Late Rain by Lynn Kostoff

in their rearview mirror once and for all. And then slap her once again and tell her what those winsome and precocious little girls had to do later to get out of places like Bradford so that they could eventually end up sitting in a theatre on a Saturday afternoon with a pampered, self-absorbed bitch watching a movie that celebrated the richness of life and family.
    Instead, Corrine surreptitiously lifted her arm to check her watch.
    Stanley would be just settling in for his nap around now.
    Corrine sat in the dark next to Terri and thought about what she was going to wear to Stanley’s funeral.

TWENTY
    JACK CARSON looked into the next room where a girl in a green T-shirt did her homework at the kitchen table, and then he got up from his recliner and turned off the television and in the ensuing silence began to move through the rooms of his house. Something tugged at him, but it was as if he were caught in a tedious game of hide-n-seek, and Jack moved haltingly, slower and more deliberately than whatever was tugging at him demanded, and he’d find himself standing in front of the refrigerator, and he would suddenly pause as if he’d heard a sound he couldn’t identify, and he would try to chase it down, only to find himself in his daughter’s bedroom standing over a stack of library books piled on her nightstand, and when he picked up the top one and opened its back cover, the due date made no sense, the year off, some kind of mistake, and then he realized he hadn’t put on his shoes and he needed them for what he had to do, and he started down the hallway and moved to the bathroom and brushed his teeth, and the sound of the water pouring from the faucet was like an urgent whisper telling him he needed to hurry, and he moved back into the living room and turned on the television, and he listened to a man in a blue suit gravely explain that two new fires had started in west Magnolia Beach, and then Jack saw the note taped to the front door. He looked over toward the girl at the kitchen table. She looked back at him.
    The note was from someone named Anne who’d written she’d be back in two hours, and underneath in all caps was: STAY IN THE HOUSE. GO BACK AND SIT IN YOUR CHAIR, DAD. PAIGE WILL FIX YOU A SNACK.
    Jack turned the knob. The door was locked.
    He walked back into the kitchen. He looked for the girl, but she was gone and so was the homework. Behind him he heard the man’s voice talking about the fires and saying there were no suspects and that three fire units were trying to get the fires under control and reminding everyone of the burn alert.
    Jack started down the hall, and then he found his shoes and put them on, and the house suddenly went quiet, and when he walked into the kitchen there was a sandwich on a white plate sitting in the middle of the table, and then Jack heard a noise, one small and compact, like loose change in a pocket, and he crossed into the living room where the television was on but with the volume turned low as a pulse, and on the screen, a car raced across a flat summer landscape at dawn, and then Jack stepped over to the front door and turned the knob, and the door opened and the screened one after it, and he walked out onto the porch and then down the stairs and across the front lawn.
    After Jack made the street, he turned left.
    The sky was pale, the wind dry. Jack walked past a woman planting flowers. Next to her were two flats of orange marigolds. Small puffs of dust appeared each time she jabbed the hand trowel into the earth.
    Jack’s shoes were rubbing on his heels, and he stopped to retie the laces. He heard a dog barking in the distance.
    The kitchen calendar had said March, but nothing around him resembled it.
    He started walking again. The wind in the trees sounded like teeth chattering.
    He walked some more, and then he stopped. He hadn’t been paying attention and must have gotten turned around. He was standing across from a Burger King, and he could smell meat