Broken Serenade

  BROKEN SERENADE

  A NOVEL BY

  DORINA NEAGU STANCIU

  To you, Ion, again…

  I love you more than ever…

  All names, characters, and actions included in the present book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real people, organizations, and events is purely unintentional.

  Dorion E-Publishing

  Copyright © 2012 by author

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, illegally downloaded and stored, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  PROLOGUE

  London, 1989

  Each and every one of his patients had something different, malignantly interesting, something that incited his curiosity and determined him to wait for the next appointment almost anxiously. What made them extremely fascinating for his interest of a purely medical nature, it was the fact that none of them was entirely out of touch with reality. They were human beings only partially lost into inexistent territories artificially created by their captivatingly alienated minds. And psychologist Doctor Andrew Evans was struggling to show them the way back to the normal world - a world that appeared mentally healthy, considering the rules by itself established. He was not married and had no other passion or hobby. He did his job with patience and total dedication, always stretching his limits to the maximum, in a desperate desire to escape his own inner monsters. Those little devils inside his head were ravishing his being every once in a while with unhealthy and scandalous cravings.

  Still, the most important thing for Doctor Andrew Evans was the fact that he felt in control in the presence of each of his patients.

  However, this teenage girl made him increasingly uneasy. She was naturally blonde, with ash highlights in her hair obediently combed in a ponytail. She seemed like taken out of a Christian icon. Most certainly, she has blue eyes like the clear sky of a beautiful summer day, the doctor guessed, in a poetic mood, and probably she is still a virgin.

  He opened the file of his future patient and realized in only a few seconds that appearances can be awfully deceiving sometimes, like in this particular case. He read fast, between the lines, the story of this girl, rejoicing for every wrong step she had taken until that moment. Down, down in the human mud, Mr. Evans thought. The lower you are now, the more you’ll have to climb with my help. Your recovery will be spectacular, he reflected in an instant of sudden and unexpected confidence in his own practice.

  Miss Lauren had become a mother at the young age of sixteen. With the assistance of an international agency, she had given up her child for adoption. Her baby girl had brought joy and happiness to a wealthy family in California.

  An entire year, Miss Lauren had managed to keep herself away from serious troubles. It had been a period almost sterile from the criminal point of view - only one act of petty theft from a cosmetics boutique, and an attempt to pose as an adult in an alcoholic beverages store. Just until a few months ago, when life had sent her a message, as concrete as it had been horrifying: You can’t play with fire and not get burned. Maybe fortune would smile upon you once, or twice, but not every time you take a wrong step.

  One late night, she was returning home from a party she had attended without the consent and awareness of her parents. She had taken three girlfriends with her in the car. Eager to add a little bit of excitement into their lives of obedient, bored high school girls, they had unnecessarily entered the freeway. Unfortunately, Miss Lauren had gotten her driver’s license only a month back, and she had drunk a considerable amount of beer at the party. The wrong way sign had not rung any bells as she had commenced her wild freeway ride. The accident had been inevitable. Her Toyota SUV had hit the small Ford car frontally. The two men in the Ford and all three friends of her had died instantly. Miss Lauren had been the only one wearing a seatbelt and, thanks to that vital detail, the sole survivor of that grisly accident. However, she had lost her left breast and, along with it, a consistent part of her mental faculties. In the months following the accident, Miss Lauren had already tried to end her life twice. Now, she had been put under suicidal watch.

  At the moment of her scheduled medical appointment with Doctor Evans, her musical talent was the only good thing about her. Many connoisseurs in the matter considered her a real piano virtuoso.

  Brimming with professional anticipation, the psychologist decided it was time to face the little beast and start to tame her.

  “Miss Johns, would you, please, be so kind as to invite Miss Lauren into my office,” Doctor Evans addressed his assistant.

  The girl entered, as formal and haughty as a queen, and she came to a stop in front of his desk.

  As it was his custom with all his new patients, he stood up and reached out to shake her hand and introduce himself.

  “Miss Lauren, I am Doctor Evans…”

  The young girl looked at him with cold, unblinking green eyes. She was undoubtedly beautiful. She had the glacial, primitive beauty of a rare, lethal reptile.

  She did not give the slightest impression that she intended to welcome his gesture. On the contrary.

  What the hell is on your mind? I can’t wait to discover, the doctor found himself thinking.

  “I am a woman,” she stated proudly. “The code of politeness dictates that you should wait for me to initiate the handshake,” she continued with a smirk. “And then, Doctor Evans,” she said arrogantly, tilting her head to one side and looking down on him with unjustified superiority, “I don’t particularly like being in your office. They forced me to come for an evaluation.”

  “A mental evaluation,” the psychologist specified rigidly.

  “Yes”, she answered with a stern face.

  “Is it the environment of my office, or is it the reason you’re here that you actually dislike, Miss Lauren?”

  “Both,” she answered promptly. “Well…you could add yourself to the list also. Nothing personal, mind you! It is just your profession that I can’t stand. You’re going to be my shrink, Mr. Evans. You’re going to want to know what’s on my mind. This is something that I don’t only dislike. In fact, I find this situation revolting!”

  I should have anticipated her behavior. Silently, Doctor Evans disapproved with his own technique so far. Most teenagers are rebels. Why would she be an exception to the rule?

  He decided to ignore her crude and disturbing sincerity. It was better that way.

  “Please, do sit down, Miss Lauren,” the doctor invited her in a patronizing tone of voice.

  The girl took a seat immediately. In a matter of seconds, her coolness dissolved unexpectedly, and she began to cry.

  “Don’t you understand?” she lamented. “I don’t want to live. I don’t want to! I can’t!”

  “Do you feel responsible for the deaths of your friends and of those two men? You have to know that the feeling is normal. Post traumatic stress disorder can lead to suicidal behavior,” the psychologist attempted to explain her psychological condition using academic terms.

  Her crying and sobbing fit stopped as suddenly as it had erupted. She broke into a nervous, hysterical laughter.

  Patiently, the doctor waited for her to calm down. He handed her a box of Kleenex.

  “Hey doc, you really amuse me,” the girl replied harshly with unmasked impudence. “They are dead. D, e, a, d,” she spelled the word. “My remorse will not bring them back. I am talking about me… ME! What am I going to do? How could I go through this perfidious life with only one breast? I am mutilated. Forever. I am a monster,” she yelled. “Do you have a pill for that, doc?”

  Yes, you are a monster indeed, Mr. Evans agreed. An enchanting, ravishing monster, he reflected and dared to stare
once again into those elongated green eyes.

  Lyrics from Kim Carnes’ song, Bette Davis Eyes, came back involuntarily to his mind: She’s a spy, she’s got Bette Davis eyes… He wanted to push the song away, but his brain continued to play it on mute stubbornly, obsessively.

  She is a monster, the doctor concluded.

  Out of nowhere, this stringent need rushed into his mind, a strong desire to plant a minuscule seed of kindness in her. With it, a sparkle of hope flickered anemically. Theoretically, it should work, Mr. Evans reflected with a certain amount of reluctance. An encouraging thought sprang to his help, fueling that feeble expectation. Come on, Andrew, you’ve been experimenting this on yourself for such a long time. If it’s working for you, why wouldn’t it work for her? Come on doc, give it a try!

  When he spoke again, his voice sounded professional, detached, but very convincing. Yet, deep in his heart, he inferred that nothing good could come out of this either. Primordially an optimistic person otherwise, Doctor Andrew Evans was amazed by the raw pessimism that engulfed his being, like an acute crisis of an illness considered long ago cured. Morbid thoughts continued to torture his will as he started to talk.

  “Miss Lauren, have you ever heard of the Amazons?” he asked slowly, with patience mastered over years of medical practice.

  The girl did not answer. He had no doubt that she had never heard about the Amazons. She’s been quite busy lately. Too many parties, drugs, drinks, and men to try, Mr. Evans thought maliciously.

  “The history places them in antiquity, a civilization formed exclusively of extremely courageous women-warriors. Some historians believe the Amazons resided on the actual territory of Ukraine.” Still a bit uneasy, the doctor shifted in his seat. He made another futile attempt to engage her in the dialogue.

  “Have you ever been to Ukraine, Miss Lauren?”

  The girl shook her head in negation.

  “No, of course not,” the doctor continued. “That’s the place where you can find the most beautiful women in the world, blonde, tall, superb. The ever-so-coveted Russian women. Men from everywhere are crazy about them.”

  Including that mediocre Sean, Doctor Evans thought, sickened again by his brother’s actions. As if it were not enough that he had become a dentist and was picking cheese from between his clients’ teeth - a disgusting profession in Andrew’s opinion – now Sean had opened a matrimonial agency. Moreover, he was using his newly established business to infest England with young Russian women. Nothing else but gold diggers looking to climb the social ladder fast and easy in exchange for their sexual favors.

  The black thorn of guilt scratched at his conscience again. Andrew Evans did not love his brother, even though he was aware that Sean idolized him. It was obvious that the man made every effort to imitate him. Yet, the outcome was disastrous. He’s trying, poor fellow, but he’s bound to fail. Time after time, after time. He doesn’t possess the intellectual capacity to copy me. In his opinion, Sean was a weak, corrupted, frivolous man and an ignoramus when it came to art. For God’s sake, we share the same blood, the doctor thought with remorse, appalled by his own lack of affection for his brother. He wanted to love Sean; he wanted that from the bottom of his heart. Nevertheless, it was impossible. Andrew was capable though to play the loving sibling exceptionally well, and that had proved to be enough so far.

  He urgently resumed his conversation with Miss Lauren. He even talked more enthusiastically, as if he intended to make up for those few seconds of personal distraction.

  “Aware of their physical inferiority in a hand-to-hand combat, the Amazons were said to have chosen the bow and arrow as their main weapons. The legend claims that these warrior-women used to cut off or burn out their left breast to make up for their physical limitation and reach the best results in archery.”

  His words had an immediate effect on the girl before him. As if by magic, Miss Lauren’s face brightened up. Happy to have finally gotten her attention, the psychologist continued his ancient-history lesson zealously.

  “In this matriarchal society, men were accepted only as slaves and as necessary instruments used to perpetuate the specie. They had no voice in the tribe; their opinion didn’t matter at all.”

  The young girl interrupted him unexpectedly, wearing a mysterious smile on her soft lips.

  “Doctor Evans, I am not interested in men. Not anymore.”

  Miss Lauren’s voluntary confession almost startled him. For an instant, a flash of confusion washed over his face. Then he remained looking at her fixedly, dumbfounded.

  “I’m even less interested in their opinion,” she continued nonchalantly. “Actually,” she said, getting up and stretching out her hand with rehearsed grace, “the meeting is over. One hour. Not a second more,” she added, looking up at the big, round clock on the left wall.

  Under the old clock, that now showed 3 PM sharp, an oil painting captured the image of two little girls between the ages of ten and eleven as they played with a ball. An indiscreet gust of wind blew their short, pleated dresses, uncovering their fancy, lace-stitched underwear.

  “We’ll see each other again, doc, I promise you,” Miss Lauren assured him. “The Amazon women’s story is very interesting.”

  As he enjoyed a strange feeling of masochistic nature inside his ego, the doctor dared to hope that the girl would keep her word. He was almost sure that she would return. His professionalism would have to assert itself, like in all other cases up until now. He was well known for his success.

  Miss Lauren walked toward the exit with the elegance of a model. She stopped before the closed door and kept her back on him. Balancing her entire weight on one foot with the grace of a ballerina, she leaned to her left and examined another painting that was hanging above a tall lamp. The girl touched it gingerly with the tips of her fingers. It had the same subject with the one seen before - little girls playing - this time on a lake’s shore. Both paintings must have been the work of the same painter, variations on the same theme.

  “Do you like children, Doctor Evans?”

  She had asked the question meaningfully, turning around gracefully, with not a bit of urgency, like in a movie scene filmed in slow motion.

  The psychologist did not lift his eyes to look at her. Apparently, he continued to take notes into her file, but she observed that he had stopped writing, and his hand was slightly shaking. There was a long silence. That moment she knew she had him. Surprisingly, he knew that too.

  Finally, the doctor sighed.

  “Good bye, Miss Lauren,” he said coldly, as she opened the door and left.

  After only a few seconds, he called his assistant. He struggled to control his fury.

  “Miss Johns,” he yelled. “Who put these paintings on my walls?”

  “Surprise, Mr. Evans!” the woman chirped happily. “This is the gift from your brother. He insisted that I should expose them on your birthday. Actually, I put them on the walls yesterday after my lunch break, but you didn’t return to the office in the afternoon.”

  “Take them down immediately and send them back to him with this note.”

  The secretary sent a quick glance over the small note just written in a hurry in her presence, and she blushed violently up to her flapping ears. She backed up silently.

  A week later, when Miss Lauren did not show up to honor her appointment, Mr. Evans experienced hastily a feeling of relief, a moment of indisputable happiness. The disappointment in his assistant’s voice, when downcast, she announced that the young girl had left the sanatorium and was nowhere to be found, did not impress him in the least. Actually, he felt liberated. It was as if he had had a short encounter with the devil, and to his utter surprise, the creature had unexpectedly changed its mind and had abandoned, had spared him.

  Apparently, his happiness had not been long lived. The following day, the old woman who cleaned his house found him dead, lying on his kitchen floor. Subsequently, the autopsy attributed his death to a fatal combination of alcohol and
sleeping pills. His family was shocked. His old parents vehemently denied the fact that Mr. Evans had ever had sleeping problems.

  “Not so difficult to resort to medication anyway,” they had insisted, even though they had not seen their sons in years.

  Nevertheless, in the absence of other concrete evidence that would have proved the contrary, the coroner quickly listed his death as accidental suicide.

  The police received only one anonymous phone call regarding this mysterious case. The person had allegedly seen Miss Lauren leaving the doctor’s residence that particular night. However, at the time of her supposed departure from his house, Doctor Evans was believed to have been still alive and not yet deadly intoxicated. According to the forensics, his death had occurred a few hours later. Moreover, the detective in charge of the case concluded that the girl, in spite of her tumultuous past, did not have any reason to kill her psychologist whom she had met only once in her life.

  CHAPTER 1

  Woodside, San Francisco Bay Area, summer of 1996

  Serene and carefree, morning filtered in through the wide-open window. Vivien yawned, blinked a few times, and then let go of her pink stuffed bear that she always hugged while she slept. Her eyelids still heavy, she jumped off the bed and fell on her knees. She positioned her elbows on the edge of her bed and put her palms together in a pious gesture of prayer. Her grandmother’s words reverberated inside her mind with convincing power that filled her little heart with hope and chased away her morning somnolence.

  “If you pray hard enough, God will hear your voice, and He will make your wish come true. You only have to have trust in His unlimited power, and He will undoubtedly help you,” granny had said.

  Granny knows so many things. She bakes the best cookies and tells the most exciting fairy tales. She is so smart and wise! Vivien remembered.

  She concentrated on her prayer.