Coyote Blues Read online

  Coyote Blues

  Synopsis

  Riley Dawson is a psychotherapist with a lycanthropic affliction. She’s a were coyote, to be precise.

  A foundling adopted by wealthy parents, Riley led a privileged life until she fell in love with Fiona Bell, an evangelical preacher’s daughter. Raging hormones, the full moon, and the pull of Fiona Bell on her teenage heartstrings triggered her first transformation. Unfortunately, her parents witnessed the change and sent her off to college with a trust fund and an agreement never to return home.

  Twenty years later, Riley shares a lucrative therapy practice with Dr. Margaret Spencer. Margaret, her wife, and her gay brother-in-law are the only ones who know Riley’s secret. Afraid of risking exposure, Riley restricts her love life to online hookups. But when a family is referred for treatment and Fiona Bell comes back into her life, all the rules of the client-therapist relationship are tested and Riley’s world is turned upside down.

  Praise from Publishers Weekly: “Injustice and self-acceptance drive this excellent paranormal lesbian romance...[Williams] manages to tug at the heartstrings without being preachy...Grounded in kindness, queerness, and just a hint of magic, this is sure to satisfy.”

  What Reviewers Say About Karen F. Williams’s Work

  As the Crow Flies

  “Long and satisfying. I enjoyed all of the characters and happenings so much that I just enjoyed the ride. There were two blossoming relationships in this story and I was equally invested in both. I also felt the mystery was carefully unraveled over time. And I was truly stunned at a point toward the end. Completely loved this.”—Bookvark

  “There are two romances for the price of one in this fascinating book, and the paranormal elements are skillfully woven through the entire story. Don’t worry if you’re not a fan of ghost stories—I didn’t think I was but As the Crow Flies convinced me otherwise. The settings are described using wonderful language and imagery, and the quality of the writing is very high. I definitely recommend this book if you want something intellectual and a bit different to sink your teeth into.”—Curve

  “While all four characters are completely different, they are all likeable and you’ll end up rooting for both pairs. There is a ghost in this story—not the kind of ghost you’d normally expect. I see paranormal anything, and I grab it. However, I honestly didn’t expect this to be so good.”—Lez Review Books

  “…some of the best story telling I’ve ever read. Brilliantly written with great pacing, and such interesting and enchanting characters. I was transfixed from the very beginning. I can’t believe it has taken me so long to read this author’s works.”—Les Rêveur

  Cupid’s Bow

  “[A] cute, quirky and sometimes hilarious novella… What I loved the most about this story was the dialogue between the two. It was witty, sometimes sarcastic, funny, and definitely romantic.”—Rainbow Reflections

  “[Cupid’s Bow] is a lovely story of unexpected attraction and the hope of more. It poses the question of whether one can fall in love at first sight. And whether you can make a life changing decision based on that one meeting. I loved it. Karen F. Williams is an excellent writer with imaginative flair.”—Kitty Kat’s Book Review Blog

  “…the rule of three and the golden mean…it’s as close to love at first sight as you’ll get. The romance is intense while still sweet enough to bring the characters to life. Best Novella I’ve read this year.”—Les Rêveur

  “Snowed in. A hotel bar. A novelist. A math professor. Lesbian speed dating. I love Williams’ intellectually stimulating writing style. Playful, nerdy, quirky, yet absolutely engaging and downright sexy!”—In Bugs’ Own Words Blog

  Meeting Ms. Roman

  “Black Jaguar, Hermès scarf, dark sunglasses, eastern European accent…if these things do it for you, then Ms. Roman is your lady.”—Lesbian Review

  Coyote Blues

  Brought to you by

  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com

  eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share.

  Coyote Blues

  © 2020 By Karen F. Williams. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-63555-559-2

  This Electronic Original Is Published By

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, NY 12185

  First Edition: June 2020

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Shelley Thrasher

  Production Design: Susan Ramundo

  Cover Design By Melody Pond

  eBook Design By Toni Whitaker

  By the Author

  As the Crow Flies

  Cupid’s Bow

  Meeting Ms. Roman

  The Feeding

  Nightshade

  Love Spell

  Coyote Blues

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks go out to the wonderful people who helped bring this story to fruition: Radclyffe and Sandy Lowe; Shelley Thrasher, an amazing editor and even more amazing woman; Carryl Cole, for her constant love, endless patience, and her very fine instincts for story-driven plots; friend and fellow author, Kelly Wacker, who has an uncanny knack for telling me what I think; Connie Ward, whose friendship, support, and insightful suggestions made a difference; Michelle Lisper, my sharp-eyed, sharp-eared coach; Judy Portnoy for reading and listening; Sallyanne Monti for sending out her “energetic integrity” and keeping the universe in balance; my dear friend and colleague, Donna Ramirez, LCSW, for those late night musings on narcissism and family annihilators; and another fine colleague, Michelle Axelson of Provincetown’s Womencrafts, for reviewing the clinical content of this manuscript.

  Also, I want to thank my awesome pack of dogs for staying by my side and reminding me (every half hour) that it’s time to stop writing and go play in the woods: KC, Black Jack, Kylie, Zoe, Hazel, and my little red Chile Pepper, who made her literary debut in The Feeding, and who is one of the finest and most intuitive dogs I have ever known. I love you guys to pieces.

  Dedication

  To Carryl

  …and to the special coyotes who inspired this story, and who respectfully share my land, granting me daily glimpses into their complex lives. We are more alike than different. They are us, and we are them.

  …and to the earth’s good stewards who protect and educate the public about coyotes, wolves, and all other canines, in their effort to make the world a more humane and kinder place. All God’s creatures are magnificent, but there is no animal more beautiful than a compassionate human being.

  Prologue

  New York City

  1987

  Riley Edith Dawson was born with a tail. All vertebrate animals begin life with one, but in humans it recedes during embryonic development to form the coccyx. On rare occasions, however, a baby is born with a fleshy appendage containing nerves and muscle. And rarer still, there may be bone, up to five vertebrae, resulting in a true vestigial tail that can contract and move and—who knows?—maybe wag if left to itself. Such was the case with Riley. The tail was removed, of course, and it wasn’t until the age of six, when her adoptive parents moved from Boston to New York, that she learned she’d ever had one.

  Riley sat on the examination table of her new pediatric
ian’s office that day, patiently swinging her legs while, in the next room, her mother and Dr. Blacksberg discussed her medical history. When her mother’s voice dropped to a whisper, she slowly slid off the crinkly paper covering the table and tiptoed to the door. It was open just a crack. Riley brushed her sandy bangs from her eyes and peeked in.

  “We never actually saw the tail,” the well-spoken and impeccably dressed Mrs. Dawson was explaining to the doctor. “Riley was a foundling…discovered in the woods by hikers off the Appalachian Trail in western Massachusetts.”

  Riley covered her mouth with both hands to silence her gasp. The fact of being adopted came as no news. Her parents had already told her the story of how they’d asked for a baby girl, how the stork had been on its way to deliver her in a terrible storm when it was blown off course and she dropped from its beak, tumbling from the sky and landing safely in a crow’s nest high in a tree. There she had been kept warm and dry until a nice person retrieved her from that nest and carried her to the waiting arms of her parents. Riley didn’t know how someone had noticed her high up in a nest or gotten her down from that tree. But one thing for sure, she knew she hadn’t come out her mother’s belly as her classmates claimed to have done. The part about the tail, though, came as quite a shock.

  “All we were told,” Mrs. Dawson went on, “is that the placenta was still attached, and so was the…you know, the…”

  “Tail,” Dr. Blacksberg finished for her. “Fascinating!” He scratched his balding head and flipped through the medical records on his desk. “No tethered spinal cord? No spina bifida, spinal dysraphism?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that. Riley’s perfectly healthy. She did have mild developmental delays, though.”

  He looked up from the papers on his desk. “With reaching milestones?”

  “Yes. Well, for some reason Riley resisted walking. She crawled until age two. Not that anything was wrong with her legs—she crawled faster than the other toddlers could run.” Daintily clearing her throat, Mrs. Dawson folded her well-manicured hands neatly in her lap. “And, uh…she did receive early intervention services to address a deficiency in expressive language skills. Her receptive language, mind you, was rather advanced, according to the speech pathologist. Riley was sharp, quick to comprehend. She paid careful attention to every sound, every word, and she loved being read to. She just never had much to say. Of course, now we can’t shut her up,” she said with a dismissive laugh. “She’s perfectly fine now, aside from a few…quirks.”

  “Quirks?” Dr. Blacksberg leaned back and put his hands together, pressing his fingertips to his mouth in the manner of a detective mulling over a case.

  Mrs. Dawson backtracked. “I shouldn’t say she’s quirky. Skittish is more like it. We recently bought an apartment here on Fifth Avenue, and she’s having difficulty adjusting to city life. But—oh, my God!—does she adore Central Park. She’d be happy to stay there if we let her.”

  “She likes the outdoors?”

  “Loves the outdoors.” Mrs. Dawson sighed. “After having a house and big backyard in a Boston suburb, I suppose the confinement of urban living has her restless. And then there’s the constant cacophony of crowds, traffic, horns, all of which have her somewhat…gun-shy, her father says. Sometimes when we’re out on the streets, she stops on the sidewalk for no apparent reason and covers her ears. The first time I took her shopping on Fifth Avenue, she bolted across the street in a panic. Ran straight into Central Park. I was almost hit by a taxi, nearly trampled by a carriage horse trying to catch her.”

  Dr. Blacksberg’s grimace was so intense his lips were stretched clear across his teeth. “Was your daughter ever screened for a pervasive developmental disorder…like autism?”

  “Autism?” Mrs. Dawson’s face flushed, and her tone became indignant. “Absolutely not.” She smoothed the temple of her coiffed hair, straightened her back so that she was perfectly postured in her chair. “My daughter is very much part of the group, Doctor, an affectionate and socially connected child. And as you’ll soon discover, she has a terrific sense of humor. We think her ears are to blame for her sensitivity. The audiologist we saw last week placed her hearing at the extreme high end of normal range. He’s convinced her acute hearing makes living in Manhattan somewhat of a challenge.”

  “Fascinating….” Dr. Blacksberg said again, more to himself this time. He stared past Mrs. Dawson, apparently lost in thought over a missing link that made Riley’s medical history more of a medical mystery. “What made you take her to an audiologist?”

  Mrs. Dawson put a hand to her chest, nervously fiddling with the large diamond pendant that adorned her neck. It was one karat away from ostentatious. “Well…my husband Michael and I are opera buffs,” she said, apparently torn between defending her child’s overall perfection and expressing her deeper concerns. “Just last week we took Riley to the Met for a production of The Magic Flute. It was her first opera and she was enthralled, as we had hoped, but when the female soprano’s voice ascended beyond the usual two octaves, Riley began to wail like a…like some sort of animal in distress. Her father had to hold her head against his chest and cover her ears. The entire audience turned to look at us. Even the female soprano scanned the crowd to see who was singing along with her. I was mortified!”

  His eyes narrowed and he nodded. “So you had her hearing checked.”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Dawson reached for her diamond again, rubbing the extravagance between her fingers like a worry stone—something to self-soothe, to ease the embarrassment of what she was about to confide. “It wasn’t the first time Riley made noises like that. As an infant she made odd sounds in her sleep—gurgly little growls, piercing yips, which, frankly, Doctor, scared the jeepers out of me. My husband thought I was being ridiculous, but knowing my daughter was born in the woods to an unknown mother and with a…a tail,” she said, clearly horrified that such a monstrosity had ever hung from her otherwise perfect little girl, “I will confess that on more than one occasion I wondered if Riley might be half human and…”

  “What, half wolf?”

  “It’s a silly thought, I know.”

  Dr. Blacksberg removed his glasses, slipped them into the pocket of his white coat, and chuckled with paternal, if not condescending, assurance. “Mrs. Dawson,” he said, folding his hands on his desk and addressing her squarely, “the human tail is not a vestige of our ancestry. Contrary to what Darwin and his proponents might have believed, it isn’t an evolutionary regression. The human tail is an aberration, an abnormality caused by an improper forming of the neural tube. And in almost all documented cases, there are spinal deformities and a host of other complications. I’d say it’s a medical miracle that your daughter isn’t deformed and physically disabled.”

  “As I said, Doctor, she’s perfectly healthy. Strong, agile, well-coordinated—fast as lightning.”

  And Riley was. She went on to become a superior athlete in middle school, excelling in track and field, and in touch football with neighborhood boys on the weekends. Wily Riley, they called her; she could outrun and outmaneuver the best of players.

  Riley never did get up the nerve to ask about her tail—Mrs. Dawson wasn’t the type of mother to ease a child’s worries—but Riley did always secretly wonder about her lost appendage. Curled up at night with her little dog, she often fell asleep running her hand along the length of his bushy white tail, trying to imagine what hers might have looked like if someone hadn’t gone and chopped it off. But one night, soon after her seventeenth birthday, her tail grew back.

  Dr. Blacksberg was wrong. Darwin, it appeared, had been right.

  * * *

  Lenox, Massachusetts

  1998

  It was on the dock of the family’s summer home that the partial transformation first occurred. The August moon was full that night. And so was Riley’s heart. Earlier that day she’d lost her virginity to Fiona Bell.

  Fiona Bell with the shocking blue eyes. Eyes almost too big for her face and
too blue to be real, their impossible beauty was accentuated by her fair skin and thick crop of short black hair. So intense were Fiona’s mesmerizing orbs that Riley tried not to stare for too long, lest she lose her balance, fall into those eyes, and spend eternity floating in their sapphire sea. God, was she ever beautiful. Inside and out. Electric. Magnetic. Her whole being pulsed with a contagious love of life, an invigorating energy that propelled Riley all summer long.

  Mr. Dawson had purchased the summer lake-front cabin in Lenox, Massachusetts, for Riley’s thirteenth birthday—a consolation prize, or so it seemed, for tolerating life in the big city. But while other teenaged girls were off partying and boating with boys in a larger lake that allowed jet skis, Riley was happy to remain solo. She enjoyed the tranquility of swimming and canoeing on their non-motor lake, reveling in the quiet beauty of the woods and nearby waterfall. For two months out of the year, it became her summer paradise. A solitary paradise, until Fiona Bell moved in three years later.

  From the moment they met, they were inseparable. Except on Sundays. Fiona’s father was the new evangelical minister in town, and the Lord’s day was spent in church, despite Fiona’s insistence that she felt closer to Jesus in the woods than she did inside a brick building. Monday through Saturday was theirs to share, though, and they spent those days enjoying the water, exploring the woods, and watching wildlife.

  Fiona always carried binoculars in her backpack, and they’d take turns spying beavers, birds, snakes, and basking turtles. Fiona loved turtles. The day Riley met her she was sitting alone by the water holding two tiny black ones in the palm of one hand, feeding them blueberries from a Dixie cup.