Raining On Heaven

by Amanda Foote

  Raining On Heaven

  By Amanda Foote

  Author’s Forward.

  Don’t laugh. I’m one of those people that actually reads those weird snippets from the author at the beginning of the book that most people skip past to get to the good stuff. The weird part is that the snippets have always been, for me, just as much a part of the good stuff as the meat of the novel.

  When I was eight I dreamed bigger dreams than most eight-year-olds. Well, that may not be fair. I’m sure there were a lot of eight-year-old astronauts and scientists and veterinarians, which really is a lot bigger dream than my little old one of seeing my name on a bookshelf. So I guess I should say I dreamed odder dreams than most eight-year-olds. I soaked up books like they were oxygen through a steady supply from my father and grandmother, and I saw words in my dreams.

  Fast forward nearly twenty years later (you don’t start to feel old until you can say something like “twenty years ago, in my time…”), and I’m finally crafting a dream into a reality. Don’t ask me what took so long - I’m sure you all know that life isn’t some zippy path from A to Z.

  But the point is, I’m doing it. I couldn’t wait around any longer for some wayward book agent to snoop through my personal password-protected Google account and discover my masterpiece just waiting to be published. So I’m discovering it myself.

  This debut novel of mine, Raining On Heaven, is my first crowning achievement, but it certainly will not be my last. You see, I’ve loved reading those Forwards and Acknowledgements at the beginning of books that most people skipped because, I guess in a way, I craved seeing that insight into the author’s life, what adventure went into crafting that book and how much of the author’s soul wound up between the pages.

  I’ll let you in on a secret. The whole dang thing.

  My whole entire soul went into this novel. And I know it’s not perfect, and it wasn’t sold to you by the marketing team of a nationally acclaimed publishing organization… it was sold to you by little old me, a grown-up eight-year-old, who still someday dreams of seeing her name on a book on a shelf in a quiet little store (or a big one too!). And I hope that’s enough to inspire you to read the part you usually skip, even if just this once.

  You can follow along with my writing (or procrastinating) adventures on Instagram at www.instagram.com/amandafoote.writes.

  Thank you for your interest in little old me.

  Acknowledgements.

  The first person I’d like to thank is myself, for believing in me and pushing me to succeed, ha. Just kidding.

  But truly, I want, no - I need to thank so many people for patiently waiting for me to figure out what I wanted out of life, guiding me gently when I was lost and supporting me unfailingly when I needed it.

  To my partner in crime, love of my life, and father of my fur children, Philip, your love and uplifting spirit are the most precious things to me.

  To my mom and dad, my step mom, my grandma, my aunts and uncles, my brothers and sister, all of those people I was forced to love at birth but ended up loving so fiercely anyway.

  To Michelle, whose guidance and peaceful soul have kept me pointed toward my dreams with every coffee shop writing date; you are invaluable.

  To Michelle Finney, Cristopher Foote, Michelle Watts, Taylor McKay, Faith Foote, Maddie Fuller-Foote, Cheryl Bednarek, Savannah Lutrell, Tessie Houser, Sarah Williams, Kaylin Hill, Kinzie Dye, KaShell Shepard, Genipher Krug, Elissa Waitman, Sarah Hoover, Hayley Elliott, Vicky Nordwald, Krystal Anderson-Gosselin, Francien Jolien de Bergerac: thank you so much for being a part of my launch team and believing in a small time author like me.

  For Meagan.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  The Crash.

  Chapter One.

  Chapter Two.

  Chapter Three.

  Chapter Four.

  Chapter Five.

  Chapter Six.

  Chapter Seven.

  Chapter Eight.

  Chapter Nine.

  The Recovery.

  Chapter Ten.

  Chapter Eleven.

  Chapter Twelve.

  Chapter Thirteen.

  The Crash.

  Chapter One.

  Body bags. Four of them, lined up along the wreckage. Rain droplets smashing into black canvas. My knees scraped glass as I fell to the street. It took everything I had not to stare at those black mounds. My knees curled under me as the rain crushed me. I cried as it soaked my hair and my skin and my soul. Body bags. Four of them. And two contained the lifeless forms of the two people I loved in the world more than anything. Around me there were cops, medics, nosy passerby, debris from the wreckage, thunder shaking the sky and lightning touching the clouds. But for all I had noticed, none of this could have been there at all. Because to me, there were only body bags, body bags, body bags.

  I don’t want you to come into this story thinking it’s a happy one. It’s so far from happy. There’s very little happy here, so if that’s what you came for, you should turn around now. But if you want to know the story she told me that cold afternoon in December that changed everything, keep going. The story I’m going to tell you is a really great story, I promise. It’s sad, yes, but there’s a really good ending, and there are some people in it that you will really love. But I’m getting ahead of myself. She hasn’t told me the story yet, so I’m not going to tell you, either. I’ll just start at the beginning of my story. The only beginning that mattered much to me at the time; the beginning where everything I knew about life ended.

  ✽✽✽

  The last thing I remember was my mom singing off-key to Dolly Parton in the front seat. Her wavy dark hair pulled up into a neat bun, Dad laughing next to her in the driver's seat. Her laughter is the last sound I heard before it hit us. I’ve heard it every day since.

  The first thing I remember is a paramedic pulling me from the car and checking me for external, and then internal, damages. There were none. Yet.

  I was dizzy. Things began to come back into focus. A man with a beard replaced the paramedic and he looked at me with hard, sad eyes that had seen so much more than I ever had. Though, not for much longer.

  “It’s your parents,” he said. Those three little words, they stung worse than I hate you. And it hadn’t been that long since I had thrown I hate you at the very people in question. But I guess that doesn’t matter now, because soon enough I’d come to find that they weren’t worse than she’s gone. Those were the absolute worst two words in the world when you put them together. But I’m not at that part of the story yet.

  “My parents?” I mumbled. It was less of a question though, and more of an agreement.

  He scratched his beard. “Your parents…” He glanced at a rain splattered clipboard barely protected by his black umbrella. “Heaven.” He was looking for my name. “Your parents have passed away, Heaven.” He spoke my name like it was an illusion, something that might float away and never come back. But his next words were clear. Maybe he’d thought I’d misunderstood him somehow. “Your parents are dead.”

  I nodded, he gestured toward a cop car he expected me to climb into. I ignored him and watched as two moaning forms were carried out of the wreckage on stretchers. I approached them. One was a girl from Dale Summer’s car. Dale had gone to high school with me. He couldn’t have known how foolish it was to run that red light, like he did. If he could have known, he never would have killed my parents.

  The girl on the stretcher was unconscious, her face spattered with blood and rain, and her nose was clearly broken. Her wrists were a dark purple and her ankle was twisted the wrong way. She was barely breathing. They placed her carefully in the ambulance. It rushed away.

  I
approached the second stretcher. It was Dale Summer’s best friend. I didn’t even know his name. He was awake. I grabbed his hand and walked with the stretcher as they moved it toward the remaining ambulance vehicle.

  “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay,” I said, but really I didn’t know. He squinted at me; his eyes were milky and unfocused.

  “Heaven?” he murmured. “Is that Heaven?” Staring at his vacant eyes I wondered briefly if he was even referring to me at all.

  “It’s me. It’s Heaven,” I whispered. He clutched my hand tightly. “Don’t go,” he said, and started to cry. There was a dark purple bruise under his eye. The rain had matted his hair against his head and a deep gash peeked out from under his hairline. Rain fell into it, washing it clean. He closed his eyes. He whispered again, “Heaven, don’t leave me.”

  I watched as they lifted him into the ambulance and drove away.

  ✽✽✽

  I woke up. I had been sleeping on an ugly green leather couch in a corner office. Someone had placed a scratchy red blanket across me. Shivering, I pulled it tighter around me. Three minutes passed. My body ached as I stood up, just as a man opened the door to the office. I vaguely remembered him as being the cop at the crash site. “Heaven,” was all he said.

  I could see into the lobby from the windows surrounding his office. My best friend Lila and her parents were huddled on some benches near the front door. Lila glanced over and saw that I was awake. She burst into tears.

  “Heaven,” the man said again. “We called your aunt. The aunt in Oklahoma.” I knew who he meant. She was the only aunt I had. Or rather, now, she was the only family I had. “She already got on a plane. She’s headed this way now. She’s promised to take care of everything,” he finished.

  “Everything?” I asked, looking at him. There was brown and gray speckled stubble on his chin and dark circles under his green eyes.

  “The paperwork, the funeral. You.” He stood there for a moment but when I didn’t respond he left, closing the door behind him. I laid back down and soon the world again went dark.

  I woke a while later and the office light was not on. I didn’t know how long it had been and that made me anxious. Someone had closed the blinds and turned off the light. I got up, keeping the red blanket around me, and opened the door. The resulting light was blinding for a moment, but my eyes quickly adjusted. I searched for a clock and found my phone resting on a desk nearby. 8:27 pm.

  Lila and her parents were gone. Aunt Marlene was already here, talking animatedly with a cop. Her suitcase, purse and coat lay on the floor next to her. She came straight here from the airport. I glanced around for my cop, but he was nowhere to be found.

  Aunt Marlene looked like an old woman, but she didn’t at the same time. She wasn’t that old, 45 at the very most, if that at all. But she wore these bright red plastic glasses on a chain around her neck, the kind that connect in the middle. There were rhinestones on the temples of the glasses, for Christ’s sake. And she didn’t wear makeup and her dark thick hair was always up in this giant messy bun where it often seemed like it and the small gray hairs that hid above her ears were trying to escape, and she had one tooth that was brown at the top, like it was trying to turn into a tree. You could see these wrinkles around her eyes, too. Soft wrinkles. Hard eyes. Marlene had lost a lot, but who knew what had transpired in her life to turn those dark green eyes to stone. But the wrinkles; oh my, she loved to laugh. It was her favorite thing, laughing. She’d said to me once, laughter makes the heart grow stronger. Laughter is the only cure for sadness, she added. There was no question where her wrinkles came from.

  “Heaven!” Marlene spotted me from across the lobby and rushed over. She gripped me in a tight hug, tears pouring from her eyes onto my drying hair. “My dear, dear Heaven,” she cried, clutching me, as if holding me could somehow ease the pain.

  My cop walked up. “Officer Paulsen,” she greeted him, still gripping me. I appreciated it; at this moment I was not entirely unsure that were she to let go I would not fall apart.

  “You’re free to go now,” he said to us both, pity in his eyes. For seven minutes, she had held onto me. Then Aunt Marlene gathered up her things and we left.

  Chapter Two.

  We walked through the front door with heavy shoulders. Marlene set down her belongings in the foyer and turned to me. “Would you like some tea? I’m going to make some tea,” she said, not bothering to wait for my response. She disappeared into the kitchen.

  I stood in the doorway for a while, the door open. I couldn’t make myself come in. It felt empty, hollow, deceitful. Of course the house wasn’t empty - we were here. Somehow that didn’t seem like enough.

  I stood motionless for six minutes and thirty-two seconds. But the smell of pancakes wafting in from the kitchen reached me and I was struck with the growing realization in my stomach that I had not eaten a thing all day. I carefully closed the door and made my way down the hall to the kitchen. For half a second I almost saw my mom there instead of Marlene, they looked so similar. My heart ached as I recalled the last argument we’d had in that kitchen, over what to have for dinner. An argument that had ended in laughs and spaghetti sauce all over the floor. The vinyl flooring still had a faint stain underneath the sink.

  Aunt Marlene had set up a stack of three butterscotch chip pancakes on a plate on the bar, and I sat in front of it. She handed me a fork and the syrup. “Eat up,” she said. Though she’d already made plenty of pancakes for both of us, she continued to cook.

  My stomach growled ravenously and I dug into the pancakes gratefully. It felt more like I was inhaling the pancakes than eating them, as my body’s natural tendencies took over. Eventually she stopped cooking and we both were perched at the bar, eating but not eating, sharing looks but not talking, sharing thoughts but refusing to think. When we were both finished, Aunt Marlene poured two glasses of wine and handed one to me. “I think, today, just for today, you’re old enough to know what it’s like to find comfort in a glass of cheap wine.” I took it, planning to down the whole thing, but I took one sip and spit it back into the cup.

  “Maybe I’m not,” I said. She saw the look on my face and laughed, but instantly cut herself off. I smiled at her, if not in sharing this momentary happiness with her, then in needing to relieve her pain. She placed her hand on my cheek from across the bar. I leaned into it and felt the tears start to build up, but I refused to let them fall. No tears would grace this awful mess. I would not cry a moment for this terrible event. Because the moment I cried tears over this is the moment it became real. And I refused to accept that my parents were gone. As long as I refused to accept it, maybe, just maybe, for a short time… they wouldn’t be.

  ✽✽✽

  Aunt Marlene stoked the fire and we watched as the flames in the fireplace burst up furiously before dying back down. She wore a pair of my mother’s pajamas, I was wrapped in my father’s bathrobe. “Let’s get as close to them as possible, while we still can,” she had said, so we changed into their clothes and we put their favorite movie on mute in the background, and we played Billy Joel on the kitchen stereo. We pulled their comforter into the living room in front of the fireplace and laid on top of it, staring at the ceiling, listening to ghosts. We sat like this for twenty-three minutes. Vienna had just started to play when I said the first words to be spoken in almost an hour. “What now, Aunt Marlene?” What do I do now?

  The thoughts banged around in my head like a shifting kaleidoscope. There are so many things left here… their things. And what happens to me? I’d barely taken a breath in the moments between my question and her answer.

  She sighed, her second wine glass close to empty and her eyes barely open. “It’s hard to say,” she murmured, trailing off on the last word. It was quiet for a few more moments, then she spoke again, suddenly, as if wide awake. “We won’t know anything for sure until we see the will. But I imagine that we will sell the house. All of that will go to you. We can sell your father’s
bike, and even some of their things.” She turned to face me when she heard me utter a small gasp. “I know that sounds hard. And it will be. But it’s for the best. What would you do with the belongings of two adults collected over a lifetime? We will set aside the most important things: your father’s baseball cards, your mother’s jewelry, various other sentimental belongings. Her wedding dress. His favorite shirt…” She stopped short, tears falling gently down her cheeks. I turned to face her as well.

  I knew exactly what she was feeling. There was so much left here, but what were we supposed to do? Give it all away?

  People die all the time. Loved ones, enemies, neighbors. I’m no stranger to death. I just never expected this. A lifetime was spent here, memories in every corner and ghosts on every surface. I was one of the ghosts, a stranger to my own body, too stubborn to leave but too tired to stay.

  ✽✽✽

  “Ben and Gabriella had the kind of life that others only hope for. They had steady, reliable careers, a beautiful family, a nice home, and many friends to keep them humble.”

  There were a surprising number of people that I didn’t know at my parents’ funeral. Currently speaking in front of this room full of people was my father’s best friend and coworker, John. I met John a few times but he wasn’t the kind of friend that came to hang out with the family, he was the kind of friend that my father went out with. Next to him was a line of chairs, each containing some friend or other of one of my parents who had a speech folded up in their pocket or purse. Aunt Marlene had asked me if I wanted to say a few words myself, but I couldn’t seem to find the right ones, so I declined. What would I even say? How does one describe a broken heart?