When Sunshine Meets Silence

Chapter Four: The Emergency Umbrella

October came in on a Tuesday, which felt like it was trying to tell Elena something.

Elena had a relationship with the month of October.

It was the month when the school year really started. Not September with its weeks and getting to know people but October, when the school work got serious and the reading lists were no longer optional and the seminars started expecting things from the students.

Elena found this change of clarifying in a way that other people found really stressful. She liked it when things got more focused. She liked it when socializing was not the thing people did and school work took over because school work was something she could control. School work had rules she understood and results that could be measured.

Elena had also started to understand that something was wrong with Marcus in October of her year. She did not fully understand it then.. She had started to get a feeling that something was not right.

She had gone to a study group for a class they shared a group Marcus was not part of. Had found herself sitting in a common room with five other students laughing at something one of them had said and she had felt. Underneath the laugh underneath the moment of being social. A small thread of anxiety about whether Marcus would ask who had been there and what had been said and whether her story of it would be good enough.

Elena had tried to ignore the anxiety. She had told herself it was nothing.

October was when the thing she had been trying to ignore had started to get bigger.

That was a year ago. That was then. This October was different. Elena was handling it differently. She was. She regularly checked herself to make sure. Actually doing okay.

The seminar with Dr. Anand had gone well. Elena had spoken up twice. Both times the other students had taken her seriously which always mattered to her more than she admitted. Her dissertation research question. The relationship between how children attach to their parents and how vulnerable they're to being controlled by others when they are adults. Had been approved, which felt both validating and a little too close to home which was partly why she had chosen it. Elena had developed a conviction that the closest things were the worth understanding.

The new rhythm of the week had accommodated a variable, which was Liam.

Elena did not think about this variable much. She just noted it. She noted that Tuesdays now included a conversation in the hallway as Liam returned from his afternoon lab because his lab ran late and she happened to collect her mail at the same time and they had now done this enough times that it had become a pattern.

Elena noted that the soup had not been a one-time thing: Liam had knocked on her door more in the first three weeks of October once with extra pasta from a dish he had made and once to ask if she had a screwdriver, which she did and which he had borrowed for four hours and returned with a small chocolate bar on top of it and no explanation.

Elena noted these things.

She kept their importance in a category marked manageable. Did not put them in the other category, which she thought of as the category that requires things from her.

It was the Tuesday in October when Liam came home soaking wet.

Elena had collected her mail. A bank statement, a letter from the university library about a book that was not actually overdue and a handwritten envelope from her mother with her mothers handwriting on it which she picked up and held for a moment and then put at the bottom of the stack. And was standing at the mailboxes when the elevator opened.

Liam came out of it looking like he had been in a storm. His jacket was so wet it had changed color. His hair was flat which made him look different. Without the mess something in his face was different more open. He was holding one hand up empty.

"Its raining " Liam said.

"I can see that " Elena said.

"I had an umbrella this morning." He looked at the hand. "I believed in the umbrella. I trusted the umbrella. The umbrella has let me down."

"Where is it?"

"I think I left it in the lab. I think I left it on the bench when I was looking at the soil samples, which's actually quite funny leaving your umbrella in a room full of dirt but it does not help me now because the lab is locked. I stood outside for six minutes hoping the rain would stop."

"Did it stop?"

Liam looked at her with the expression of a man standing in a puddle of his optimism. "Elena. I am soaked. I think you can tell."

Elena looked at him. She looked at his jacket. She thought about her system, which included no provisions for neighbors and then thought about the emergency umbrella, which she kept in the small basket by the door along with her keys and her extra lip balm and the three-pound coin she kept for emergencies and never used.

Elena thought about why she had an emergency umbrella. She thought about how Marcus had told her that preparing for things that had not happened yet was a form of anxiety and not a good thing. She had believed him at the time. She did not now.

"I have an umbrella " Elena said.

Liam blinked. He dripped slightly. "You have an umbrella."

"I have two. One for use and one for emergencies."

He looked at her with an expression that was both impressed and charmed. "That is really organized."

"Thank you."

"I mean it as a compliment. Not in a -" He paused, seeming to notice something in his words. "Some people say 'organized' in a way that means something. I do not. I mean: you are prepared for things and that is a quality."

Elena looked at him for a moment. "I know you mean it as a compliment " she said. "I could tell."

Liam seemed to receive this. The fact that she had read him correctly and trusted him. As something noting.

Elena went inside. Got the emergency umbrella from the basket by the door. It was navy blue, compact and good quality. She had bought it to be the emergency umbrella, which meant it was reliable.

She brought it back.

Liam took it with both hands, which was. She did not know why. Touching. The formality of it. Taking a borrowed object with two hands.

"I will take good care of this " Liam said.

"I know you will " Elena. Meant it.

Liam looked at her. Something passed across his face that she would think about later. "Thank you " he said. "Really."

"You're welcome " Elena said. "Really."

He went upstairs dripping holding the umbrella with both hands. Elena collected her mail from the floor. Stood in the lobby for a moment looking at the rain through the glass panel of the front door.

The rain was really coming down. It was silver and straight the kind of October rain that meant business.

Elena thought about the envelope from her mother. She had been avoiding it for ten days now. Her mothers handwriting on the front was familiar. The loops, the lean, the way her mother had written her name since she was small.

Elena would open it tonight she told herself. She had been telling herself this for ten days.

Elena went upstairs. She made tea. She did not open the envelope. She put it under her laptop, where she would see it without having to look at it

Elena worked on her literature review until midnight and, outside the rain continued and through the wall she could hear the sound of Liams television and the evening was. She noticed. Not bad all.

Not bad all.