The Shape of Rain

CAROLINE

She came on a Thursday. Not a Thursday evening, not the good kind of books and wine and Patience Okafor making the room go still with her words. A Thursday afternoon, gray and cold and smelling like more rain coming, when Mira was halfway up a ladder reordering the upper shelves, and Ruth was on the phone with a distributor and the store had the particular midweek quiet of a place that was working, not performing.

The bell over the door rang.

Mira gazed down from the ladder to see a strange woman standing before her. Tall. Dark coat, high-quality. Expensive at one point, now simply an accessory to life. Dark hair like Elliot's, only shorter and trimmed in a manner that suggested she'd made the decision long ago that hair was not something to be negotiated with. Sharp face. A face that sized up the room in quick fashion, concluding before most would be comfortable with.

She stood at the door looking at the store with an expression that Mira could not quite decipher. Not critical. Not warmly appreciative either. Just… sizing it up.

"Can I help you?" Mira asked from the ladder.

She looked up at Mira. "You must be Mira."

Statement of fact.

"And I'm Caroline," Mira said as she climbed down the ladder.

An odd look on her face. Disbelief? Or rethinking? "He talked about me."

"Ruth did talk about you."

Caroline Vale surveyed the shop once more. Seeing it all correctly now, the shelves rearranged, the window display, the card to sign up for the newsletter on the counter, the clear indication that somebody had put in some effort in a space that required it. Mira didn't know how to read the strange expression on her face.

"Ruth is back there," Mira said. "On the phone. She's going to be busy for a bit."

"I know. I called ahead." Caroline stepped further into the store with the ease of familiarity, which made sense; obviously, Elliot had been coming here for two years now, and her sisters visited. She brushed one of the shelves with her finger, but not for dust, simply tracing it. "He speaks about this place."

"Elliot?"

"Who else?" She met Mira's gaze, her eyes grey just like his, but in a different way. Harder, sharper, more guarded. "He speaks about the store. He speaks about Ruth. He speaks about you."

Mira took the books from the shelves and held them against her body as if they could protect her from everything. "Positive things, I hope."

"Mostly," Caroline answered, not really meaning it, though.

After twenty minutes, Ruth came out from the back of the store to see Mira and Caroline sitting on opposite sides of the table near the window, drinking two cups of coffee with the strained formality of two individuals trying to be civil.

Mira saw that expression in Ruth's eyes, which suggested that Ruth had seen everything and had strong thoughts about the situation but chose to keep quiet about them.

"Caroline," said Ruth in an equally warm but controlled voice. "You look tired."

"I drove all the way down here from Harrington this morning," Caroline explained. Four hours. Mira made a mental note.

"Have a seat," Ruth said, heading towards the coffee machine. "Both of you. Stop trying to be careful around each other."

Caroline gave a glance at Ruth, which could be described as affectionate. "That's what we're doing."

"That's what you're doing," Ruth clarified. "Mira is alright. It's you who is being careful."

Mira tried hiding her face behind the table.

Caroline wrapped her fingers around the hot cup and remained silent. The rain had started pouring outside at its full intensity now.

"He didn't tell me you were coming," Mira said finally.

"He doesn't know," Caroline stated matter-of-factly. "I wanted to see the place, and you, without him lurking and controlling the situation."

"Does he lurk?"

"With what he cares about," she replied and regarded Mira seriously. "Yes."

The statement hung in the air.

Two hours of conversation.

Not of Elliot himself, mostly. Caroline was a structural engineer based in Harrington, worked on bridges and huge constructions, and seemed to have a mind that automatically assessed the carrying capacity of everything, even the people around her. She was sharp and witty in an ironic manner, and only when she realized you were worthy of her wit did it appear. She asked Mira questions about her publishing career, the newsletter, the idea of a small press. Genuine questions. Follow-up questions. Those questions showed that she really listened.

Talking about her thoughts proved easier than she thought it would be.

About Chicago. About the disappearance. About finding herself in Bellweather with absolutely nothing in mind and discovering, eventually and unintentionally, that there really was no point in having something in mind. Because sometimes you need to lose yourself thoroughly in order to understand where you wanted to be.

Caroline heard all of this without interrupting. Once Mira was done, she was silent for a bit.

"He did that too, you know," she said. "After Lena. Simply… landed somewhere with no plan and started to wait for what would happen."

"Bellweather."

"Bellweather." She glanced outside the window at the rain. "I hated it initially. The fact that he went somewhere unfamiliar to me, to some place so far from anything. I thought he was trying to hide."

"Was he?"

"Maybe. At least initially." She looked at Mira again. "However, he somehow stopped doing that at some point, and I guess he didn't even realize when he did it."

Mira pondered it. That other Elliot, the one she hadn't known. That version of him living in Boston, unable to feel like he was a person and waiting for something to happen that just wouldn't. The gap between that version of him and the version that came on Saturdays with two coffees and noticed poetry books in the window.

"Can I ask you a question?" Caroline said.

"Yeah?"

"What do you want?" She didn't hedge around it or ask it in a delicate way. "Not from the bookstore. Not from Bellweather. From him. What do you actually want?"

Mira stared at her. It was an honest and pointed question that merited an honest response.

"I don't know yet," Mira said. "I think. I know what I don't want. I don't want to make him less than he is. I don't want to be made to be less than who I am. I don't want something that makes either of us less than we are."

She let silence fill the space for a long time after.

"That is the most honest thing you could say to me," Caroline said finally. "Anyone telling me they had everything figured out exactly what they want from my brother at this point is either lying or not paying attention."

From behind the counter, Ruth let out a noise that wasn’t really a remark, but most certainly was something.

Caroline came to dinner.

Ruth made pasta since soup wouldn’t be enough and pasta was the second language of love for Ruth. The three of them sat at the back table while the rain was doing its heavy Thursday job outside, and the store was dark except for the lamps and a bottle of wine coming from the cabinet that Ruth kept exclusively for people she admired.

The discussion became less stiff during dinner. Caroline talked about a story about an inspection of a bridge that had turned into one very funny thing because of a harness and a pigeon that came unexpectedly. Mira talked about her first attempt to use David's inventory system, which resulted in an order of forty copies of a book that no one from Bellweather ordered and was devoted to Norwegian fishing techniques.

At one point, Caroline's phone buzzed. Caroline glanced down at it.

"Elliot," she said.

Mira glanced up.

Caroline held out her phone. It read simply: Are you in Bellweather?

Not even a question mark. Just like her sister, stating what they already knew.

Caroline responded: maybe.

Three dots followed. Then I am going to drop by the shop.

Caroline glanced at Mira. Mira glanced at Caroline. Some sort of exchange happened there, an understanding of two women who had just spent two hours speaking openly, and who had reached a place that wasn't quite friendship, but was moving in that direction.

"Should I warn him?" asked Caroline.

"About us meeting?"

"No," answered Mira. "About us having spent two hours talking, and that Ruth has brought out the good wine."

She smiled.

First full smile of the evening.

Changed her whole face; everything about her became softer and warmer and just like her brother.

"I think I'm going to like you," Caroline said.

"So do I," Mira answered.

Elliot showed up at half past eight.

He entered the room with his jacket wet and his hair back and stood motionless in the doorway, seeing his sister sitting at the back table drinking wine with Mira sitting opposite her while Ruth behind the counter looked completely unperturbed by it all.

He looked at Caroline.

He looked at Mira.

He looked at the wine bottle.

"How long?" Elliot asked.

"Two hours," Caroline said. "Sit down. Ruth made pasta for us."

He did. And he looked at Mira with that certain look that she had learned to recognize well enough; it meant that Elliot had evaluated the situation as unforeseen but somehow natural.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

Low. Only for her.

“More than okay,” she replied.

His eyes met hers briefly. Something in him shifted into place. Literally. Like a long, deep breath exhaled.

“She didn’t give you a hard time,” he remarked.

“I gave her an appropriate time,” Caroline retorted. “There’s a difference.”

“There really isn’t any.........”

“Elliot,” Ruth placed a bowl of pasta in front of him. “Eat.”

He did.

And the four of them found themselves sitting there in the amber glow of the back room, with rain falling outside the window, with wine being slowly drunk, and conversation proceeding in its natural flow because here were the right people in the right place at the right time, having easy and honest talk without pretending for anyone.

Mira was seated opposite Elliot while Caroline observed both of them with her sharp gray eyes, but did not say anything about what she saw, just stored it away in the careful way that someone knowing load-bearing things would store something similar upon encountering it. Some things carried far more weight than they looked to hold.

And yet held on to it without breaking.