The rain stopped. The storm passed. But Olivia couldn’t stop thinking about it. She and the other teachers had finished out the day’s classes as best they could after such an all-consuming disruption to the day derailed their lessons, then piled into the car and drove aimlessly around the town, searching for evidence and answers. Everywhere they went, red-tinged puddles shimmered in the late-afternoon sun drying up almost as quickly as they’d accumulated. Women pulled splattered and streaked laundry from clotheslines. And everywhere people marveled at the sudden storm burst that gave every appearance of drenching them all in blood.
How far did it reach? Did their little town alone experience this bizarre event? With no radio or television available to them, and dial-up internet slow and spotty at best, they had no option but to wait for the morning papers and glean what they could from the articles in those. Presuming the event had been large enough to attract the attention of the media.
While they were out and in town, Chris let her run into the bookstore to check on her order. To her delight, not only had her requested books arrived, but also the shopkeeper pointed out the next three books in the series on the shelves. He smiled so proudly, she was sure he’d ordered them with her in mind. She took a copy of each, not only because she enjoyed the first and wanted to see what happened next, but because if Aditi had already finished the first, she needed something more to keep her challenged. But Olivia would read the second book prior to passing it along. Best to preview it before handing over to a student.
She climbed back into the front seat of the car. Chris turned into traffic.
Aubra pressed her face against the window. “That’s her! Look! She doesn’t look pregnant. But she’s still here.”
The others twisted in their seats and craned necks.
“Who is it?” Olivia asked.
“The teacher you replaced,” Melanie said.
Olivia spun in her seat but caught only a glimpse of the young woman as she walked down the street, eyes down, no apparent interest in anything. Olivia recognized that look.
As Chris parked the car and they all headed inside for dinner, she gave thanks for so many witnesses to the bizarre storm. Otherwise she might start doubting her sanity, questioning what she’d really seen. Then again, one glance at the stains on her top, darkening deep crimson as they dried, offered all the proof she needed. Would they wash out?
The deep crimson breathed new life into moments she’d tried to bury, memories she’d held down, strangled the life out of, knowing they would suffocate her if she didn’t smother them first. Her brain closet creaked open, puking out blurred and hazy recollections to torment her with—a lifeless body, gray-blue skin, no blood circulating to pink the tiny cheeks, followed by six weeks of postpartum bleeding she’d agonized through, wondering if it would never end.
That teacher’s face, the mourning and misery she wore like a shroud as she walked down the street. Olivia knew it well—the look of someone crushed under the weight of enormous loss, no direction, no knowledge how to even begin to recover. One foot in front of the other would keep you plodding forward, but it didn’t help you move on.
Chris nudged her, offering her a platter of biriyani. Lost in thought, she didn’t remember walking from the car to the dining table.
One foot in front of the other.
She scooped food onto her plate and passed it on.
Tisha accepted the platter, asking, “What’s up? You okay?”
She tried to shake off the stupor. “Yeah. Today was weird.”
The other women chimed in agreement.
“The rain looked like blood. It was—”
“I know!”
“The real red tide, right?”
They all laughed. So she wasn’t the only one thinking that.
She glanced at Chris. “Not going to suggest we change the subject?”
“Chris is totally metro,” Tisha said. “He is not the least bit perturbed by periods or discussions revolving around them.”
She nearly dropped her spoon in her dal. “Seriously?” Scott couldn’t tolerate the “p” word or the sight of feminine hygiene products. She’d half expected him to pass out in the delivery room. As it was, he stayed by her head the entire time, refused to look below her chin, and looked peaked the entire time.
“He’s so enlightened,” Aubra said, and though she tried to sound nonchalant, Olivia saw the longing in her eyes. “A true renaissance man.”
Chris shrugged. “It’s natural. Biology. What’s to be bothered by?”
She met his eyes. “My turn to be impressed.”
“Part of life. Like sweating and farting.”
“And there it is!” Delilah said. “Table manners, please!”
A lull fell over the table, all of them eating quietly. Olivia could not stop thinking about the young former teacher, and how she had looked so morose, and wondered if anyone offered her understanding and support. She remembered how listless she’d been for months, inconsolable, despite her mother’s attempts to rouse her from the intense depression she fell into. Scott made it worse. He wandered around the house like a specter, sleeping with his back to her, scrunched as close to the edge of the bed as possible without tumbling over the side. When he looked at her, she saw crests of accusation buoyed atop waves of hostility and frustration. Her mother kept insisting they needed to lean on each other, hold each other up, be each other’s strength. But when she reached for him, he pulled away, no strength to offer her, leaving her to wither in her grief, while he drowned himself in a bottle.
“What’s her name?” Her voice startled her.
“Who?” Melanie asked.
“The teacher. The one who got pregnant and left.”
“Oh, Meena.”
“Do you know where she lives?”
They all shook their heads. “No. Frankly I was shocked to see her today.”
She nodded and dropped the subject, focusing on finishing her food.
The lights went out, plunging them in complete darkness, pitch black. Groans filled the dining room.
Tisha sighed beside her. “Honestly, meals are the worst for power outages.”
“Nah. Sitting on the toilet at night is the worst.”
“Chris!”
“Hey, if we can discuss periods over dinner, I think bowel movements are also on the table. Pun intended.”
The ridiculousness of the situation, Meena’s haunting face, and the ease of delightful company after a strange day all combined to trigger a laugh—a deep, uncontrollable laugh that percolated from a place within her that had been abandoned and gone fallow. Once she started, she couldn’t stop. The others joined her, setting off another round of unfettered hilarity until tears leaked from her eyes.
Olivia took deep breaths and composed herself. “Goodness, I haven’t laughed that hard since—” She stopped short of completing the thought and ruining their evening. The moment got away from her.
“Since?” Tisha asked.
“Nothing. But seriously, now what? It’s gotten dark outside. What do we do?”
The kitchen door swung open, and Ms. Vanya shuffled into the dining room, carrying a candle in one hand, shielding the flame with the other.
“When we lose electricity,” Tisha said, “we switch to candles. Ms. Vanya keeps them on hand and lights the candles in our rooms.”
“I don’t have any candles,” Olivia said.
“We forgot to tell you to get candles!” Tisha said. “How could we forget that?”
“Oh, no! We did forget. I’ll grab an extra from my room,” Chris said.
“Meanwhile,” Aubra said, “the night is young, and I have a new shipment of chocolates from my parents that just arrived yesterday.”
They clustered around the candle, moving slowly, taking cautious steps. The darkness outside was unlike anything she’d ever experienced—no streetlights, no soft glow from windows, no ambient city lights. She held her hand directly in front of her face and saw absolutely nothing. Complete, utter pitch blackness.
Chris’s voice in the darkness said, “Here you go!”
She couldn’t see his face, had no idea who he spoke to or what he meant.
He moved into the anemic glow of the single candle and checked each face until his gaze landed on hers. Before she knew what was happening, he’d grabbed her hand.
She jerked away from him. “Hey!”
His features morphed from delight to horror. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you. I should’ve thought. Here, this is for you.” He lifted a candle in front of Ms. Vanya, into the feeble light. “For your room. You can borrow the holder too, until we get one for you.”
Of course. He was being thoughtful and generous. He’d never been anything but, and yet she continued to make assumptions and hold tight to suspicions. She’d learned the hard way to suspect ulterior motives from men. But not from him, and he didn’t deserve it. “Thank you, Chris. I—”
He didn’t let her apologize. “I’ll take you to the market after classes tomorrow, okay?”
She nodded and he disappeared from sight, swallowed up in the darkness, back into the desolate building before she realized he couldn’t see her reaction.
Ms. Vanya lit candles in each girls’ bedroom before bidding them all goodnight.
Olivia watched for Chris to reappear, to join them for chocolates, before remembering boys weren’t allowed in their building. She thought about him alone in the dark in the other building, no other guys to interact and chat with, for the first time considering how isolated he must feel. No wonder he always eagerly jumped at the opportunity to accompany them out into town.
Aubra welcomed them all into her room, where they sat on the floor, clustered near her nightstand with the candle casting a warm glow over them.
“I always love an impromptu girls’ night,” Melanie said.
Aubra passed around boxes of assorted Cadbury’s chocolates. The other Americans insisted she notice the royal seal: By appointment to her majesty the queen . . .
“That makes it sound so serious and official,” she said. “Cadbury makes me think of Easter commercials and nose-twitching rabbits laying eggs.”
“Yes!” Melanie laughed.
“Good lord. What?” Aubra asked, and Olivia wasn’t sure which she enjoyed more, Aubra’s horrified face, all traces of British decorum gone, or falling onto Tisha’s shoulder again in another fit of helpless, teary laughter.
She wiped her eyes. “I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard. I feel like a kid again.” Except she couldn’t remember ever laughing so hard as a child, and she’d definitely never had a group of friends or a sleepover. So really it was all new.
Tisha’s fingers dug into an open box of chocolates, the packaging crinkling at the intrusion. “Why so serious normally?”
Olivia glanced over, lured in by a sense of false security the soothing darkness blanketed them with, and met Tisha’s probing gaze. She glanced away quickly, shoulders rising and falling in a helpless shrug.
“Don’t psychoanalyze her, Tisha,” Delilah teased.
“I’m a counselor, not a psychiatrist,” Tisha said.
She’d never asked the others about their lives before teaching in India. She didn’t want to think about hers. Didn’t want to open herself to return questioning.
She shook her head. “Several reasons, I suppose.”
“Do you have a guy back home?”
She squirmed and shook her head again.
“What do you think of Chris?” Melanie asked.
She swore she felt Aubra’s gaze bore into her. She shrugged. “He’s young. Like all of you.”
Tisha cackled. “Girl, I bet I’m older than you.”
“No way. Nope.”
“Thirty-two.”
“Get out. You do not look thirty-two. I thought all of you were just out of college.”
“No,” Delilah said. “Not any of us. Tisha is hiding.” Her southern drawl rolled over the words, as if relishing a decadent dessert instead of airing someone’s dirty laundry.
“I . . .” She truly didn’t know what to say.
Tisha shook her head. “It’s okay. We’ve all confided in each other. I’m here to get away from an abusive boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. How’s that for irony? I work for DHS as a counselor, specializing in domestic abuse cases, and hid what was happening in my own home. Or didn’t want to see it. Anyway, I’m trained to recognize the signs of battered women. We’re here for you. That’s all. And we all have demons we’re wrestling.”
Battered. The word sent a sharp jab into her sternum as though she’d been poked. Her father used to do that—poke a finger into her breastbone until she cried, then grab her arm and shake her, admonishing her to stop fussing, his voice growing louder and louder. She remembered her head lolling, teeth rattling, as he shook her, yelling, “Shut up!” When Mom appeared and yelled at him to stop, he turned on her. Always. She’d been the bait to lure her mother into a fight, a screaming match that escalated to justify his angry slaps, punctuated by his insistence that she deserved it, that she’d made him angry. Olivia had always stood there watching, frozen, tears streaming down her face.
She dropped her head, hid her face in her hands, tried to deny the tears leaking from her eyes.
Tisha pulled her into a hug, holding her fiercely, rocking her gently. Delilah, Melanie, and Aubra scooted close and draped themselves around her.
“It’s okay,” Tisha crooned. “It’s okay to hurt. We’re here. We know.”