Page 15 of The Promise Of Rain

“I talked,” I retorted, my voice shaking as hard as the dishes clamouring on the tray in my shaking hands.“I talked to anyone who would listen,” I snapped, my tone of voice sending a deep flush to my face.“There just weren’t all that many.”

“True,” Ansel interjected easily, coming to my defense.

An honorable man, good to his core, Ansel had never once let me down.

Running to him the night my mother’s boyfriend tried to break into my bedroom was the smartest thing I’d ever done.

Ansel was my boss at the bakery.At that time, having only worked there a handful of months, I barely knew him.But I knew him to be a decent man not unlike Sergeant Elliott who had often checked in on me.

That night, Ansel was the closer of the two.

Ansel patched up the gash I earned on my calf when I pushed through my bedroom window and landed on a broken bottle.

He dried my tears, gave me a pair of his pyjama pants and a soft t-shirt, then made me a cup of tea and toasted me a wide slice of sour dough bread smothered in butter and strawberry jam.

It was still my favourite comfort food.

No matter the blow to his reputation, he took me in and settled me with him in his apartment over the bakery.Moving me into the master bedroom with its ensuite bath, he took the smaller, second bedroom and treated me like a treasured daughter.

We lived over that bakery together until I moved in with Deacon.

And we lived there together once more when my world fell apart.

He knew everything that happened.

Every sordid detail.

I set down the dishes that betrayed my distress and crossed my arms over my chest.

“You can’t talk to a brick wall,” he continued.“A woman needs a safe place to be soft, and you didn’t have that back then.”

I paused and lifted my chin to meet his eyes.“You gave that to me.”

His eyes gleamed.“And it was the greatest privilege of my life to do so.”His lips firmed.“Now, you need to grow.We all need a little rain.”

Rain.

A single word.

A scant handful of letters to mirror my greatest hope and deepest fear.

Deacon was coming home.

I won’t do anything to hurt you, Jenny.

And my battered heart hesitantly whispered her truth.

Softness was no longer enough.

3

What Might Be

Deacon

There was a bitterness stamped in the lines on my mother’s face that had only deepened in the two years since my ex-wife filed for divorce.

Back then I attributed the strain on her face to the great shame I brought on the family.