RAIN

 

ATER RUSHED UP THE shoreline and flowed out slowly to be overrun by other approaching waves in an endless ballet. Rachel was chasing Allison back and forth across the warm sandy beach. The girls laughed and giggled when Allison would challenge the rolling water, then run from it when it caught up to her and splashed her skinny little legs. He loved their long, golden blond hair that flitted and danced as they ran and played in the mild coastal air. He couldn’t have been happier, smiling and looking on from the shade of his large beach umbrella. This was a beautiful place and he had a beautiful family.

“Ethan,” Rachel shouted from behind him. He stood and walked across a freshly mowed dark green lawn to where they were working in a flower garden. Allison had collected a small bouquet and held it in her hands. She looked adorable in her white garden hat and work gloves that matched her mother’s.

“Do you like them?” she asked, holding the flowers up for inspection.

“I think they’re beautiful, just like you,” he said smiling and tapping the brim of her hat. She giggled and ran to the house to find a vase.

Ethan sat down on the grass near his wife. Rachel loved flowers. Her printed dress and large garden hat made her blend in when she kneeled amidst the many groups of Asters, Daisies, Zinnias, Mums and other plants in the massive beds that were scattered about their large property. Because of his wife, their home and yard was the envy of the neighborhood, and he couldn’t have been prouder. Everything was perfect.

She put her arm around him and they kissed when he heard the faint melodic notes of her piano coming from the house. He followed the sound down the hallway and around the corner through the dining room to the music room where she was playing one of his favorite compositions. He sat quietly on the loveseat behind her baby grand to listen. He had heard few people play with such feeling and conviction. Her compositions were like stories that would lift you up on invisible strings and caress you as you flowed through their emotional discourse—pulled along, rising and falling in harmony with the notes and chords. She was an incredibly gifted woman. Many times he had wondered how he had been so lucky to find her.

As he sat listening, relishing in his melodic journey, something hit him on the cheek. He slapped at it—an insect maybe. Then there was another…and another. They were becoming more frequent but as he wiped his face and looked at his hand, there was nothing there. The piano started making strange and confusing guttural noises that were ugly and foreboding. Rachel ignored them, or couldn’t hear them. The intrusive sound was beginning to drown out the piano’s natural tones. He called her name. She didn’t respond.

Now he was shouting, but his voice was empty. The rumbling slowly escalated to a roar and suddenly he found himself standing in the middle of a street in a downpour. His wife and daughter were on a nearby sidewalk getting ready to step off the curb onto the rain soaked asphalt.