THAT MORNING THERE had been a storm setting up to the south, and the smell of rain had roused her. Not rain falling, but rain coming. The air was fuzzy with that particular smell. Lucille had lain still in bed for a few minutes upon waking, breathing it in and listening for thunder, but all she heard was the sound of the birds, who seemed so blithely unconcerned by any change in the weather that it made her wonder whether she was wrong. Maybe there was no gathering storm. Maybe she only wanted there to be. She was not the only one who would have welcomed rain. The drought had been going on for
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