West Wind (Complete Book on Author's Site)

West Wind: Chapter One

Chapter One

James Weaver tilted a brass watering can over the small garden at his property line. "No, I haven't seen her today," he said to his wife. "How am I supposed to know if she's okay?"

Ida Weaver stood on their neighbor's front porch, where she alternately rang the bell, knocked on the door and tapped on the window.

"Well, she never goes anywhere," Ida said, keeping her voice low so the elderly woman inside wouldn't hear. "She hasn't driven the Cadillac for at least a month."

"Just try the door then. I doubt it's locked." His sage advice delivered, James went back to tending his flowers.

Ida visited Rose Windham a few times a week, getting as close as any neighbor could to the reclusive old lady. It was mid-morning, so Rose shouldn't be in bed. Ida hesitated, then twisted the knob and opened the door of the Victorian mansion.

James dropped the watering can on his toe at the sound of her scream.

* * *

Sabrina's heart pounded as she groped for the telephone.

"Sabrina?" Her mother's husky voice still carried a slight Portuguese accent. "Are you awake?"

"I am now," she said, swinging her legs off the side of the bed. "What's wrong? Is Daddy okay?"

"Yes, he's fine. It's Grandmother Rose."

"What's happened?" Sabrina rubbed her face, wiping sleep from her heavy lids.

"She's in the hospital. She fell. Daddy's on the cell phone with her neighbor now. Doctors say she may have had a stroke."

Sabrina had limited experience with illness. Her parents were healthy and Rose seemed invincible. These three made up her small family.

"We need you to go to Eaton."

Sabrina exhaled. Here it came. "Isn't Daddy going?"

"We're leaving for Tibet in two days, Sabrina. We can't change our plans now. We have our visas and tickets. Our itinerary isn't flexible." Her mother's voice rose, no longer husky.

Sabrina heard the threat of tears. She wondered if they were for Grandmother Rose, unconscious in a hospital on the East Coast, or if they were for Marta, herself, busy planning yet another trip to the Orient.

Her parents, Norman and Marta Windham, were bohemian writers, renowned more for their eccentric personalities and fantastic destinations than for the quality of the books they wrote as a team. For more than twenty years, their popular series of "Tread Lightly" travel guides sold well. They wrote about backpacking the Himalayas, rafting the Amazon, floating across Africa in a hot air balloon, and snowshoeing through British Columbia. They retained the "eco-friendly" attitude that attracted them to each other as young college students, sipping green tea, dining on hummus and lentils, favoring Birkenstock shoes and all-cotton clothing.

As the daughter of aging hippies who smoked who-knows-what in their Hookah, Sabrina mutinied in her youth. At the age of eleven, fighting her way out of a lifestyle embellished with the exotic artifacts of her parents' travels, Sabrina begged to enroll in an all-girl, Catholic preparatory school in Maryland. At the time, the family still lived in northern Virginia, close to Washington, D.C., where her parents worked as freelance writers and co-hosted a show on public radio. They now lived in Boulder, Colorado, a bastion of aging "free spirits."

Their young, conservative daughter amused Norman and Marta and they smiled when she rebelliously dressed in plaid skirts, knee-high socks, leather loafers, white shirts and cardigan sweaters. They understood her need to "buck the establishment." The same need drove them into finding their destiny as teens, albeit with tied-dyed T-shirts and hemp sandals.