Saving Rain

by Kelsey Kingsley

I walked the short ten minutes it took to get from The Fisch Market to my run-down trailer, where I made a can of soup I’d bought at the store and went to sleep on the air mattress Harry was letting me borrow until I got my hands on a bed. And that was more or less how things went the first week or so with only work on my little house to break up the monotony. One day, I came home and went to town, scrubbing the bathroom until it was suitable to shower in. Another day, I came home and pulled up the matted, stained carpets in the living room and bedrooms. Little by little, it was looking cleaner, at the very least, and I was starting to see the potential underneath the grime. But the whispers hadn’t stopped. It was the start of my second week when I walked into McKenna’s Delicatessen to grab some lunch. The only cop I ever saw wandering around town watched me with a blend of curiosity and suspicion as I walked up to the counter and asked the woman at the register—the same woman who’d shielded her kids from me that first day—for a chicken salad sandwich. “Of course,” she replied and set to work, risking a cautious glance in my direction. “So, um … you work at The Fisch Market, don’t you?” She knew I did. She’d seen me there several times, just as I’d seen her. But she was making friendly small talk, or so it seemed, while that cop observed the exchange from the row of refrigerators behind me. “Yeah,” I replied, nodding. “I just started last week.” “How are you liking it so f...