Werlinger - Invisible, as Music

Invisible, as Music

Published by Corgyn Publishing, LLC.

Copyright 2019 by Caren J. Werlinger

All rights reserved.

e-Book ISBN: 978-0-9982179-5-6

Print ISBN: 978-0-9982179-6-3

E-mail:

Website: https://carenwerlinger.com

Blog: https://cjwerlinger.wordpress.com

Cover design by Patty G. Henderson

blvdphotografica.wixsite.com/boulevard

Cover image credit: Dreamstime

Book design by Maureen Cutajar

www.gopublished.com

This work is copyrighted and is licensed only for use by the original purchaser and can be copied to the original purchasers electronic device and its memory card for your personal use. Modifying or making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, without limit, including by email, CD, DVD, memory cards, file transfer, paper printout or any other method, constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely the work of the authors imagination.

Piracy is stealing!

BOOKS BY CAREN J. WERLINGER

Novels:

Looking Through Windows

Miserere

In This Small Spot

Neither Present Time

Year of the Monsoon

She Sings of Old, Unhappy, Far-off Things

Turning for Home

Cast Me Gently

The Beast That Never Was

When the Stars Sang

A Bittersweet Garden

Invisible, as Music

Short Stories:

Twist of the Magi

Just a Normal Christmas ( part of Do You Feel What I Feel? Holiday Anthology)

The Dragonmage Saga:

Rising From the Ashes: The Chronicles of Caymin

The Portal: The Chronicles of Caymin

The Standing Stones: The Chronicles of Caymin

For all those who dare to love

Acknowledgments

Love comes in many forms, expressed in many ways. That exploration, what it is that draws people together, is a bottomless well of inspiration for stories. Most of my books arent romances in the accepted sense, but theyre all love stories. This novel is such a story.

To tell it, Ive drawn on many things: my past experiences as a caretaker for a woman who was my model for Henrietta, thirty years working as a physical therapist, and the inexhaustible curiosity of watching people and wondering what their stories might beand making up my own versions of their stories.

Most of my books have some kind of soundtrack that helped inspire me. This novels soundtrack was a trip down memory lane.

Thank you to my editor, Lisa. No matter how clean and complete I think the manuscript is, she always finds ways of asking me to look at the story a little differently. Her suggestions and questions make my stories so much better.

Thank you to my Beth. Without you, I dont know if I could write at all.

And thank you, as always, to my readers. Your support means everything!

Contents

Chapter 1

H enrietta poured a little water into a bowl and stirred it into the gesso shed already spooned in. Picking up a well-used brush, she applied the mixture to a new canvas. Sunlight diffused indirectly through the floor-to-ceiling windows forming the north wall of her studio, where the trees beyondnot quite ready to turnbeckoned and begged to be captured. Again. Though shed seen these same treesbirches with their starkly white trunks, majestic oaks more than a hundred years old, spreading maples whose leaves would become brilliant crimson and orange in a few weeksgo through this same cycle every year for nearly forty years, it never failed to stir her.

She tried to ignore the thumps coming from the front of the house and the repeated openings and closings of the front door. She tried, too, to ignore the nervous feeling in her stomach. It was going to be a bad night. Probably a bad month or two before things calmed down again. But the calm never lasted long. And then shed go through this same cycle, just like those trees.

While the prepped canvas dried, she picked up a sketchpad and pencil and laid out a composition to be transferred to the canvas later. She sketched in a view of the pond below as it would appear when the leaves began to fall, with the meandering flagstone path from the house, down the hill, to the pond itself.

She paused. It had been a while since shed been down there. Maybe later today

She stiffened at a timid knock on the studio door behind her. A thin voice said, Miss Cochran? Im all packed.

Setting her pad down, Henrietta swiveled on her stool.

Im sorry to leave you

No need to apologize, Amanda, Henrietta cut in.

Its just my grandma needs someone, you see. Amandas pale, watery eyes flitted about the studio, her hands twisting the strap of her purse as she looked anywhere but at Henrietta.

It was a reaction Henrietta was accustomed to. I understand.

Ive made you a turkey sandwich. Amanda waved a hand in the direction of the kitchen.

Thank you.

A long silence stretched out between them until Amanda shuffled back a step. Ill just be going then. She waited a moment, but when Henrietta said nothing further, she said, Good-bye.

Henrietta swiveled back to the windows, listening to the fading sound of footsteps tapping over the kitchens linoleum floor, then silence on the living room carpet, then more taps on the foyer flagstones. When the front door thudded shut for the last time, she sat staring out at the trees, but no longer seeing them.

After a while, she picked her pad up. Her pencil rolled off and fell to the floor. She plucked another from the can on her table and continued sketching. Ignoring the rumbling of her stomach, she continued working as the light gradually shifted. She set the pad on a tabletop easel and opened a tin of watercolors. Over the next few hours, the sketch blossomed. Pushing back to scrutinize it, she made mental notes about what to change when she turned it into an oil painting.

Her hands tremored with the hours of work and lack of food. Pushing stiffly to her feet, she reached for her crutches and made her way to the kitchen, where Amandas sandwich sat on a plate on the table along with a glass of tea, the ice long since melted.

On the kitchen counter was a key. Amandas key. The key that had been issued to and returned by more companions than she could now remember.

She briefly considered making something fresh, a hamburger maybe, but instead lumbered to the table. Settling herself at her accustomed place with its view of the country club golf course across the road, she ate her stale sandwich and drank her watery tea. This late in the day, there were only a couple of solitary golfers wandering around out there.

As she ate, she ran through an inventory of sources to check with tomorrow. Amanda hadnt been stimulating companythe woman hadnt any more than a high school education and considered Harlequin romances to be literaturebut shed been pleasant and reliable.

When she was done, Henrietta shuffled first her plate, then her glass to the counter where she could push them nearer the sink to wash them and place them in the drainer. She paused as she left the kitchen, undecided between going to the living room to watch television or going to the bedroom to read.