Along Came the Rain

by Alison R Solomon

  How can she manage to insult me in so many ways in just one sentence? But I ignore it and hang up.

  I have some spamming to do.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Wynn, June 27

  I am having difficulty understanding Parminder Chatterjee, and it’s not because of her accent, or because we have a bad connection. It’s because what she’s saying makes no sense.

  I spent my day in a tizzy of anticipation, trying to create jewelry but mostly screwing it up as I dropped beads all over the floor, cut myself with my pincers and put clasps on backward. In the end, I left the jewelry and decided to make a complicated Lebanese dish I saw on the cooking channel instead. But I couldn’t concentrate on that any better than my jewelry. Finally, I decided to take Queen and Latifah on the longest walk they’ve had in weeks, even though it’s over ninety degrees outside. When we got back, I couldn’t wait any longer and I clicked on the Skype icon. I got right through to the man I’d spoken with yesterday. This time he answered with the video. I could see the desk he was sitting at and behind him a wall, filled with photographs of smiling children in various poses.

  “Aquí tiene,” he said, and as he disappeared from the screen, a dark-skinned young woman replaced him.

  “Hi. This is Parminder. Who am I speaking with?”

  “Uh…I’m Wynn. Barker’s partner.”

  She looks startled. “I thought Señor Rodriguez told me someone from the university was calling.”

  “I guess that’s my bad Spanish. Sorry if I worried you.”

  “I wasn’t worried. I was excited. I didn’t get my first choice of placement and I thought perhaps they were calling to tell me it had come through after all.”

  “Maybe it still will. Or you’ll find that the placement you did get turns out to be really interesting. Barker told me that she didn’t get the placement she wanted her second year, but that it worked out well because she ended up learning a lot about a population she might otherwise never have worked with.” I realize I’m babbling but I don’t know how to start our conversation. Luckily, Parminder does it for me.

  “May I ask why you’re calling me?”

  “It’s about those two girls you asked me to pick up.”

  Her eyes grow big and she looks scared. “That was weeks ago! They were meant to wait for you opposite the bus station, on the park bench. Weren’t they there?”

  “Yes, yes. They were right where you said they would be. But there’s been a bit of an issue and I just wanted to clarify a couple of things.”

  “What do you mean, ‘an issue?’”

  “After I took them to the condo, they went missing—but they’re back now,” I add quickly to reassure her.

  “I don’t understand why you’re the one calling me and not Barker. I can’t really talk to you about them because of confidentiality.” She sounds a little pompous and I begin to understand why Barker didn’t care for her.

  “I’m not asking for any confidential information. I only want to ask you who it was who asked you to pick up the girls.”

  Parminder raises her eyebrows. “Barker of course, who else?”

  And this is why what she’s saying makes no sense. If she initiated the abduction, I would expect her to lie. If Mrs. Clark did, perhaps she would make up a story to cover for her too. But it makes no sense to involve Barker. Obviously if it were Barker, she’d have told me herself.

  “Barker asked you?” I repeat, because I can’t think of what else to say.

  She nods. “I had to be the one to remove them from the home because I work for the county and you don’t.”

  “But why didn’t she just call me directly instead of having you ask me to pick them up?”

  “She was at her retreat, so I think her time was limited. And because you have a standing appointment on Wednesday mornings, she knew she wouldn’t be able to get in touch with you.”

  My head is spinning and my brain feels so thick, I can’t think. I don’t have any standing appointments. Why would Parminder make this up? The only reason I can think of is that she did indeed organize the whole thing and now she’s trying to put it back on the county.

  “Why did you tell me the girls were eighteen?” I decide to see what else I can find out from her.

  “Because that’s what Barker told me. She said I couldn’t tell you why I had removed them from the home and that I should just tell you they were going to have a wonderful vacation at that condo. She also said to be sure to let you know they were eighteen and aging out of the system.”

  Someone clearly wanted to dupe me. I had to think the girls were eighteen because if I’d known their real age, when word got out that two fifteen-year-olds were missing, I’d have made the connection. But who is that someone, and if it’s not her, why is Parminder covering for them? I try to think what else I can ask her but she starts to speak again. “Wynn, what’s going on? Why did you call? I don’t even know how you found me here.”

  “I did a lot of digging. Why does it bother you? Are you trying to hide? I know you haven’t been answering your phone or your email—”

  “I didn’t bring my phone, the roaming charges would be way too much, and I had to close my university account because I was getting endless spam, some of it very obscene. My family has stayed in touch via my personal email address, so if someone really wanted to find me, all they had to do was contact my parents.”

  “Barker told me your parents go to India every year.”

  “Well…that’s true.”

  “It seems to me, you’ve gone out of your way to be unavailable. And the fact that you’re trying to pin this on Barker makes me mad. I’m not stupid and nor is she. She had no idea those kids were being removed.”

  Parminder starts to look very annoyed. “Of course she knew, since she initiated it. Maybe she just wasn’t allowed to tell you. I don’t like being accused of lying and I’m sorry I told you anything at all. You’re clearly calling behind Barker’s back and I don’t believe she’s been trying to find me. If Barker wanted to call me, she could have called me here just like you did.”

  “She—she knew where you were?” My heart starts pounding. She has to be lying, she has to be.

  “Of course she did. She’s the one who found me the placement. She sent another student here three years ago. And if you don’t believe that then ask Señor Rodriguez. Would you like me to put him back on?” She turns around, presumably looking to see if he’s still in the room, but my shaking hand has already clicked the red icon to hang up.

  I sit and stare at the blank screen. It can’t be true. If Barker knew where Parminder was, why didn’t she tell the police? There’s only one reason. She didn’t want the police to find Parminder. And the only reason for that is because Barker wanted to keep the suspicion focused on either me or Mrs. Clark. I want to believe it was Mrs. Clark she was trying to frame. But I know it wasn’t. I know because I was the one who wrote the check for the condo. And even though she denied it, I know Barker told me to write it. Barker has been lying to me all along.

  Suddenly, I’m shaking violently. My stomach seizes and I start heaving. My legs give way beneath me and I crash to the floor. I wish I had hit my head so that I could sink into a cloudy oblivion, but instead my mind is coming into focus and I wish I could turn away from what it’s telling me. It’s repeating over and over, like a Buddhist mantra, “It’s Barker. Barker is the one who set you up.”

  Part Four

  Chapter Thirty

  Wynn, June 27

  When Barker and I got together, I was 44 and she was 28. Two years earlier, I had left Daria, and vowed I’d never get in a long-term relationship again. Daria and I were together for ten years, which was nine years and nine months longer than it should have been. The first three months were blissful. Every other day she showed up with flowers or chocolates or an unexpected gift. She caressed my face, insisting my eyes were the most beautiful she’d ever seen. She made love to me for hours, teasing and tantalizing me
in ways that were entirely new to me. I’d never experienced such intensity and passion, and I lapped it up. When she suggested I give up my apartment and move into her house, I had no doubts. But once I moved in, things started changing, although at first I didn’t recognize what was happening.

  “We’re not keeping that futon,” she said, directing the mover to take it to the dump.

  I loved that lumpy, old mattress, which had been with me since college. “We could put it in the spare room,” I suggested.

  “I don’t need to look at that and be reminded of all the other women you’ve slept with,” she responded. “And anyway, it’s mangy-looking.” I gave in, and that set the pattern for everything else that happened.

  “You need to get a different job,” she said, three months after I’d moved in. “Being a preschool teacher doesn’t pay you enough to cover half of our expenses.”

  “I—I thought you said you didn’t mind paying the lion’s share.” Daria worked in real estate and had an endless supply of money.

  “Not forever! I’m not going to let a girlfriend mooch off me. Don’t you want to be equal partners?”

  Even though I loved playing in the sandbox with the kids and reading stories to them, I gave up the funky little preschool job I had and joined Daria in real estate, writing up loans for her potential buyers. The mortgage company was directly connected to Daria’s real estate business and customers didn’t seem to realize that they weren’t always getting the best deal by coming to us. I hated that Daria would make it sound like they might lose the house if they didn’t take one of our loans. I also hated the work itself. I’m hopeless with numbers and even though my part in securing the loans wasn’t related to the numbers, it was boring. But the commissions were good and I made four times as much money as I ever had before. It seemed like the perfect time to set up a retirement account, but Daria looked at me like I was crazy.

  “You’re thirty years old. You can plan for retirement when you’re fifty. We have a lot of living to do, girlfriend!” We bought a boat and spent weekends taking it down the Intracoastal. We threw away our earnings at casinos, and spent ridiculous amounts of money on food and alcohol at high-end restaurants. It wasn’t the lifestyle I would have chosen, but by then Daria had questioned me about so many of my beliefs and habits that I no longer knew what I wanted.

  The gifts stopped the day I moved in to the house, as did most of the compliments. It seemed that now that she had me, Daria wanted me to become someone else.

  “You’re not really going to wear that hippie jewelry are you?” She’d ask when we were getting dressed to go out and I put on the silver bangles that I liked to cover my arms in. When I met her, I was probably wearing ten different bangles and bracelets on each arm and she commented on how unique I was, but that quickly changed to embarrassment at my eccentricity.

  The worst part was how she made me doubt myself as a lover. “You don’t use your tongue right,” she’d scold, as I was snaking my way down her body. “Your fingers are pressing too hard, lighten up!” she’d reprimand as I tried to bring her to orgasm. She stopped teasing and tantalizing me, saying our lovemaking was too one-sided. If I was lucky, I got to have a quick orgasm before it was my turn to go down on her, but after a couple of years even that stopped.

  Why did I stay so long? I guess by then, my self-esteem was shot. Instead of praising me outright, as she did at the beginning, she’d give me insults veiled as compliments: “Your face could look fantastic with a nose job”; “You could be head of the loan department if you studied accounting in your spare time, instead of making jewelry.” I always felt that if I just tried a little harder, and did everything a little better, our relationship would improve. I did try harder—though thankfully I didn’t get the nose job or give up my jewelry—and it made no difference. I never did get up the courage to leave her though. She left me for a younger woman who was already a rising star in commercial real estate. Three months later, Orlando was blitzed with billboards letting the world know that Daria and Svetlana were the top-selling realtors in town. Their faces were plastered everywhere, Svetlana smiling widely, Daria looking sultry. I couldn’t bear to see them, and shortly after, I left the city and moved west to Jade County.

  I met Barker two years later at a fundraiser for the local animal shelter. She approached me and asked if she could sit in one of the unoccupied chairs at the table I was sitting at. I was glad of it, not knowing anyone there. We made easy conversation and at the end of the evening, she asked for my phone number.

  “I’m not looking for a date,” she said when she saw me hesitate. “I think we could become good friends.”

  She called a few days later and we met at a coffee shop, where we drank lattes and exchanged stories about our dating histories.

  “That’s abuse,” she said, when I started telling her about Daria.

  “Oh no,” I reassured her. “She wasn’t violent. She never hit me.”

  “Not with her hands maybe, but she punched you in the gut plenty of times with her words and actions.” It was the first time anyone had told me about emotional abuse. The next time we got together, she said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I brought you this book to read,” and handed me a self-help paperback about psychological cruelty. At first I thought she was overreacting—she was a social worker after all—but then I started opening the book at random places, and every time I did, there was something in it that matched an experience I’d had with Daria. The next time we got together, she gave me another book, this time about how to raise your self-esteem. “I want you to be a strong, confident woman, so that when you’re ready to date, you never fall into that trap again.”

  For the next few weeks, we met a couple of times a week. Gradually, she started introducing me to her social circle. I liked the women I met. They were honest and sincere. None of them boasted about their boats or cars, like the women Daria and I had hung out with, and if they had material wealth, they didn’t throw it in your face. What they did talk about was how to improve the world in which they were living and how to support and help each other.

  “I choose my friends carefully,” she told me when I commented on what I was seeing. “I’d rather have a few intimate friendships with people I know I can trust, than know a boatload of people but not know if they’ll be there for me if I really need them.”

  “What about your family? Can’t you rely on them if you need someone?”

  “I don’t have contact with my family,” she responded without elaborating. Later I would learn that she’d grown up surrounded by violence and had decided to create a family of choice instead of interacting with her birth family.

  Two months after we met, Barker and I attended a one-woman play about a character who falls in love with another woman despite knowing she has cancer. When it was over, she invited me for herbal tea at her apartment. After she made the tea and we were sitting in her living room, she turned to me and said, “I know you’re not looking for a relationship, and nor was I. But I’d really like to date you, if you think you could be interested in me.”

  I’d had a feeling this was going to come up sooner or later. Although our friendship had blossomed, I’d noticed a certain awkwardness had started to arise between us. At the beginning we’d give each other a quick hug when we met and when we parted, but lately, we’d stopped doing that. For my part, I knew why. Every time she touched me, I felt like a jolt of electricity was shooting through my veins and I wanted to grab her and kiss her. Now it appeared she felt the same way.

  “You don’t think I’m too old for you?” I said shakily, knowing that I wanted her to say no. She stood up and took me in her arms. We looked deeply into each other’s eyes and then we kissed.

  The first time we made love, she asked me what I wanted, what I needed, what I liked.

  “I want to make it perfect for you,” she told me. “So you’ll never want to leave me.” Everything about her was the complete opposite of Daria. She didn’t shower m
e with a level of attention she couldn’t sustain, she didn’t give me backhanded compliments, she didn’t try to change me. We waited six months before we moved in together, and when we did, it was to a home that we furnished together. She never made a decision without my input, and she never suggested she knew better than me about anything. She accepted me with all my quirkiness. When I was ditzy or clumsy, she laughed, and when I wore five contrasting necklaces around my neck at the same time, she told me how much she loved my fashion sense. She was the one who suggested I make creating jewelry my full-time occupation, even though it wouldn’t bring in enough money to support us.

  “Life is too short,” she told me. “You can’t keep doing work you don’t love. My salary is reasonable. It should be enough for us both if we live carefully.”

  When my mother started to decline, she supported me in every way she could, and when Mom had to move to the nursing home, she cried along with me.

  Barker has been my rock for years, and I have never doubted her love for me. I have trusted her with every fiber of my being. So what am I to do now? How should I proceed? The Barker I know would not make me doubt myself or her. The Barker I know would not set me up.

  Despite all proof to the contrary, I refuse to believe that I have fallen prey to another woman’s abuse. Something must be going on with her, and I have to figure out what.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Wynn, June 27

  I dream that Barker is wielding a knife dripping with blood. I dream that Dot and Evie are standing in the background laughing hysterically. I can’t figure out what I’m doing and then I realize that Barker has stabbed me and the blood is mine. I try to scream but nothing comes out of my mouth, and then suddenly I’m awake, bathed in sweat. Barker rolls over and spoons me.