A New Foundation Rochelle Alers (read aloud .txt) 📖

“Vi sent me a text telling me your father had died, but I was in Europe and couldn’t get a flight back to the States in time to attend the memorial service.”

“Everything was done very quickly,” Taylor explained. “My father had instructed my mother that he wanted to be cremated if he died before she did. He used to tease Mom that he would come back and haunt her if she had a wake where folks came and stared at him in a casket. However, she felt it was only right to host a memorial service for his friends and former employees shortly after following his passing.”

A slight smile played at the corners of Sonja’s mouth. “My dad is the complete opposite of yours. He already has a plot at Arlington National Cemetery with instructions that he wants to be buried with full military honors.”

“Your father is in the military?”

“Was,” Sonja corrected, smiling. “He’s retired, and he and my mom live in a lakefront house in the Adirondack Mountains, where he spends most of his time boating and fishing. After thirty years of moving from base to base he claims it feels good to be in one place for more than a couple of years.”

“Did you grow up a military brat?”

She nodded. “Yes. In fact, I was born in a hospital near Fort Campbell. At first I really didn’t like moving so much when I’d just made friends with other kids on the base, but as I got older and we were transferred abroad a different world opened for me. My mother, who taught romance languages, would take my brother and me on holiday to Spain, Portugal, France and Italy, where we toured museums and medieval cities and soaked up the local culture. Keith, who is ten years older than me, hated it. He claimed he didn’t see the sense in staring at statues and old paintings, and eventually stayed on the base with my father. Whenever we toured a medieval church, art gallery or museum I felt as if I’d been transported back in time. I was sixteen when I told my parents I wanted to study art history.” Sonja held up a hand when Taylor opened his mouth. “And before you ask about my brother. He’s followed in my father’s footsteps and plans to become a lifer. We never know where he is because he’s Special Forces and comes and goes like a specter. My sister-in-law says she’s in a state of constant anxiety until he walks through the door after being away for weeks and sometimes months.”

“It takes a special spouse to be married to an active duty soldier.”

Sonja’s eyebrows lifted slightly when Taylor said spouse rather than wife. Unknowingly, he had gone up exponentially on her approval scale. She’d married a man who had assigned specific gender roles for men and women, and it wasn’t until she’d had enough years of being her husband’s little wife that she finally filed for divorce.

“I agree. But now that she’s the mother of twin boys, she has a welcome distraction.”

A wide grin spread across Taylor’s face. “So, you’re an auntie.”

“I prefer Titi Sonja to auntie.”

“Should I assume you speak Spanish?”

She nodded again. “You assume right. I speak Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, and understand French, although I’m a little rusty when it comes to speaking it.”

Taylor stared at something over her head. “I’m somewhat deficient when it comes to foreign languages.” His gaze swung back to her. “My mother, who is fluent in French, taught all her children the language, but for me it did not come as easily as math and science. I managed to learn enough to read a French-language newspaper, but having a conversation was and still is definitely out of the question.”

“If you don’t speak it, then you’ll lose the facility to have a conversation. Maybe languages came easy for me because my mother is Puerto Rican and my abuela insisted on speaking only Spanish in the home to her son and daughter. Mami said her mother always tuned the radio and television to Spanish-language stations.”

Taylor gave Sonja a steady stare. “How did she learn English?”

“She grew up in West Harlem, but when she entered school for the first time she was fully bilingual. Years later she married her neighbor’s brother.”

“So, that’s why you’re Rios-Martin?”

Sonja laughed softly. “Yes. Mami is an avid feminist and claimed she didn’t want to give up her maiden name when she married, so she opted to hyphenate it.”

“What would happen if you married?” Taylor asked. “Would you be Rios-Martin while adding your husband’s last name?”

“I still would be Rios-Martin.” Her refusal to change her name had become a source of contention between Sonja and her ex-husband. She may have given in to a lot of his demands, but she had remained adamant about not changing her name.

“Good for you. There’s no reason you should give up your identity because of marriage. I know several career women who have opted to keep their maiden name.”

Sonja noticed he’d said career women. Would he feel the same if she did not have a career? On the other hand, that was not her concern. Her association with Taylor, if she did help with the restoration, would be strictly business. She was now thirty-four and no longer the wide-eyed impressionable graduate student that had fallen under the mesmerizing spell of her worldly professor. Her mantra had become once burned, twice shy. And at this time in her life, her focus was on her career and not a relationship with a man.

“There were times when I felt jealous of Vi,” Sonja said, hoping to divert the conversation away from the subject of marriage.

“Why?” Taylor asked.

“It was when she told me she grew up with four brothers. Mine was so much older than me. By the time I’d entered the first grade he was already a teenager, so I always felt like