Page 2 of Rainshadow

Flora’s only friend had gone off to college in Bellingham. She had moved only two hours away, but it wouldn’t be the same.Flora had known that. She’d had good enough grades to be accepted to college, her adviser had told her that, but her mother hadn’t paid taxes in years, so she didn’t qualify for financial aid.

She didn’t even know how to contact her father. She had asked Maureen to give her his information once, and that had not turned out well.

Maureen’s bright eyes had gone icy cold, and her mouth straightened into a sharp line.

“Am I not enough for you?” Maureen asked her.

Flora flushed with fear and embarrassment.

“I j-j-just… If he’s up-to-date on his taxes maybe?—”

“You don’t have a father,” Maureen said through her teeth.

Flora had repeated all of this to her college adviser, who had sighed and looked out of her office window, as though debating how much to help this helpless girl.

Instead of going to college, Flora got a job. Five miserable days a week she walked from the tiny-house school bus to the small, touristy downtown where she worked as a checkout girl at the island’s only grocery store. She made seven dollars an hour and turned her checks directly over to her mother.

That first winter, out of school, friendless, and stuck on the tiny island, was the darkest time of her life. She worked her mind-numbingly boring job with all the enthusiasm of a halting, charmless robot. She went on long meandering walks, even in the cold and the endless, drizzling rain.

When the weather was really, truly bad she read, working through piles of books that she checked out by the armful, fantasy and romance, carrying them home in a patched JanSport backpack. The only time she was ever relaxed was when she was reading, tucked into a fantasy world. She liked strong heroines, mousy, unremarkable girls who realized they had magical powers or inner strength, and ended up getting everything they wanted in the end.

Flora had lived on Anderson Island her whole life, and had not wanted to leave when she was younger. Once her few friends left and the horse farm shuttered, Flora came to understand what a very small and desolate place it really was.

People came and went on Anderson, people who were charmed by the island in the summer. Artsy, hippie, off-grid types, wannabe farmers, and idealists of all stripes tried to make a home there, but most didn’t stay. Winter was too dark, too gloomy, too rugged. All the people who left had either money or somewhere else to go, and Flora had neither. She had left only a few times, for day trips to Seattle and a few horse shows with Lisa.

In the years after graduation, Flora only managed to save six hundred dollars. She kept it in a coffee can in her bunk, secreted from her mother, who could always find an excuse for why Flora should hand over every last penny she made, citing things like property tax and utilities that she couldn’t dispute. Maureen was so unpredictable that Flora, who otherwise thought of herself as an honest person, could lie to her mother as easily as breathing.

In Seattle, she knew, there was a whole city, with jobs, apartments, thousands of people, restaurants, live music, and bookstores. Flora tried to imagine a life there, but her imagination was limited, since she’d only been there a few times. She listened on a Walkman to bands who were from Washington and still played in Seattle, Nirvana, Sleater-Kinney, and imagined going to their shows.

When she once mentioned moving to the city, her mother had scoffed.

“Sure, go there and pay rent to some stranger,” she said. “Work like a little worker bee, throw your money away like a sheep, and see if you’re any happier.”

In May, a boy from her work, (a man, really, but it was hard for Flora to think of someone her own age as an adult), askedif he could give her a ride home after her shift. She had been grateful, at first, not to have to walk home, even though his car was littered with trash and cigarette butts and smelled of mold.

One day, in front of her house, he had leaned over and kissed her before she got out of the car. His mouth tasted like stale cigarettes and something sickly-sweet, like warm, flat Dr Pepper. She had wanted to wretch, but held back, then rushed inside of the school bus. Two days later, in the break room, he had kissed her again as she froze, unsure of what to do or how to respond.

She found Debbie, the manager, and told her what was happening. Debbie groaned at the news. “I’ll talk to Maggie and Ted,” she said. They were the owners of the grocery store and seemed like sweet people.

“Matt is their son,” Debbie said, and Flora winced, even though she had already known this. “He’s got to stop doing this, though. Don’t worry, I’ll help you.”

Flora was fired within a week.

The money in the coffee tin was frittered away, so hard won and easily lost.

She told her mother everything that had happened, and her mother only rolled her eyes at Flora’s distress.

“I wish you hadn’t caused problems. You can be so dramatic, Flora. What are we going to do now?”

And then, at the farmers’ market, she heard the news.

“Somebody bought the horse farm.”

She first heard from a woman selling eggs, blue, green, white, and brown, in half-dozen cartons.

“Lavender Acres?”

“Lavender Acres is what Lisa called it,” the egg lady said. “The real name, when it was built by a lumber baron a hundred years ago, was Rainshadow Abbey. Everyone just called itRainshadow, though, when I was a girl. It was broken down and vacant for a long time before Lisa bought it.”

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