After the Rain by Jane Lorenzini

Author:Jane Lorenzini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jane Lorenzini
Published: 2018-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The broad, deep puddles in the yard the next morning surprised Belle. She must have slept through a heavy rainstorm. Boone’s presence last night, three feet away, had allowed her to consider sleep. She’d expected to get none at all, her mind and body vaporized. How could she, as a vapor, fall asleep? But she did. Thankfully, a new day came all the faster for it.

Through the cottage window she could see Abigail’s youngest current boarder, Jamison. Several days ago, when she asked him in the kitchen how old he was, he stuck out his right palm, all fingers up. Now he was playing with a red wooden sailboat in a large puddle beside the vegetable garden. She’d noticed the toy boat in the shed and wondered if Boone built it for Abigail’s youngest guests. How sweet Jamison looked with his bedhead hair and bungled buttons on his shirt, a welcome sight for her tormented mind churning through the horror of last night. She hoped her brain would cycle through it all, somehow. All she wanted right then was to be out of the cottage, moving through the first day of her life without a monster in it.

Righting a blown-over porch plant, Belle headed down the steps to say hello to the sailor. He was barefoot with his pants rolled up, calf-deep in what must have seemed to him like a proper lake. She waved as she approached and readjusted the head scarf she wore to conceal her swollen, bruised cheek. Her straw hat helped keep the scarf in place. She’d left her boots in the cottage so she could wade with the boy, which she did, lifting her skirt just high enough to avoid soaking its hem.

“Ahoy, Jamison,” she said.

He smiled and moved the boat across the water, clutching the top section of the boat’s mast.

“Ahoy, Miss Belle.” He looked up at her and rubbed one sleepy eye with his free hand.

“You’re a good sailor, little man. I like how careful you are . . . making sure your boat stays upright.”

The boy squatted and blew hard into the sail. His bottom dipped into the water.

“Oops,” he said, standing up and touching his soggy backside.

“That happens,” Belle said. “Sailors and their boats get wet during adventures.”

Jamison grinned and resumed powering his trusty vessel, making it lurch in pretend choppy waters.

Suddenly, an unpleasant memory interrupted the innocence—another time, a different place. Move through, she thought, and saw herself at Jamison’s age.

There she sat, clutching the coarse hair of a mule’s mane. The day was brisk, and the Carsons were participating in a sugarcane grind with several other families. Julius, knowing she was timid around large animals, had plopped her atop a mule. The animal was hitched to a long wooden pole and walking in endless circles, powering the cane press extracting juice to be boiled into syrup. She gripped the mule’s mane with both hands, her eyes pinched shut. She was certain the creature would break free from the pole and race off into the woods with her on its back.

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