In This Rain

Chapter One Sutton Place Ann Montgomery sped up the Thruway thinking about Joe Cole's garden. The old garden, the one at the house that wasn't Joe's anymore: she couldn't keep her mind off it. Its chaos of color and scent, shape and size. Its bright gleams and secret shadows. How amazed she'd been, the first time she'd seen it. Joe had led her through the house, a shipshape sparseness that didn't surprise her, suiting well her new partner, so precise, methodical, soft-spoken, and civil. The wood floors and white walls stood in quiet contrast to the asphalt anarchy outside the front door; but outside the back she found a wild extravagance that stopped her, openmouthed. She'd turned to Joe to find out who the gardener was, himself or the thin-lipped Ellie who'd looked her up and down at the door. But Joe's eyes weren't on her. She followed his gaze to a vine loosed from its stake, a flower head faded but not yet cut, and she didn't have to ask. Intense, powerful, this memory of Joe and his garden: but not enough to distract her from the highway or her location on it. She was coming up on the exit she'd never taken, that led to the college she'd never been near. There, the concert hall, to honor the man whose will endowed it, bore his name, which was the same as hers. Ann added speed, pushing the car through curves. As she'd done for distraction and for buttressing since she was nine, she called Jen. Not that Jen would answer. Sunday morning? Once, they'd been party animals together, dancing wherever the music was, drinking whatever was served, and though Ann these days preferred her own den, Jen was still joyfully on the prowl. "Hey, get up," she said into the air, her cell phone on speaker in its car cradle. "The sun's shining. You remember the sun, I'm sure you've seen it. Guess where I'm going, win a prize. You have an hour till I'm there. Get on it, girl." Brief, that phone message, but it took her past the college exit, this highway's only pitfall. The pounding storm that had started Friday night and hung stubbornly on through yesterday had left shiny roadside puddles and scrubbed the air clean. She loved to drive this road: her joy in it had led to guilt each time she'd taken it to the prison, to see Joe. She'd never told him how she'd looked forward to the wide sky (he could see a slice of sky from his cell), the rolling land (the prison's grounds sloped steeply), and the feel of soaring through it (he could go nowhere in the prison without permission). Odd, she thought, that though now he was out, she was heading up to see him along this same road. It was her father who'd taught her to drive like this, fearlessly and fast, when she was too young to be legally behind any wheel, when, with her father beside her, she feared nothing.Lean into it, Annie, he'd say.Be part of what's coming, not what is. Her mother preferred the back seats of limos and cabs and to this day complained about Ann's driving. "After what happened to your father I'd have thought you'd want to be more careful." "Nothing 'happened' to him. You and that bastard, that's what happened to him," Ann always answered, because it was true and because it made her mother turn away, her lips pressed into a thin hard line. Flying up the left lane, Ann was forced to slow behind a blue SUV cruising at sixty-five. She flashed the Boxster's lights, crept closer. Nothing. She gave the SUV the lights again and hit the horn. He acted as though she weren't there. Veering right, she moved alongside, held a moment, then shot ahead. As she swerved in front of him she slowed to sixty. His shiny bulk loomed in her mirrors. He blared his horn and flashed his lights. She acted as though he weren't there. Another blare, and he gunned the big engine; she hadToscain the CD plaRozan, S. J. is the author of 'In This Rain', published 2006 under ISBN 9780385338042 and ISBN 038533804X.