When the Rain Returned

"It's over," Damian said.

Clara looked at him across the table.

He could have meant the old incident. The argument. Their marriage. He didn't offer her enough words to know.

She was tired of trying to supply them.

The pen lay beside the papers where Vince had dropped it. She picked it up.

Damian watched her hand.

For one second she waited for him to stop her.

He didn't.

She signed.

***

Owen dealt with the practical arrangements.

Clara wanted Bennett Row and nothing else. Damian insisted the lakeside house remain hers, together with the assets already held in her name and enough accessible money for years of study.

They argued through Owen because they could no longer bear to argue face-to-face.

The signed settlement began a process. It didn't finish the divorce. There were records to retrieve, financial schedules to reconcile, and final documents neither had yet put before the court.

Her torn marriage papers had become one more absurd obstacle among many.

"I can request certified copies," Owen told her. "We still need you back to review the complete file."

"When?"

"When you've finished the handover at work."

"August, probably."

He wrote it down.

She wondered whether he had ever expected to put that appointment in the same calendar as their wedding.

***

She moved out of the hotel in Westbridge with one suitcase and fourteen boxes of books, drawings, and papers.

The hotel sent the boxes to the lakeside house.

The furniture had arrived months earlier. She walked through the rooms and felt ashamed of how little attention she'd given it.

Everything was well made, oversized, and dark.

Damian had wanted her to choose. She had wanted him to stop asking.

Now there was a bedroom large enough for a whole family, and she was alone in it.

She lay awake listening to the house.

A branch tapped the upstairs glass. Pipes moved inside the walls. Somewhere near the back door, a latch clicked in the wind.

She knew the noises were ordinary.

Knowing didn't make her get out of bed to investigate.

At dawn she slept for forty minutes, woke frightened by a dream, and decided she couldn't do another night.

The old apartment had neighbors on both sides, a staffed entrance, and one door she could lock.

Returning the property to Julian still required paperwork. For the moment it was empty and legally hers to use.

She took her suitcase there.

That night she slept.

When Damian heard, he looked away from Owen.

"Of course she did."

Owen tried to explain about the size of the house, the noises, how frightening a strange building could be alone at night.

Damian was studying an invoice as though it contained something desperately important.

"I heard you."

***

Clara resigned from the practice.

Her mentor asked whether she was certain.

"About studying? Yes. About where? Not yet."

He nodded and helped her put the handover in order.

There were site inspections, client meetings, drawings to explain to the person taking over. Work gave the weeks a shape. She was grateful for it, even while she counted down the days.

By August, the rains had returned.

She left Westbridge beneath a clear sky and entered the Briarhaven district under thunder.

The traffic report warned of standing water. She slowed, kept the roof closed, and followed the cars off the main highway.

Then the rain thickened until the wipers couldn't clear it.

At the tunnel entrance, brake lights stretched into the darkness.

Clara stopped behind a van.

For several minutes nothing moved.

Water ran along the gutter beside her wheels.

She watched it rise.

A man came running between the cars, striking windows with his palm.

"Out! Leave the cars!"

She opened her door.

Muddy water pushed against it.

The lights flickered overhead.

She took one step into the water, grabbed the roof, and pulled herself up with help from the man behind her.

Her little convertible sat lower than everything around it.

A truck driver waved from his cab.

"Over here! Get higher!"

Hands reached down. Someone below steadied her leg. She clambered onto the truck with two other women and a boy who wasn't speaking at all.

The tunnel lights went out.

A phone flashlight trembled beside her.

Her own phone was still in the car.

The water climbed past the doors.

For a while all she could hear was the heavy rush of it and the strange, controlled breathing of people trying not to frighten one another.

A woman beside her held a child beneath her coat.

Clara thought of the envelope on the table. Ethan's handwriting. The boy whose name she hadn't said aloud without crying since November.

Then she thought of Damian.

If she had her phone, she would call him.

She didn't know what she would say first. That she hadn't brought those papers because she was certain. That she had been waiting for him to tell her something she could believe. That there were days she still reached across the bed before remembering.

Or just his name.

The truck shifted beneath them.

She caught the stranger's sleeve.

He caught hers back.

***

They got out when the water began to fall and rescuers reached the far side.

Clara followed the line of people through brown water and then mud, one shoe gone, the other lost somewhere she couldn't remember.

Her feet hurt. She didn't stop.

Outside, the sky was a dull, exhausted gray.

Emergency vehicles waited along the road. Someone put a blanket around her shoulders. Someone else asked her name.

She answered automatically.

A woman in the rescue van lent her a phone.

"Tell your family you're all right."

Clara looked at the screen.

Beside her, a little boy touched the back of her hand.

"Don't cry."

She gave the phone back without dialing.

***

They dropped her near the entrance to town.

The Grand Briar was closer than Bennett Row.

She walked there with mud drying hard on her jeans, the blanket slipping from her shoulders. At the front entrance she stopped, looked at the polished floor beyond the doors, and went around to the side elevator instead.

Damian's office was locked.

She knocked on the neighboring door.

The marketing director opened it.

For half a second the woman's professional expression failed.

Then she stepped into the hallway.

"Clara. Come in. I'll get towels."

"Could you call Owen? I don't have my key."

"Of course. Damian just rushed out. I'll call him too."

"Owen is fine."

The woman reached for her phone, then looked at Clara's bare feet.

"Please sit down while I—"

The office door behind them opened.

Shelby stood in the doorway.

Clara recognized the silk nightdress before she understood why it mattered.

It was hers.

Over it, Shelby wore Damian's silver-gray jacket.

Red marks showed above the neckline.

For several seconds neither woman spoke.

Then Shelby pulled the jacket closer, looking frightened and shy.

"Clara. I didn't know you were coming."

The marketing director went very still.

Shelby glanced down at the nightdress.

"My clothes tore. Damian was a little rough. He said I could borrow something."

Clara felt the blanket slipping and caught it against her chest.

The hallway was warm. She couldn't stop shivering.

"If you mind," Shelby whispered, "I'll take it off."

Clara looked past her into the room where she had once slept with her books beside his business files.

She had survived the tunnel with one thought she hadn't dared name.

Now she couldn't remember what had made it seem possible.

The marketing director began speaking quickly into her phone.

Clara turned away.

"Don't call anyone."

"Clara—"

"Could I have a room?"

Her voice sounded almost normal.

"Of course."

The woman guided her toward the elevator, one hand held carefully near her arm without quite touching it.

Behind them, Shelby stayed in the open doorway.

On the pale floor, Clara's bare feet left small, dark prints.