Re-Arranged

Chapter Nine

Rainstorms were bad. Unseasonal ones were worse. And unseasonal ones that left rain damage behind were the worst.

Despite the distress call the day before their travel plans, Ted and Amelia had tried their hardest to keep calm while leaving and make sure they had closed and locked everything. However, the living room windows had not been fastened tightly and they flung open quite easily in the winds accompanying the rains.

With it pouring all through the night after the hottest day yet recorded of this summer, the living room no longer bore a resemblance to its former homely feel. It looked abandoned, neglected, rotten and soggy, splotches of water gathering under the furniture from their incessant dripping.

Kelly had looked around the room in disbelief, her lower jaw refusing to rise up again. She tried to say something, but all that came out were disjointed single syllable sounds.

Darian tentatively pressed on the closest armchair with his fingers and it dipped inwards to form a pool of filthy water around his digits. "Goodness," he breathed out and regretted it a moment later. The mossy, seaweed-y stench of the room hit his olfactory senses with all their strengths and he slapped a hand over his nose and mouth.

"This... is... unbelievable..."

He watched her move around without so much as flinching at the strong scents weighing the air down, and wondered if the shock had nullified some of her senses. The moment she rounded the biggest couch, she picked up her pace and hurried down the side corridor.

"Okay.. uh, it's not so... not so bad here..."

Her voice echoed in the empty house, sounding more and more defeated in the reverberations. "I'll check the upstairs then. You look into the kitchen," Luke called back and climbed the steps two at a time.

It looked all right. The stench was still there, but no visible damage, so it might have dispersed from the downstairs room and seeped through the whole house. It had the whole night and half a morning to spread its tentacles.

Ooof, that description does not help the nausea creeping up.

"All good up here," he yelled back almost at the same time as Kelly hollered out, "Kitchen almost okay."

On the drive back, she let him drive while she sat in the passenger side, her elbow resting on the window frame and the back of her index finger scratching at her teeth.

"Told your parents?"

"Yep, texted. They asked not to call while they're there."

"Oh. How're things there?"

"Vague. They're being evasive."

"And what did they say to do?"

"Papa will call the insurance and have them check it out."

"We can go and look over the inspection if you want."

"Okay."

Darian extracted one hand from the steering wheel and patted her shoulder, letting his hand stay on it till she quit her obsessive teeth scratching and twisted in the seatbelt to face him.

"So... this one week thing is clearly out of the picture, right? Shit, this is just getting more and more crowded! Okay, yes, I don't mean to sound awful really, but oh dear lord, I'm just doing a headcount of the people in our home and I keep forgetting it as if they exceed the number of fingers I have! What the heck is wrong with me?" She leaned her head to the side to rest it on the seat and sighed. "I don't know what I'm thinking. It's like I'm blocking my own thoughts out because I feel they're only turning evil. Goodness, I've never thought through anything so much since those few hours leading up to the altar the first time!" She fell quiet and tugged at the leather strap, frowning.