Page 38 of Rainshadow

“I was really sorry to hear about your mother, Flora,” Debbie said, looking at her with more curiosity than sympathy. It occurred to her that Debbie thought she’d used the charity money to buy a bunch of designer clothes.

“The boots, all of it, were a gift,” she said, blushing. “From my boyfriend.”

“Your boyfriend?” Debbie looked more confused than ever.

She blushed harder now. “Never mind,” she said.

“You look very nice, Flora,” Debbie said. “I was just trying to figure out why you looked quite so… different.”

“Oh,” she said, laughing with discomfort. “I don’t know.”

“You’re just grown up, I guess.”

“I guess so.” Flora laughed, still nervous.

Night fell on her drive home, the sunset obscured by the endless fog encircling the island. When she pulled into the driveway at Rainshadow, she saw lights on in the house, and she felt a tingle of excitement, knowing she was about to see Ethan again.

She didn’t find Ethan when she went inside. Not at first. Looking for him, she ended up back in Sylvia’s bedroom, where the other woman was still in bed.

“Sylvia?” Flora asked, stepping in, feeling strangely bold. “Are you still alive?”

Sylvia stirred. She finally sat up.

“Flora?” she said in her hoarse voice. “Will you help me? I need water. I need to… I need to…” Her head nodded forward. “Flora, you have to go…”

“Go?” Flora asked, going to Sylvia’s bedside. She spoke to her directly, without simpering or apology. “Sylvia, you would have died without me. Your horses would die without anyone to take care of them. You can’t send me away.”

Sylvia closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands.

“Will you just get me a water?” she finally said.

Flora sighed and went to the bathroom for one of the paper cups. She filled it and brought it to Sylvia, then watched her drink it with her arms crossed.

“Help me get up,” Sylvia said. “I want to… I want to take a shower…”

“Why doesn’t Ethan help you?”

Sylvia looked at her then, a withering look.

“Have you not questioned why he is never out in the daytime? Or, like I did, do you explain away all of his eccentricities because you want to maintain the fantasy that he’s good?”

“He is good,” Flora said, and she noticed the flood of emotion, the way it made the words sound forceful, intense.

Sylvia looked at her pityingly, the old Sylvia, cruel and dismissive, the woman who thought Flora was an idiot. She winced.

“He is who he is,” Sylvia said. “Ask him, when you’re together at night, as I know you are now, why he sleeps all day. Ask whyhe never eats. You’ve noticed that, haven’t you? Why he still looks so young and so beautiful though he is older than I.”

“He is not?—”

“Yes, yes he is, Flora. I can only tell you in so many ways…” Sylvia closed her eyes again.

“What are you telling me?”

“You already know.”

“You’re jealous,” Flora hissed at the other woman. “You’re seething with jealousy.”

Sylvia smiled then and laughed, a low, ugly laugh, her eyes still closed. “Little girl,” she said, her voice a contemptuous growl. “I wouldn’t trade places with you for all the money in the world. I am at the end, terrible as it may be, but you’re at the beginning. Whatever happens, most of the suffering is behind me. I tried to save you though, I really did.”

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