Things to Do When It's Raining by Marissa Stapley

Author:Marissa Stapley [Stapley, Marissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Graydon House Books
Published: 2017-11-28T18:38:32+00:00

Do a crossword puzzle. Not only are they fun, they’re good for your brain.

Lilly walks slowly. There’s ice, even at the side of the road. Where did Mae go, and why? I am taking the dog for a walk. The dog must be walked. There’s such purpose in having a dog. She wishes they’d gotten one before.

She realizes she’s on her regular path, the one she normally walks after dinner with Viv. She should have stopped at Viv’s house, knocked on her door. Then she wouldn’t be alone. But she forgot all about Viv. It’s happening again. The spells are becoming more frequent. Soon, they will be all she is. She doesn’t want that.

Lilly steps down and goes farther along the river than she intended to. She can’t help herself. She wants to look out at the vast, cold expanse, to listen for the cracks and booms, to hear the great sounds that give her such pleasure and never startle her the way they startle others. “Good boy,” she says to the dog, because he has stopped pulling and is walking beside her. He wags his tail.

Mae. Where did she go?

She was angry.

Lilly has a wild impulse to step onto the river ice, to clear off a patch by shuffling the snow with her boots, to slide and slip, to feel momentum again. Of course, that would be foolish. But she does it anyway. Then she stands, mischievous, the ice below her feet.

Where am I?

On the river.

She needs to find the riverbank. She needs to find Mae. She needs to go back the way she came—but which way is that? There. She sees a house ahead and feels hopeful. It’s not home, though: no weather vane. It’s Jonah’s cabin. The outside light’s still on. It tells her she’s going the wrong way.

A dog barks. Then it’s right there beside her, nudging her. Whose dog is this? They should keep it in their yard. He barks again and she realizes he knows where the shore is and is trying to lead her there. But when she attempts to follow she moves too quickly. Her feet slip, she falls. It hurts her head so much.

The world has turned upside down. Lilly is forgetting again. I am on the river. I am on the ice. She hears a distant crack and this time it scares her. Pain in her head, and the tiredness, too. “George,” she calls. He will come for her, he always has. They are tethered to each other by an invisible cord that has had many years to strengthen and it can’t be broken now. “George!”

Only silence.

She looks up at the darkening sky. She’s so cold, too cold, but hot at the same time. This must be how Virginia felt. It’s clear, this thought. It brings her back, frightens her, but also comforts her. Better this, better here. No fluorescent hospital-room lights. No disappointed eyes.

I loved you so much, Virginia. I tried.

She thinks about their bedroom, her and George’s: matching

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