The flash white lighted The Cabin. The c***k came in an instant. The boom so close The Cabin shuddered with the force of it. There was to be no break in this weather, Adam was certain of it. The storm had settled into the valley as though it had signed a lease and taken possession of the key.
Cynthia seized the moment to recount to him in hurried sentences the other times storms had lodged in the valley. Each time, Burton had been flooded, she said. The great flood, the devastating flood, the killer flood, there seemed no end to it, and she leaned in closer towards him, breathing her halitosis-laced recollections, imprisoning him in a ghastly intimacy.
Of the time Alf’s house was flooded to its ceiling. The time a weatherboard house nearby had been lifted clean off its stumps, the floodw
