All Chapters of Locked Out In The Rain: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Rachel’s wedding dress was face down in the gutter on Linden Court, and the rain was drowning it.She knew it from the corner. You don’t mistake your own wedding dress, not through a thunderstorm, not at twenty to eight at night with the streetlight flickering like it had somewhere better to be. Ivory satin. Sweetheart neckline. Paid off in four installments at a bridal shop on Central Avenue in Yonkers, three hundred and twelve dollars, and she’d been so proud of that receipt she kept it folded in her mother’s jewelry box for eleven years.Now the skirt was puffed up with brown water and snagged on the storm drain, and a Dunkin Donuts' cup was riding the current right across the bodice.Rachel stopped walking. The nine-dollar umbrella she’d grabbed at Grand Central flipped inside out, and she let it.Twelve hours at the penthouse today. Mr. Cross had a board thing in the morning and wanted the study, the dining room, and every inch of terrace glass done like no human being had ever b

Eleven dollars and one MetroCard with $4.75 left on it. That was the whole estate.Rachel sat on the 9:14 southbound with her two trash bags wedged between her knees and took inventory, because inventory was something she could do. Phone, 31 percent. Charger, somewhere on the lawn on Linden Court, probably. Keys to a house she couldn’t open. Keys to a car she didn’t have. Work ID, laminated, RACHEL MOORE in block letters. A lip balm. A hair tie around her wrist that had been there so long it left a groove.Family? Zero. Her mother had been gone thirteen years. Her father had been gone since before she could spell him. There were cousins in Pennsylvania who sent a Christmas card with their boat on it, and she’d sooner sleep in a dumpster than call them.Tessa. Tessa would come. Tessa would come with a bat. But Tessa was in Tampa, sleeping in a vinyl chair next to her mother’s hospital bed, learning how to say “range of motion” in Spanish to a physical therapist named Rafi.Rachel’s ph

“The 4 train,” Rachel said. “Sick passenger at 149th Street. We sat in the tunnel twenty minutes with the lights off.”It came out easy. Smooth as a countertop. Eleven years married to Michael Hayes, and it turned out she’d picked up a few things.Julian Cross stayed in the laundry room doorway. His eyes went to her shoes again, and then to the steamer, still ticking as it cooled.“Twenty minutes,” he said. “And you were three late.”“I ran from Columbus Circle.”“In those.”“They’re very supportive flats.”Something happened at the corner of his mouth, like a smile had considered it and decided against it. He looked at her one second longer than her boss had ever looked at her, and she held it, steam still curling off her cuffs, because if she looked away he’d know.“Next time text Mrs. Ruiz,” he said, and left.Rachel leaned back against the Miele and put her hand flat on her stomach until it stopped flipping.* * *Her monthly Metro-North pass was still active on her phone. Michael

By Saturday, Rachel had a routine, and the routine had a smell.Bridge at eleven, bag under her head, not in her lap, because Dottie said so. Up at 4:40 when the first freight train rolled over and rattled every bolt in the trestle. Sal’s sink by five, bubblegum soap, the hand dryer, the hubcap. Two trains, twelve blocks, Hector under the green awning saying “Morning, Miss Moore,” the mahogany elevator, and then forty-two floors of pretending.Sal never said anything about it. But Saturday morning when she came out of the restroom with her hair still steaming, there was a small coffee sitting on the ledge outside the bulletproof window. Light, two sugars. She’d never told him how she took it.“What’s this?”Sal didn’t look up from the crossword. “Seven letters. ‘Shows up regular.’ Starts with P.”She thought about it. “Punctual.”“There you go.” He wrote it in. “Coffee’s from the machine. It’s terrible. Drink it anyway.”It was terrible. She drank every drop.* * *It was the blouse t

The river came up through the concrete at one in the morning, and it came up cold.Thursday night. A week to the day since Linden Court, and God, apparently, had a sense of humor, because it was the same kind of storm. Thunder that you felt in your fillings. Rain coming sideways off the Harlem River so hard it got in under the trestle anyway.Rachel woke up because her feet were wet. Then her hips. She sat straight up in an inch of black water that was moving, actually moving, carrying a Takis bag past her knee.“Up!” Dottie was already standing, ribs taped under the army jacket, one eye still the color of an eggplant. They’d let her out of Lincoln Wednesday with a bottle of Tylenol and a pamphlet. “Up on the ledge, go, go, bring the bag!”There was a concrete lip along the base of the abutment, maybe a foot and a half wide. Rachel hauled herself onto it with her trash bag clutched to her chest and her back pressed to the wall. Dottie climbed up next to her, swearing in Polish. The ol