60 Days Before The Rain

The coffee pot slipped out of Mara's hand and burst on the kitchen tile.

Hot glass. Hot coffee. A brown tide crept toward her slippers, and she did not step back. Her fingers were still curled around a handle that was no longer there, and her lungs pulled at the air as if she had just been hauled out of a river.

Black water. Her own coat wrapped around Lorraine's shoulders. Her own back braced against a door while Grant's family climbed past her, one by one, into the dry.

Red taillights shrinking down a flooded street.

Grant's hand, steady and warm, lifting a little boy into the last seat.

There's no room, Mara.

She flattened her palm on the counter. Granite. Cold, dry, solid. Not water. Her hand left a damp print on the stone, and she stared at it, the print of a living hand.

The smell reached her next. Burnt coffee, lemon cleaner, Lorraine's gardenia perfume. She had forgotten this house smelled of gardenias. At the end it had smelled of diesel and wet wool, and she had believed she would never smell anything clean again.

"Look at this mess." Lorraine stood in the doorway in her silk robe, lipstick already on, hair already set. "That pot was a gift from my sister."

Mara stared at her. Fifty-eight years old, well fed, perfectly alive. The last time Mara had seen that face, it was turned away from her, watching a truck door slide shut.

"Well?" Lorraine snapped her fingers once. "The cleaner doesn't come until Thursday. Pick it up."

Mara crouched and reached for the largest piece of glass. It bit into her thumb, and a bead of blood rose, bright and warm. She watched it swell. Dead women did not bleed. She pressed her thumb to her lip and tasted salt and iron, and something in her chest gave a small, startled thump.

"Careful," Lorraine said. "You'll stain the grout."

Mara's phone buzzed beside the sink. She turned it over with a wet thumb and the screen lit up.

August 15.

The rain had started on October 14.

She did the sum without meaning to, her lips barely moving. Sixteen days left in August. Thirty in September. Fourteen.

60 DAYS UNTIL THE FIRST RAIN.

An envelope drifting past her face in the dark, the words Ellison Trust printed in the corner. Lorraine's voice, calm as a waiter's. Sloane, hold the boy.

Hurry. The boy's face at the rear window, pressed to the glass. Grant's jaw. Grant's eyes. Then cold, and nothing else.

Heat flickered under the jade bracelet on her wrist, cracked down one side since she was nine. It lasted only a second. She told herself it was the coffee. Her mother had worn that bracelet every day of her life. Mara had worn it every day since, and in twenty years it had never once been warm.

"Mom, leave her alone, she's tired." Grant strolled in knotting his tie, smelling of the cologne she had picked out for him. He kissed the air near her cheek. His phone lay on the counter beside the toaster, and it lit up with two letters, S.P. He turned it face down without looking at it. "Did you look at the papers? The bank closes at ten."

Mara watched his mouth move. He was thirty, with a clean jaw and a good haircut and no lines around his eyes yet. At the end, in the dark, he had looked fifty. She had thought the water aged him. Now she understood it was only fear showing his real face.

Seven years. She knew every word he was about to say.

"What papers?" Her voice came out rough, like something left out in the rain.

"The investment." Lorraine slapped a folder onto the island, right in the spilled coffee, then snatched it up with a hiss and set it down on the dry side. "Hollis Development needs eighty-two thousand by noon. Your savings cover it. Sign the transfer."

"My savings."

"Family money. Don't be dramatic."

In the last life, Mara had signed. She had signed standing right here with coffee on her slippers, and then asked if anyone wanted breakfast. She remembered the pen, warm from Lorraine's hand.

She remembered thinking that being useful was the same as being loved.

She looked down at her own hands. Short nails, a paper cut on one knuckle, a faint burn scar from a skillet she had grabbed too fast for Lorraine's dinner party. Working hands. Hands that had held up a roof for people who never once asked who was holding it.

She opened the folder.

Page one was the transfer form, her name already typed on the authorizing line. Page two was the budget. She read it like a freight manifest, from the bottom up. Concrete. Permits. A roofing supplier. Then a line near the end.

Pierce Interiors, design retainer, $31,000.

Sloane Pierce.

Hold the boy. Hurry.

Her hands stayed perfectly still. That surprised her.

"Who is Pierce Interiors?"

Grant's fingers stopped on his tie. Only for a second. "A vendor. One of Mom's contacts."

"I never said that," Lorraine said, much too fast.

"You just did," Mara said. "Both of you."

The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere outside a car door shut, and a neighbor laughed, and the morning went on being ordinary.

Grant gave a soft chuckle and reached for her shoulder. "Babe, you're being weird. It's a retainer for the model unit. Sign, and I'll take you to dinner tonight. Anywhere you want."

"Thirty-one thousand dollars," Mara said, "for a model unit that doesn't exist yet."

"Mara." Lorraine's voice dropped to the one she used on waiters. "You have never once asked where the money goes. Why start now? I have welcomed you into this house for seven years.

Sign it."

She slid a pen across the granite. It stopped against Mara's knuckles.

Eighty-two thousand dollars. Six years of overtime, skipped holidays, lunches eaten standing at her desk. She had saved it one careful deposit at a time, for a rainy day. In ten minutes it would be a design retainer for the woman holding the boy.

Mara looked at the pen. Then she looked at the two of them, standing shoulder to shoulder in her kitchen like a wall. These were the people she had carried through every hard month of her marriage. These were the people who had watched the water rise and chosen who got a seat.

"You'll want to hurry," Grant said gently. "Ten o'clock."

His phone buzzed again against the counter, one long angry vibration. He did not flip it over. His eyes stayed on her.

She picked up the pen and pushed it back across the counter until it rolled against his wrist.

"No."

Lorraine laughed once, short and dry. "Excuse me?"

"I said no." Mara closed the folder. "Not the transfer. Not the retainer. Not one dollar."

"Mara." Grant's smile was wearing thin at the corners. "Don't do this in front of my mother."

"Why not? She wrote the budget."

Lorraine's face went white, then red. "You ungrateful little girl. I took you in when you had nothing. After everything this family has done for you."

"Done." Mara's voice stayed quiet. "Yes. I remember what you did."

Grant stepped closer and reached for her wrist, the one with the bracelet. "Okay. You're upset.

Whatever this is, we'll talk upstairs."

She moved back before his fingers landed. The jade went warm against her pulse.

"Seven years," she said. "I paid the mortgage on a house with my name on nothing. I cooked every meal in this kitchen. I paid your mother's dental bills and your car insurance and never asked what the rest was for." She looked straight at her husband. "I'm asking now. What is the money for, Grant?"

Silence.

His jaw worked. Lorraine's eyes flicked to her son, then away. The refrigerator hummed on. A drop of coffee fell from the edge of the counter and hit the tile with a small, clear tick.

Neither of them answered. It was the first honest thing they had ever said to her.

Mara worked the ring off her finger. It took some effort, because she had never taken it off, not once. The skin underneath was pale and creased, like a mark left by a closed door. She set the ring down on the closed folder, and it clicked against the granite, small and bright.

"Mara." Grant's voice cracked in the middle of her name. "What are you doing?"

She looked at the man who had left her to drown, and she did not raise her voice.

"I want a divorce."