Page 49 of Rainshadow

“Hello?” A confused sounding person answered.

“Hello, who is this?” Flora said. She didn’t recognize the voice.

“This is Celine.” The person on the other line sounded like a woman. A very young woman.

“I… this is Flora. I used to work there. Are Ethan and Sylvia still there?”

“Uh, yeah,” Celine said, laughing a little.

“And what are you doing there?” Flora asked, trying to sound casual. “Helping around the barn?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m a trainer…?” The woman, the girl’s voice lifted at the end of statements like she was asking a question.

Flora felt a hot, disgusting feeling, like she wanted to throw up.

“And Sylvia hired you?”

“Who is this? Flora you said? I don’t know if I’m supposed to answer questions?—”

“It’s ok. I, uh, I was calling to see if they’d hired anyone else… I was thinking of asking for my job back.”

“Oh,” said Celine. The line went quiet for a moment.

“I can ask Ethan to call you.”

“Ethan hired you?”

Another long pause.

“Umm, yes…” she said. “Sylvia isn’t… she isn’t doing so well.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Flora said. “Thanks… Thanks for talking to me, I guess.”

“Uh, sure,” Celine said, but she sounded hesitant.

When Flora hung up the phone, she felt a hot, sticky rage building inside of her. She went to start her day’s chores, but by noon she was so frustrated, so obsessively furious, that she could barely see straight, much less finish her days work. She asked for the rest of the day to go for a ride, but even urging Frenchy over meadows and ridge lines at a breakneck pace didn’t make her feel any better. She ended the day just as out-of-her-mind angry as she had ever been, imagining this girl, Celine, getting everything she had wanted and worked for.

She had dinner with the Richards that night, beef tacos with no vegetables. She said goodnight to them, said she would see them in the morning and already knew that was not true. She tried to sleep and couldn’t.

Around three in the morning she packed her meager things, loaded up her pickup truck, and set out for Rainshadow.

24

When she drove her pickup truck off the ferry onto the island, she felt gripped by something more than obsession, more than insanity.

There was a part of her, a rational, objective part of her, that felt like it was watching from the outside, hovering above, as an insane version of herself was propelled toward Rainshadow like she was drawn by a magnet. Her anger was profound. Sylvia had worked so hard to get rid of her only to replace her with someone else? Maybe, Flora thought, it was some sick game, and Sylvia got pleasure from torturing girls who came to work for her. She imagined Sylvia laughing as she drove away the first time, thinking she’d won.

She hadn’t won, though. Flora couldn’t let her. She would have the last laugh. She would have Rainshadow, too, and Ethan, and the dream, her dearest dream, would become a reality so perfect it would be like a fairy tale.

She kept thinking of all the ways that it really was a fairy tale. Sylvia, the witch, the evil stepmother, the wicked queen, the old crone, all of the women who have ever stood in the way of the beautiful princess and the handsome prince, denying them the love they were destined to share.

Flora smiled, thinking of it.

She drove through town, across the island along winding roads, and finally up the driveway toward the towering, dark form that Rainshadow mansion made in the sunset. She felt determined and breathless, and like if there was a point of no return, she had already crossed it, and now it was as though she was falling.

When she arrived at Rainshadow, the wind was whipping up the cliffside, and the horses were unsettled, nickering and whining in their stalls. Flora could hear them as soon as she got out of her truck. The wind was high, howling, and her hair tangled around her face, sticking to her lips as the misty rain dampened her skin. She realized she had cold sweats. She was afraid. She wasn’t sure if she was afraid of what she would find, or afraid of what she would do.

The walk to the front door of the house was slow, but when she arrived it was like she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there. She knocked, stupidly, knowing that no one was likely to answer. She didn’t wait long and pushed the door open. The silence of the house was haunting, droning, after the sound of the wind and rising rain.

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