Things to Do When It's Raining

by Marissa Stapley

  So . . . what? Why was everyone so against Gabe all of a sudden? “He’s been my best friend my entire life.”

  “Hey! I thought I was your best friend!”

  Her cheeks felt hot, and there was a sudden warmth in the base of her belly. She took the condom out of the drawer, and Gabe’s eyes widened. “Mae, are you sure?”

  “Positive. Absolutely. I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life.” Not true. She was unsure and terrified, but soon it didn’t matter because they were kissing again and then they were taking off their clothes—there was no way to do this gracefully; Mae was quickly learning that real life was nothing like the sex scenes in movies. She pressed her mouth against his shoulder to keep from crying out: the combination of pleasure and pain was startling and new.

  He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Are you okay? I don’t want to hurt you,” he said in a new voice, a voice of his she had never heard, a voice struggling for control. It made her feel powerful, beautiful, perfect.

  “You’re not. Not hurting me. Please, don’t stop.”

  Then, “Always,” she said to him. “Always, always, always.”

  “Always,” he said back. He pressed his face into her shoulder and she felt his body shake, for just a moment, and she put her arms around him and held him against her. She was sure that they were the only two people in the world who had ever loved like this, that maybe even, in that moment, they were the only two people in the world at all.

  Except they weren’t.

  Mae heard the front door of the inn open and the voices of her grandparents. “I thought you said they weren’t coming home,” Gabe whispered.

  “They weren’t.” They dressed quickly. Just in time. There was a knock on the bedroom door.

  “Mae? Are you in there?”

  “Yes, Grandma. I just need a minute.”

  “Can we speak to you? Both of you? In the kitchen?”

  They came downstairs wordlessly and sat beside each other; she held his hand. George was sitting beside Lilly, staring intently at the surface of the harvest table. Lilly’s face was white with anger. But why?

  “I’d like you to leave,” Lilly said. “I’d like you to leave this house, right now.”

  Mae gasped, turned to her grandfather, but he wouldn’t look up. Gabe was standing and backing from the room. She stood, too, but Lilly said, “Mae! You stay here.”

  She didn’t want to, but she did. She wondered later what would have happened if she’d gone after Gabe.

  Lilly turned to her now, her voice cold and harsh. “Mae, Gabe’s not for you.”

  “What are you talking about? Gabe is a part of our family!”

  “This has gone too far. I should have stopped it earlier.”

  Mae implored her grandfather. “Are you going to just sit there? This is insane.”

  George cleared his throat. He looked up from the table finally. “Your grandmother is doing what she thinks is best,” he said.

  Mae banged both palms against the table. “Did it ever occur to either of you that it wasn’t him, that it was me, that this is what I wanted?” George looked away again. Lilly’s mouth was a hard slit and Mae didn’t recognize her. In the silence that followed, she was almost sure she could hear Gabe’s motorcycle in the distance, getting farther and farther away. She pushed her chair away from the table.

  “I’m going after him,” she said. “I’m going into town.”

  “You will do no such thing,” Lilly said. “You will stay in this house if you still want to live in it.”

  Mae’s mouth dropped open. Gabe was all she had, but so were her grandparents. She turned and went to the stairs, climbed them slowly, felt the tears begin to slide down her cheeks. Once she was in her room, she made a plan in her head. She would call Gabe in a few minutes, whisper into the phone, arrange to meet him the next day, tell him everything was going to be fine. She’d let Lilly cool down. In the morning, everything would be different. Lilly would apologize. Gabe would come over. Life would go on. Normal.

  When she called, he didn’t answer the phone.

  She was right, though, but only about one thing: in the morning, everything was different.

  Lilly was waiting for her in the kitchen. Her grandfather was standing by the window, staring out at the boathouse.

  “Gabe stole from us,” Lilly announced when Mae walked in, bleary eyed and heartsore from the night before, from hearing his phone ring and ring, from wondering why Gabe wouldn’t talk to her.

  “What are you talking about?”

  George turned from the window, his voice sad, empty—the voice of a man who was losing someone, someone he had considered a son. “The boathouse safe was open, empty, when I went down this morning,” he said.

  Mae felt her knees weaken. She gripped the table to keep herself standing.

  Lilly spoke. “I don’t know if he did it while he was here, or if he came back last night.”

  “Why are you assuming it was him? It could have been anyone!”

  “No, Mae,” George said.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because,” Lilly said. “I went into town to talk to him, and he was gone. Garry said he’d taken off on his bike and wasn’t coming back. Gave him the rent for next month in cash, and rode away with a hockey bag on his back.”

  Mae sank to the floor. “No. I don’t believe it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lilly said, and it sounded like she was apologizing for something.

  Eventually, Mae got up off the floor. She went upstairs. She waited for a call from Gabe, for some kind of explanation. But he didn’t call. She went into town later to see for herself that he was gone. He was. She went back to the inn and she waited. Days, weeks.

  She didn’t get the note until a month later. George was taking the trampoline down for the winter. It was something Gabe would normally have done. George knocked on her bedroom door.

  “Come in.”

  “I found it rolled up in a spring. I think it was meant for you.” He handed her the note. He patted her arm and looked at her for a long moment. It hurt him, too, what Gabe had done. She unrolled the paper and read two lines: I will always love you. And I’m sorry. Gabe.

  She walked down to the river and threw the note in the water.

  Her eyes have become unfocused from staring so long at the river, at the footprints. That note, long ago swallowed by the river, might still be out there in some form, under the ice. And Gabe, he might be out there, too, in his father’s cabin.

  She slides down the snow- and ice-covered riverbank until she’s standing on the river before the path of footprints.

  Go on an island cruise in the rain. There are way more than 1,000 islands. I think that’s just where they lost count.

  Gabe sits at the kitchen table. He sits on the couch. He paces the hall. Finally, he stops and places his hand on the door of the room he’s been avoiding. He holds his hand there, as if trying to feel what’s inside. Then he opens the door.

  Nothing has changed. The Dukes of Hazzard poster on the wall, now so sun bleached the images have turned to blue-green shadows; the army-issue sleeping bag on the cot; the Star Wars pillowcase Mae gave him for Christmas one year.

  He walks over to the dresser: there’s a pile of change on top, a Hardy Boys book, a blank tape that says MIX on it in Mae’s handwriting. And nothing is dusty. This gives him pause. His father was dusting, in here? It seems impossible, but— He picks up the Hardy Boys book and sits down on the bed with it. His father is in the hospital, dying in a hospital bed. He should be there, shouldn’t he? It’s his duty, isn’t it? But that man . . . The words on the page blur. He feels small, like a boy. An eight-year-old boy.

  * * *

  “You little shit, this is all your fault!” Gabe’s nose was bleeding. He covered his head, tried to shield his face, as his father started hitting him again.

  “I told you, I told you exactly what you needed to do! I even wrote it down for you. You had
one goddamn job to do before we sold that hovercraft to Virginia—and you didn’t do it, did you? Did you?”

  Gabe remembers. All he had wanted to do was get across the river to play with Mae. So he’d ignored his father’s instructions, but later, had told him the job was done. “No. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

  “It’s not me you should be saying sorry to. It’s your little friend Mae. You killed her parents. You realize that, don’t you? Because of you, her parents are dead.” Every slow word burned into Gabe’s brain.

  He killed them. He killed her parents. “Please . . . I didn’t mean to!”

  “You’re lucky I don’t go to the police.”

  Could he go to jail for this? Could kids be sent to prison? There would be so many bad people there. And he wouldn’t see Mae ever again. He started to rock. No, no, no.

  “You’re lucky I don’t kill you,” Jonah said.

  “Go ahead, just do it!” Gabe shouted before he could stop himself. Then he put his hands over the wet spot on his pants. Blood dripped from his nose onto his sleeping bag.

  Jonah backed out of the room.

  Gabe heard the boat start. He stayed on his bed. Maybe he slept. Later, when he heard the front door open again, he thought his father was back to kill him.

  “Gabe?”

  Not his father. George.

  Gabe pushed himself to a seated position. His pants were still wet and his legs itched and he knew he smelled bad.

  “Gabe?”

  Gabe was shocked by what happened next: George, a grown man, began to weep. “We’re going to get you out of here for good. I’m so sorry, we should have done this before.”

  Before he killed Virginia and Chase.

  Gabe got off his bed and crossed the room to stand in front of George. He wasn’t sure what to do with this crying man, so he offered his hand. George reached out and took it, shook it gently, as if they were meeting for the first time. “You’re a very good boy, Gabe. You’re a good, good boy.”

  Not true. He was bad. He was so, so bad.

  “Let’s go. Pack what you need and come with me. You’re okay now. You’re going to come live with us, son.”

  Son.

  That was the moment he should have told George, should have said he was the killer of Mae’s parents. He should have said that he was the worst boy ever and volunteered to go to jail because he was so bad.

  But Gabe said nothing.

  George waited while Gabe packed a bag. He took his hand and led him from the cabin. Gabe got in George’s boat. And he went to the inn, and he let these people take care of him when they knew nothing about his horrible secret.

  Gabe collapses on the cot and closes his eyes. Oblivion comes quickly. He thinks he hears a banging at the door, but who would be out here?

  When he hears her voice he’s sure he must be dreaming.

  Do something, anything, you’ve never done before.

  Mae steps into the first icy footprint. Bud bounds toward her. He has a small branch in his mouth, which he presents to her. She throws it and he chases it, brings it back. She throws it farther and off he goes.

  To further calm herself, she tries to pretend she’s walking on a road, but it’s impossible to convince herself that the river is not the river, so she thinks, I’m walking on several feet of ice, and the ice is not going to break and I’m not going to die out here and I have to see if Gabe is out there because if it’s him, I need to ask him why. She takes another step. Another. Soon she’s made it, up the bank and over. The river hasn’t claimed her. She’s safe.

  She approaches the shack and knocks. Silence. She tries the knob. It’s not locked. She pushes the door open. “Hello?”

  Mae has never been inside this cabin; she wanted to, begged Gabe to take her there on his boat every spring and summer, whenever Jonah wasn’t home, but he would never do it. “Think of the worst place you can imagine, and multiply it by ten,” he said to her once. She had imagined someplace exactly like this, with its particleboard walls, cracked linoleum on the kitchen floor, dusty surfaces, grimy windows, some of them broken and boarded over, and the smell: dank, neglected, rotten. She trails snow behind her as she passes through the small rooms.

  Down the narrow hall, she can hear snoring.

  She finds him on a cot, curled up, his head on a stained pillow. Gabe’s hair is darker than it used to be and past his collar, thick. His face is covered in stubble. He’s older now, his face more defined and set, but he’s who he always was, who he was going to be when she knew him, at least as far as looks go.

  She steps closer. He’s wearing a soft-looking navy hoodie and salt-stained Blundstones, and there’s a Hardy Boys book beside him, broken spined and splayed. She turns a slow circle. This was his room when he was a kid. And there’s something strange about it. Unlike the rest of the cabin, it’s clean in here. No dust. You can see out the window.

  She leans in and it hits her: the smell of alcohol on his breath and skin. Her stomach twists upon itself and she’s out the door of the bedroom before she fully comprehends what she’s doing. She searches for kindling, relights the dying embers in the woodstove, heads to the kitchen to pour water into a chipped mug. It’s only when she’s standing at the threshold of his room again that she sees what she’s done, feels the muscle memory in her actions. She took care of her father, too, when he smelled that way. She could never stop herself. She’s about to turn back, to dump the water on the fire and put the mug back, but her footfall causes the wood beneath the linoleum to squeak. Gabe opens his eyes.

  “What the . . . ?” he says. He squints. “Mae?”

  “Hi.” Her voice is curt. Her heart bangs against her rib cage.

  “What are you doing here? How are you here?”

  “I walked. Here, take this.” She steps forward, but he doesn’t take the mug. He chuckles, and it’s that dry, familiar chuckle and it hits her directly in her racing heart, like he’s lobbed something at her and she’s caught it with her chest.

  “But you would never walk across the frozen river. I’m dreaming, right?”

  “Not a dream.” She shoves the mug into his hands. “Just drink it. Please.”

  “Thanks.” While he drinks, she stands over him, motherly, then backs away. A safer distance.

  He moves to the edge of the bed and stands. He’s taller now. There are faint lines around his eyes and the silhouette of a beard on his cheeks. He’s staring right into her, the way he always could. Her heart has recovered from the earlier blow and it rushes toward him as if no time has passed. She pulls back on it, hard. No.

  “I saw you,” she says. “I thought it was your dad, but then Lilly told me he’s sick, and I realized it might be you and I came out here. It was stupid. I shouldn’t have.”

  “Why was it stupid?”

  When she doesn’t answer, he continues to stare at her as if still trying to determine whether she’s real.

  “Are you drunk?” she asks.

  He runs a hand back and forth over his stubble and looks up at the ceiling. “Not really. I saw Lilly at the hospital. She said I should come to the inn for dinner. Instead, I went to a bar.”

  She feels it now: a flash fire as the shock wears off. Anger, first in her fingertips, then up her arms. “You . . . seriously? You saw her, got drunk, and now you want to come for dinner like nothing ever happened?”

  He’s looking at a salt stain on one of his boots. “I don’t want to come to dinner. That’s why I left.”

  “You stole from us. Then you disappeared. And you don’t want to come for dinner?” Her laugh is bitter. “This is ridiculous.”

  “Stole,” he repeats, and his eyes are back on her. There’s anguish there now. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I took so much from you—”

  “I don’t want an apology! I don’t care if you’re sorry! That’s not why I’m here. I want you to explain. Why would you steal money and leave, why would you do that to me, to us? After everything we did for you. After ever
ything we—” She presses her palms against her cheeks and her fingers over her eyes to stop the tears. When she’s sure she’s okay again, she takes her hands away. “They would have given you the money, I’m sure, if you’d just asked. You were like family. And that’s why I can’t understand why you—”

  “I didn’t steal any money.”

  “Don’t lie. You never used to lie.”

  “Lilly gave me money and told me to go. I didn’t steal anything.”

  She narrows her eyes and looks into his. Incomprehension is all she sees. It scares her. “Stop this. The night you left, you went to the boathouse and you stole all the money from the safe. And then you took off.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Mae—”

  “You used me. You used my family. For years. You pretended you were someone you weren’t, my best friend, my everything—”

  He’s touching her now, his hands are on her arms and she rears back, but the room is too small for her to get far enough away from him.

  “Who told you this?” he asks her.

  “My grandmother.”

  The confusion on his face is replaced by slow realization. And hurt. “I see,” he says.

  “She wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “Right.”

  “This is who you’ve become? You’re accusing my grandmother of lying?”

  “All I said was ‘right.’ ”

  “I know that sarcastic tone of yours. I know you.” As she says this, she realizes it isn’t true. She doesn’t know this person standing before her, lying. She never did. “Do you know something? I hate you. You disgust me.”

  He flinches, but says nothing. She squeezes past him, tries not to touch him but doesn’t succeed, their arms brush. Gabe, Gabe, Gabe, and then she’s in the hall again, thank God. She hasn’t taken off her coat or boots so there’s nothing for her to do but head through the kitchen and out.