Rainstorm - Hannah Yates (best detective novels of all time .txt) 📗

It was mid-Summer, but you wouldn’t have guessed that when you looked outside. The weather was cool; rain slid down the glass panes that kept the living room dry. A man sat at a table, bent intently over a manuscript; a teenage girl sang loudly and off-key while she accompanied herself on the piano. A boy lay on the floor drawing fortresses, and an elderly woman paced slowly around him, humming. A woman danced naked in the outside, and a girl stood at the kitchen sink, a glass in her hand.
The girl stood there, concentrating. Little by little, she was deleting the room. She watched fingers move across quiet keys, silenced the hum of not-yet-written words, and dried up the rain that splashed under bare feet. The girl stood at the sink with the glass in her hand, and she didn’t move.
She was used to this process; it took practice, but she had almost mastered it. She knew how to remove herself from situations if she chose. As long as she stayed focused, eventually, she could delete her own self.

“Sounding quite good,” the man spoke. He had the voice of an authority, and everyone looked up at him. The girl, too, was drawn to the sound, and she struggled to maintain control of her senses.
The piano-girl stopped singing. “Thanks. How’s the play going, Dad?”
“It’s going,” he said.
“Have you written my part yet?” the piano stopped. As the girl listened subconsciously from the kitchen, she frowned bitterly.
“Just finished.”
“And?” the girl at the piano turned towards him.
“Very sexy.”
The girl beamed, turned back to the piano, and resumed her song.

The girl at the sink concentrated harder to erase the new sounds. The words echoed in her head and she was angry with herself for listening. Listening to these interactions only upset her, but they were constant and therefore hard to miss. She needed a distraction. She put down the glass and picked up another, rolling up the sleeves of her sweatshirt before she turned the water on again. Six more, she thought, glancing at the remaining glasses on the counter. She always counted down to things. She counted down to birthdays and vacations, and to ends in general. She always knew what was before her. It made her feel safe. Nothing could startle you if you knew how many seconds there were before it happened, she thought. So she kept counting.
Through the window, the woman kept dancing. The girl scrubbed the glass and tried to close her mind to it.
A teenage boy came in from the porch, followed by a black lab.
“Whoa man, what weather!” he said to no one in particular, stomping his boots on the mat. Then he headed for the bedroom upstairs, trailing puddles across the floor.
“You’re tracking mud all over the house!” the old woman snapped from the far side of the room before the boy had taken two steps. She was thrilled to have something to criticize.
The smell of wet dog pervaded the room as the lab circled the living room and flopped down by the stone hearth.

The girl watched the puddles swell on impact and then dissipate. She put down another glass. Picked one up. She started thinking about glasses and about the other kind of glasses and faces behind glasses. She saw images of people who had once been close to her, but she shook her head at them. Her hands moved methodically through her thoughts, subconsciously controlled. And then she stopped thinking and picked up another glass. Four more.
The little boy stood up from the floor and ran to the porch.
“Make sure you clean up that mess!” the old woman said, pointing to the pile of crayons he’d left behind.
“Mom, look at my picture,” he said, ignoring the old woman, who continued to belabor him. “See, here’s the fortress and there’s the castle behind it with the portcullis, mom do you see the portcullis, with the guard next to it and the horses?” the boy waved the drawing under the woman’s nose.
“Not bad dude, but where’s the naked woman?” and she kept dancing.
“Mom!” the girl at the piano rolled her eyes.

The girl placed another cup on the counter and dried her hands before picking up the last one. The girl at the piano was singing louder now, and the man began to tell himself words before he wrote them. The boy lay back down on the floor and began adding to his masterpiece.
“That sounds beautiful, dear. You have such a lovely voice and you’re so gorgeous,” the old woman paused next to the piano and began to hum as she combed her fingers through the girl’s hair. The boy tapped his toes against the ground in syncopation.
In the kitchen, the other girl stood by the window. She watched the woman dancing outside. She clamped her teeth together and mentally plugged her ears, shutting out the voices, the pen scratching along the paper, and the offbeat thud of the boy’s feet. But the woman kept spinning and spinning, and no matter how hard she tried she couldn't block it out. The girl watched the woman dance and dance. She couldn't take her eyes away from the dancing, dancing that didn’t stop.
She reached up to press her hand against her forehead, to press out the dizzying image, and the forgotten glass fell from her hand and shattered on the floor. The room fell silent.
Then the piano started up again, the pen continued to scratch out dialogue, and the old woman appeared in the kitchen.
“What was that? Clean that up! You broke a glass! That wasn’t your glass to break—” The criticism droned on as the girl stumbled back against the refrigerator and closed her eyes. When she’d steadied herself, she opened them and looked out. The woman was still spinning.
The girl rushed to the porch door and swung it open. It banged against the wall of the house and shivered on its hinges.
“Stop it!” she yelled, tears springing into her eyes, “Stop, now.” She stood in the doorway, the rain blowing in against her face.

The woman stopped dancing. She stood across from the girl for a long moment, both of them waiting for the other to move. The girl leaned against the doorframe and held her breath. She waited for the woman to go inside or to apologize, to tell her she was sorry. Sorry for what, she didn’t know.
The woman nodded. She walked the few steps across the porch to the door, her footprints obliterating the steps left by her dance. Relieved, the girl turned to go back into the house.
And then arms were around her and she was being pulled out, away from the house, into the rain. She protested, trying to break free. She felt the faces watching her from the other side of the glass wall, and she felt her cheeks burn. She tried to retreat into the shelter of the house, to run back to the kitchen, and then she remembered the broken glass on the ground and she stumbled as if she’d stepped on it. The woman began to lead her in a circle, and she tried to focus on something stable. The room, the piano, the boy’s picture flashed across her eyes with each spin, but the rain soon blurred the image and it melted into everything else, everything that was spinning, spinning around her.
And the woman kept pulling and leading her into smaller and tighter circles. Closer and closer together they moved, their bodies mimicking each other as they circled, two vultures waiting for death and spinning into life all at once. And the girl felt her tears mix with the rain and she closed her eyes as she turned again and again in the circle. She was afraid, but she followed blindly, holding onto the woman to keep from falling. The rain soaked through to her skin, drenching her tears and anger. The circle swallowed it all.

And then the girl was dancing on her own, spinning faster and faster in the rain.

Publication Date: 01-18-2010

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