Page 26 of Rainshadow

Flora went cold. “I think I could?—”

“You couldn’t, Flora,” her mother said, laughing. “You’re a little mouse! You couldn’t be a cop!”

“I think?—”

“You think you could?” Maureen laughed again. “You can’t! You can’t leave this island!”

“I have to—” Flora began to insist.

“You have to stay here!” Maureen shouted. “I need you. I can’t be alone, and you can’t be alone. You wouldn’t be able to manage! Don’t you see that?”

“No,” Flora whispered, but her mother only cackled.

“I told them that you were not going to come to an interview now or ever. I told them that you were a scared little mouse, and that you lied on your resume.”

Flora stared at her mother, stunned. Up until that moment, she had believed that her mother had not helped because she didn’t care, was indifferent and unhelpful, but not that she would actually wreck any effort to leave. The thought that her mother had sabotaged her was too painful to bear, and she wanted to run out into the night, to run and run, until what? Until she got to Rainshadow, of course.

The wind howled outside of the rickety bus. She wasn’t going anywhere and she knew it. She looked at her mother, answering coldness with coldness.

“I’ll find a way to get away from you,” she said. “And know, when I leave, that will be it for us, do you understand? I would have helped you. Now, you can forget about it.”

Her mother smirked, as if to say “We’ll see,” but Flora ignored her and retreated to her tiny bedroom. After she changed, brushed her teeth, and crawled into her bunk, she lay awake and thought about Ethan, the way he looked at her, with something—was it hope? Hope for something different than the miserable life he had with Sylvia? Could it be that they needed each other? They were both stuck in these… relationships.

Maybe they could save each other.

13

The next time Flora went downtown, it was to pick up groceries for herself and her mother, who had slipped into a kind of polite pantomime. She had meant what she said, and would figure out a way to escape her mother, but the two of them couldn’t live in a tiny bus while constantly fighting.

Her mother went back to her routine of smoking pot, watching TV, and winding her way through the bus and the yard doing inconsequential creative projects like hanging a hand-painted nylon windsock in one of the trees on their property.

Flora realized that she now did all the cleaning, all the shopping, all the cooking, and supplied every dollar they had coming in—her mother had stopped looking for money now that Flora was making it. Instead of being grateful, though, Maureen treated her like she was the tenant in the house, lucky to be allowed to live there. If Flora thought about it for too long, she would become infuriated, so she tried not to think about it as she walked down the sidewalk into town. The bitter truth was that she still had to grocery shop at King’s. There were no other grocery stores, but she usually did it as quickly as possible, and most of the employees there did her the courtesy of smilingpolitely or pretending they didn’t recognize her, even though everyone knew everyone on the island.

Today, though, things were different. As soon as she walked in, Debbie saw her and blinked with recognition. She looked around, then crossed from behind her place at the customer service counter to talk to Flora.

“Did you hear?”

“Hear what?” Flora asked, amused to think that Debbie would think she heard any of the idle gossip around the island.

“About Matt,” Debbie said. “I figured since you knew each other maybe?—”

“What about him?”

Debbie looked around, then lowered her voice and spoke. “Dead.”

The word was so blunt that it startled Flora. “He died? From what?”

“Nobody knows yet. He was found in the back seat of his own car in his driveway. He had slashes on his neck and chest, his clothes were torn, but apparently he was sitting straight up in the back seat.”

The mental image of Matt King sitting straight up, dead and bloody, in the back seat of his car was disturbing to Flora, who shuddered.

“Somebody… killed him?”

“I don’t know,” Debbie said. “Some people say suicide. Did you ever talk to him again, after…”

“No,” Flora said, a little too quickly. “No, never. I never even saw him.”

“I think he was into drugs,” Debbie said, leaning in conspiratorially. “Maybe he got on someone’s bad side.”

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