“Mm-hmm,” I hum, biting back my laughter. I can just imagine Gran standing there in the middle of the Piggly Wiggly telling my mother-in-law off. I can see it all playing out in my head just like if I was there.
“So, was she happy about the baby?” I ask, and inside, my heart tweaks a little.
“She didn’t seem too happy about it, no.” She sniffs. “I’m pretty sure she knows he’s making a great big mistake, but she’s letting him do it without putting in her two cents.”
“Well, sounds like you put in enough cents for all of us,” I remind her.
“When you got good cents to give, you’re obligated to share them, Abigail.”
“Rightly so,” I comment. “Thank you for taking up for me.”
“Well, somebody has to do it.” Suddenly, her voice gets louder and she rushes on, her tone quick. “Speaking of which,” she says, “what’s this I hear about you and that boy?”
“What boy?”
“That boy from the lake. The one you were head-over-heels for that one summer.” I can hear her fingers tapping on the table next to her.
“You mean Ethan?” How the heck did she hear about Ethan?
“The Jacobsons think the world of that boy.” Her voice gets quiet. “He’s had a rough go of it.”
“Do you know the story?”
“Do you?” she fires back.
“He’ll tell me when he’s ready, Gran.”
“Have you asked him yet?”
“Yes, I have.”
“And he declined to answer?”
“He said when he tells me, he’s afraid I won’t like him anymore.”
“I have a feeling it’ll be just the opposite,” she says softly. “But it’s his story to tell, not mine.”
“That’s never stopped you before.” Gran runs the local grapevine at home. Once she learns of something, everybody has to know it.
“Do you want me to tell you?” Gran asks, a question in her voice.
“I’d rather let him tell me when he’s ready. But thank you for asking.”
“Well, the Jacobsons say he’s a good boy.”
“Gran,” I object, “he’s thirty-six. I think he’s past the good boy stage. And he has a son. I met him tonight.”
“He let you meet his kid?” Gran laughs. “Actions are worth a thousand words.”
I’m afraid to ask the next question, but I ask it anyway. “Do you think he’s damaged, Gran? By whatever happened to him?”
“I reckon he’s not any more damaged than the rest of us, Abigail.” She lets out a heavy breath. “I’m going to let you go, because I don’t want you to miss the rain. Love you, kid,” she says, and she hangs up on me before I can reply.
I get up and slide on my flip-flops, and I walk out the front door. A slow and steady sprinkle has started, and I listen to the sound of fat drops of water as they ting and ping against the metal roof. I walk out into the yard and look up at the cloud-filled sky. A drop of water hits my forehead, and I stand there, staring up, waiting for more.
I love the rain. I always have.
Suddenly a voice calls out, “I remember the night we met.” I spin around and see Ethan walking toward me. He’s still wearing the shirt I gave him, but his feet are bare. He picks his way across the path, avoiding the big rocks. “The night we met, it rained.”
I smile at him. “I remember.”
He smiles back. “Tell me what you remember.”
12
Abigail
The summer I turned twelve was the summer my parents gave me a little more freedom. I’d walked down to the lakeshore with a group of my friends, and after about an hour, they’d all gone off in different directions, mainly because the weather forecast was calling for rain. But I loved the rain. So instead of heading for the cabin, I walked onto the dock and sat down on the edge, letting my feet swing over the darkening water as I stared up at the deep-gray sky.
Suddenly, two sets of feet raced past me and two boys jumped right off the end of the dock and into the lake. Their splashes were full of joy, and I laughed along with them as they took turns dunking one another.
Then Little Robbie Gentry’s mother stormed up. “Have you lost your marbles, son?” she yelled. “Get out of that water! There’s a storm about to kick up!” She glared at the boys from above, so they both climbed out of the lake, dripping wet, but happy-looking as they stood in front of her. “Get on home, now, Ethan,” she said to one of the boys. He had dark hair that fell just past his collar, and in the front it fell into his eyes. “Your mama’s going to be worried about you.”
She took Robbie by the shoulder and steered him toward their cabin. Everybody called Robbie “Little Robbie” since his dad was named Robbie too. He didn’t appreciate it too much when people did that. He grumbled as he walked away.
“You’re going to get wet,” the other boy said to me as he walked closer. He dripped water steadily onto the dock, and he shook his head like a dog to get the water out of his hair. I squealed as water flew in every direction. He grinned. “Sorry.”
I wiped my face with the tail of my shirt. “You look sorry.” But I laughed at the same time.
He pointed toward the sky. “It’s about to rain.”
“I know.” I sat there and swung my feet.
“Are you just going to sit there?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Want some company?”
“It’s a free country,” I replied.
“You got a name?” he asked.
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Well, do you want to tell me what it is?”
I shook my head. “Not particularly.”
He sat there for a moment, just staring at the water, and then he said, “So, you’re just going to sit here and get wet?”
“You’re already wet, so what does it matter?”
Suddenly, he lay back on the dock so he could reach into his pocket. “Do you want to see what I found today?” he asked. He held out his hand, and in his palm he held two perfectly shaped skipping rocks. They were almost perfect ovals, flat on both sides. He shoved his hand toward me. “You want to hold them?”
I let him drop them into my hand as I tested the weight of them. “They might work for skipping.”
“Might?” he said, his adolescent voice cracking when it went high. “Those rocks are perfect.”
I rolled one over with my thumb. “Can I have one?”
He looked like I had just punched him in the gut. “You want one of my rocks?”
“Only if you want to give me one,” I replied.
“Well, I reckon it would be all right.” He took the rocks back, pretended to weigh one in each palm and then passed me one. “You can have that one.”
“Did you keep the best one?” I asked.
He opened his hand to look down into his palm. “How do you know which one is the best one?” And I could tell he was afraid he’d just made a mistake and gave me the wrong rock.
“I think you kept the best one.” I tossed mine up and down in my palm, catching it over and over. He grinned at me and started to do the same.
The rain began to fall, and I just sat there. He sat next to me, occasionally blinking his eyes to get the rain out of them.
“Why do you like the rain so much?” he said, loud enough so I could hear him over the pounding noise it made against the dock and the lake.
“I don’t know,” I replied just as loudly. “It just makes everything seem better.”
I could tell that he really didn’t understand. But he didn’t seem to mind the rain.
“My name’s Abigail,” I told him.
He grinned. “I’m Ethan.”
And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
13
Ethan
She stands there in the rain, just like she did the first day I met her. She’s a little rounder now in all the right places, but the essence of her is exactly the same. She’s kind and smart and funny and th
oughtful and…she’s not mine. I have to remind myself that she’s not mine.
“I still have that rock,” Abigail says.
I’m startled at her comment. “You do not,” I taunt.
She opens her eyes wide. “I have everything you ever gave me. In my memory box. I promise you that the rock is in there. I’ll show you if you don’t believe me.”
“You might have to, because I don’t believe you.”
“After the rain, I’ll show you.”
She starts to walk slowly down the path toward the dock.
“I thought you were nuts that first time I saw you sitting there waiting for the rain. Everybody else was rushing to get home, and you were just waiting for the raindrops to fall.” I laugh at the memory.
“You sat there with me, so you might have been a little nuts yourself.” She sees a puddle in front of her, and she jumps in it, making a splash. The rain is falling steadily now, and it’s pooling up in the dirt path.
“Did you have a good birthday?” she asks.
“Best one I’ve had in a really long time,” I say with a nod.
Suddenly, the quack of a duck running up behind us grabs her attention. “Oh, there’s Wilbur.”
I laugh. “He was asleep when I left. I guess he missed me.”
“He’s going to get wet,” she warns.
I feel led to remind her: “He’s a duck.”
She walks silently on, but it’s not awkward. “Can I ask you something?” I finally say, the words rolling out of my mouth in a frenzy.
She turns to face me, and I can see her eyebrows shoot up in the dark. “I’m pretty sure you just did,” she teases.
“Hardy-har,” I reply. “No, it’s about personal stuff. Just something I’m curious about.”
She nods. “Shoot.” She holds up one finger. “But I reserve the right to keep my secrets if it’s something I don’t want to talk about.”
“Fair enough,” I reply. “I was just wondering…” I let my voice trail off as I try to figure out how to ask what I want to ask. Apparently, she runs out of patience.
“Will you just ask it already?” She rolls her eyes at me, which makes me grin.
“All right, here goes nothing. How come you’re not a little bit torn up about what happened with your husband?”
She stops dead in her tracks, and she doesn’t say a word. The question hangs there between us like a bomb that’s about to go off, and I want to knock it out of the air, but it’s out there now, so I can’t.
“You think I should feel like screaming and crying and doing the woe-is-me thing, since my husband cheated and got somebody else pregnant, and I had to find out at work, where I lost my job because of it, and then he moved her into my house? You think I should be a little more upset about all that?”
I suddenly feel like the worst sort of heel. “Well, I was just curious,” I say, contrite. I don’t want to know any more. Not at all. “Curious why you’re not a little more bothered by it all.” I hang my head and groan. “It’s really none of my business. Forget I asked.”
“No, it’s a good question,” she says generously. She rocks her head from side to side like she’s thinking about it. “I guess I should be upset about it, huh?”
“Most women would be.”
“I guess that explains it, then.”
I’m confused. “Explains what?”
“Why my marriage didn’t matter as much as it should have.” She shrugs. “I should be absolutely wounded. I should feel like I took a dagger to the heart.” She shrugs again. “But I don’t. I don’t feel anything. So I guess that explains why he cheated.”
I stare at her. “He cheated because he’s a cheater.”
“He cheated because he wanted to be loved, and he found somebody who wanted to do it.” She bites her lips together and gnaws on them. “I don’t know that I ever loved him. I think I liked him a lot, and we had a few things in common, and we liked to do things together. But I think we probably should have stayed friends and never become lovers. I could have stayed friends with him forever and we would have been fine. But we didn’t make a fine husband and wife.” She throws up her hands. “And the thing is I really don’t care that he cheated. And that is…well, that’s really sad.”
“Huh,” I say, not knowing how to respond.
“What was it like when you met your wife?” she suddenly asks. “Fireworks?” She grins at me, and I find myself grinning too.
“No, we were friends first. Then one day I kissed her, and she kissed me back, and I felt like I could go on kissing her forever, so that’s what I planned to do.”
“And then she died.” She says it so quietly that I barely hear her.
“And then she died,” I repeat.
“You want to tell me about that yet?”
I shake my head.
“Okay,” she says. She looks up. “The rain is done.”
I nod, not quite ready to leave her.
“Why’d you come out here?” she asks.
“It was raining, and I knew you’d be here,” I admit. I feel shy all of a sudden and I don’t know why.
“That’s not a very good reason,” she says quietly.
“It’s all I’ve got,” I reply. “I find myself thinking about you an awful lot.”
“Oh, is that right?” She smiles at me, her teeth bright in the moonlight as the sky clears. The quiet of the night is like balm to my wounded soul, and so is she.
“I figured I might as well tell you.”
She points to her chest. “You wanted to tell me that you think about me?” She laughs out loud. “Thank you. Good to know.”
“You ever think about me?” I ask, and I hold my breath.
“Only all the time,” she says softly, and my heart starts to race in my chest.
“Is it too soon for you to fall in like?”
“What?”
“Is it too soon, after falling out of your marriage, to fall in like with somebody?”
“Fall in like?” she repeats. She motions from me to her and back. “This is falling in like?”
I nod. “I’m definitely falling in like with you.” I’m going to lay my shit out on the table, and I’m going to let her decide if she wants to deal with it or not. I wasted a lot of years, and I’m determined not to waste any more.
“I don’t…think…it’s too soon,” she says slowly. “To fall in like.” She raises her finger and points it at me, but she’s grinning at me all the while. “But don’t ask me to fall in love with you, because it’s definitely too soon for that.”
I grin at her. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“You had better go put your duck back to bed.”
I look down and find that he’s kicked up a little nest of grass to lie in, and he’s settled himself into it. “I’ll get right on that.”
She stares at me there in the moonlight, and I nearly lose all my wits.
“How long are you staying here, Abigail?” I ask. I don’t want to wake up one day and find that she has left me.
“It was only supposed to be for a week or two,” she admits, a sheepish wince twisting her face.
“Oh.”
“But I could rethink my plans, if I had the right reason.”
“I can try to come up with a good reason,” I say. I walk beside her all the way back to her cabin, where she leaves me standing at the foot of the steps. She stops under the porch light, and she’s never been more beautiful to me, even all wet with her curls flying all over the place.
“You do that,” she replies. “Good night, Ethan.”
“’Night, Abigail.”
And I walk back to my tent, my duck waddling quietly by my side. When we get in the tent, and I get zipped in, I look over at my duck.
“I’m in like.”
The duck settles down and burrows into his blanket bed.
“And apparently, I’m a dumbass.” I swipe a hand down my face in frustration, but for the first time in a very long time, I feel hopeful abo
ut the future. It’s both fearsome and awesome, all at the very same time.
14
Abigail
It has been a really long time since I’ve been on a date. But this is a date. Or at least I hope it’s a date. This afternoon, I went and found Ethan where he was working on the plumbing at one of the cabins. I’d knocked on the door and found him under the sink, after he’d told me to come on in.
He’d lifted his head so he could look at me, but he didn’t scoot out from under the sink. Instead, he’d grinned and said, “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself,” I said, as I squatted down next to him. “You busy?”
“I’m never too busy for you.” He scooted out from under the sink and grinned at me.
“What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. I just like looking at you.”
I shoved his shoulder. “You’re such a weirdo.
He said nothing more as he searched through his tool bag.
“Do you have plans tonight?” I asked.
“Depends,” he said. He closed one eye and stared at me the way he always does when he’s concentrating.
“On what?”
“On what you’re doing tonight. Because whatever it is, I’d love to do it with you.” He winked at me and then slid back under the sink.
“Dinner?”
“What time?”
“Seven-ish?”
“I’ll bring the duck.” Then he chuckled.
Right that moment, the duck was sitting next to his leg on the floor by where he was working, so I didn’t think he had much choice about bringing the duck. “I’ll cook,” I said.
“As long as it’s not duck,” he’d replied.
And now it’s almost seven o’clock, and the food is out of the oven and waiting on the table, and he’s not here yet. I go and check my hair in the mirror. It’s as flyaway as it ever has been, and I tuck a lock of it behind my ear. Ethan has never minded my curls. In fact, I think he likes them. Charles had always asked me to straighten my hair if we were going out. And I usually did, but I like my curls, and I love that Ethan likes them too.
Feels like Rain (Lake Fisher Book 3) Page 9
