Page 24 of Rainshadow

As soon as Ethan left, her mother was on her.

“That’s your employer?” Her mother scoffed. “I imagined some older couple. You said?—”

“I didn’t say anything,” Flora snapped. “You assumed.”

“He looks rich!” Maureen said, a greedy glint in her eye.

“Yes, he is, and he pays me well.” Flora knew she shouldn’t have said it, that it would only make her mother’s wheels spin,but she couldn’t help it. She wanted to brag. She wanted to make her mother jealous.

“Could be better, maybe,” Maureen said. “Do they need any more help? Maybe to clean?—”

“No!” Flora snapped, putting her hands to her ears. “Leave me alone, Mom!”

Maureen didn’t leave her alone. She followed her. “A man like that knows people, has connections.”

“Connections to what? What are you talking about?”

“Other work, other people, opportunities…” Her mother was spinning with ideas about how she could get money, more and more money, without having to work. She was always like this when she saw an opportunity.

Her mother, Flora realized, lived in a fantasy world where someone else would always come along and save her. She rolled her eyes and pushed past her into the back of the bus.

12

Starting later than she had in the past, Flora walked the miles and miles back to work the next day.

The rain was a soft spray, relentless on her face, and the sun seemed too weak to rise. There was only the suggestion of sun. The sky was goose-down gray, soft and endless, but uninviting, and the closer Flora got to the mansion, to the grounds of Rainshadow, the more she felt a feeling of foreboding, of a corner turned.

The horse, Bane, was dead.

Perhaps his corpse still lay curled around the rocks below the cliffside, and Sylvia still did not want her, despite what Ethan had said. She was used to being places where she was not wanted, though, wasn’t she? The thought made her defiant, strengthened her. Sylvia did not want her there, but it wasn’t Sylvia’s house. Sylvia wasn’t from the island, hadn’t bent to tend the lavender with her own bare hands for years and years. She hadn’t paid for the estate with her own money, the way that Ethan had. Sylvia was a sick, bitter interloper in Flora’s home, in Ethan’s life.

Flora pushed away the poisonous thoughts.

Rainshadow, after a week of her absence, was gray, muddy, and ill-kept. Everything on the island started to look gray and muddy this time of year, but the grazing paddock looked especially dark and plodded upon, and the lavender fields were all the same sad taupe shade.

Zeta and Mars were both fine. That was a relief. Both of them had bright eyes and seemed alert and healthy. They both probably needed exercise, but Sylvia was nowhere to be found. Her car was missing, and Flora briefly wondered if she’d gone to a doctor or something in the city.

After doing her daily chores around the barn, Flora put Zeta on a lead rope and led her to the practice arena, which was clean and dry, the powerful outdoor heaters already running. She put Zeta on a long practice line and started working her, only using simple techniques she was familiar with.

Flora was, of course, not an expert at dressage, but she was able to give Zeta a decent workout, having her trot, then canter, in sweeping circles around her, changing the horse’s gait with a click of her tongue or the softest touch of the whip. She worked Zeta, then, more carefully, Mars, who she thought might still be recovering from whatever had made him so ill the week before.

She had started late, and worked late. The most honest part of herself admitted why—she wanted to see Ethan. Sylvia did not show herself for the entire day, and Flora wondered how the horses were fed or exercised if she didn’t come. The stalls were clean, though, and the horses were well cared for, so someone had been doing at least some of the daily work.

After she meticulously groomed Mars and put him away for the afternoon, she looked around for something else to do. Just then, Sylvia made her appearance in the barn, dragging a bucket of feed. It was only a forty-pound bucket, but Sylvia dragged it like it weighed a hundred.

Flora called to her. “Do you need help?”

Sylvia startled when she saw Flora.

“I’m sorry,” Flora said. “Didn’t Ethan tell you I was coming back?”

Sylvia stared at her for a moment, but instead of looking angry and defiant, as Flora expected, she only seemed resigned. “Carry this bucket in,” she said, indicating the blue feed bucket she’d dragged from the driveway. “I have more in the car.”

“No,” said Flora, “I’ll get them. You just… relax.”

“Relax, sure,” Sylvia said, snorting with angry laughter at the word. But she did sit down, on a bale of hay, and leaned her head against the wall. For a moment she did look relaxed, and Flora saw what a beautiful woman Sylvia might have once been. Not just pretty. Sylvia was beautiful, model beautiful, like a movie star, with her raven hair, high cheekbones, and full, dark lips. A flame of something, jealousy, flared inside of Flora. She was younger than Sylvia. She was not sick and run down, but she would never have the same stark, haunting glamour. Flora was young, and she was pretty, but she was not, and never would be beautiful. It was one more thing that wasn’t fair, the universe rewarding some and not others with privilege, beauty, and riches, while others, others who deserved it even more, had nothing.

The darkness of night began to fall before it was even four in the afternoon. The howling wind grew louder, whipping up the cliffside and around the mansion like a phantom, threatening, insisting. Flora felt an eerie dread, and did not want to walk home, did not want to even be outside anymore.

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