The rain made Andy feel safer
It was Saturday evening, and it had just started raining again. Andy did not go to Taj Mahal to pick up dinner. Since Pearl, Emily, and Cassie would be joining them, he thought he’d prepare a big bowl of pasta. When he stopped at his place to pick up a couple of bottles of wine, he could see that the creek beyond the back parking lot was bank-full, the water creeping up to the band of trees and shrubs along the edge.
The rain was inconvenient, but it didn’t have the same depressing effect on Andy that it did on most people. It enclosed him. It weighed the earth down with dampness. It helped trees to grow and extend their roots farther out and into the soil, creating air passages for the bacteria and fungi that broke down nutrients. The more they thrived, the
