Change of Climate

Untitled Part 14

Rafferty was clearing the dinner table, doing the dishes. Behind her, in the family room, she could hear the television on in the family room. It was tuned to the national news, and they were talking about the hurricane working its way up the coast, about the preparations people were making.

But, no matter the preparations, this is a big and powerful hurricane, and it's going to bring destruction, she could hear the somber anchor intoning.

Rafferty's hands shook a bit as she rinsed off the glasses. She wished they would change the channel, or at least turn the volume down so she wouldn't be able to hear it.

I don't expect my house to be here when I get back, said a woman's voice, someone they must have been interviewing. I'm just trying to freeze into my memory what this whole place looks like, because I'll never see it again like this.

Rafferty dropped the glass and it shattered.

"Raff, honey?" called Susan from the family room. "You okay in there?"

"Yeah," Rafferty called back, cursing herself and trying to contain the mess she'd caused. "I'm fine."

"What happened?" asked Bayless, suddenly hovering over her.

Why was he always there? thought Rafferty, sourly. Every time she turned around, it seemed, Bayless was always just there. It was her job to clean up the dinner dishes this week and there was no reason for Bayless to even be in the kitchen. He should have been listening to the news about the disastrous hurricane instead.

"It's fine," Rafferty said, hurriedly. "I'm fine."

"You're bleeding," Bayless pointed out.

"Yeah, it's just a stupid little cut," said Rafferty, and stuck her finger in her mouth to suck on it.

She glanced up at Bayless, who was gazing at her with his wide, expressive brown eyes. Bayless had a face like an open book. Rafferty, who had been used to being surrounded by people engaged in constant subterfuge, whose whole life had been about hiding everything, found it all a little crazy-making. His eyes were all sad and concerned now. It was annoying.

"What?" she demanded, bristling.

"We're okay, right? I didn't mean to—What I said to you earlier—"

"Not even thinking about it anymore," she said, flatly, and it wasn't even a lie, because most of the time she steadfastly did not think about her mother. When she did, flash floods happened.

Bayless looked like he didn't believe her. "Okay," he said, dubiously. "Because I really wasn't trying to upset you. That's not what I wanted."

Rafferty took a deep breath and told herself to get a grip. Bayless and his family were really nice people who had taken her in when no one else would, and she was a terrible person for being so snappish about it all the time. "I know." She tried a smile at Bayless. It felt rusty and out of practice. She was the kind of terrible person who was out of practice at smiling. "I know it's not. I'm fine, really."

Bayless nodded a little bit, tentatively accepting her word for it, and then he silently helped her clean up the kitchen, which was unnecessary but nice enough that she couldn't bring herself to tell him he didn't have to.

Then she went to her room, and she sat by the window. There was no view here, not like from the house at the top of the hill. Rafferty had no idea if there were storms running riot over the rolling fields. She tried to quiet herself enough to feel if there were any, but all she could feel was the roiling emotion of the hurricane, bowling over everything in its path. If Rafferty let the hurricane in too much, it would hurt, and she'd end up crying herself to sleep. She nudged at the hurricane a little bit, trying to decrease it, to roll it into a tighter ball and cut down on the size of the path it was going to make through the country.

The hurricane pushed back at her, a sharp pinch, and she cried out in surprise and left it.

She laid down on her bed and thought how she was utterly, utterly worthless.