It was Ander. She didn’t understand how she could see him clearly when the world around her had become Niagara Falls. Then she noticed something strange:
Ander wasn’t wet. Rain cascaded around him, pummeling the mud at his feet. But his hair, his clothes, his hands, his face were as dry as they had been when he stood on the dirt road and reached out to catch her tear.
6
SHELTER
By the time Cat dropped Eureka at home, the rain had dwindled from deluge to downpour. Truck tires on the main road behind their neighborhood hissed against wet pavement. The begonias in Dad’s flower bed were trampled. The air was dank and briny from the salt plug south of Lafayette where the Tabasco plant got its seasoning.
From her doorstep, Eureka waved to Cat, who responded with two toots on the horn. Dad’s old Lincoln Continental was sitting in the driveway. Rhoda’s cherry-red Mazda, mercifully, was not.
Eureka turned her key in the bronze lock and shoved the door, which always stuck when it stormed. It was easier to open from the inside, where you could rattle the handle a certain way. From the outside you had to push like a linebacker.
As soon as she was inside, she kicked off her soggy running shoes and socks, noticing that the rest of her family had had the same idea. Her half brother’s and half sister’s matching Velcro sneakers had been flung to all corners of the foyer. Their tiny socks were balled up like stamped-on roses. The untied laces of her dad’s heavy black work boots had left short snakes of mud across the marble tile, slithering toward where he’d tossed them at the entrance to the den. Raincoats dripped from their wooden pegs along the wall. William’s navy-blue one had a reversible camouflage lining; Claire’s was pale violet with white appliqué flowers on the hood. Dad’s draping black hand-me-down slicker came from his own dad’s days in the Marines. Eureka added her heather-gray raincoat to the last peg in the row, dropped her track bag on Rhoda’s antique entry bench. She sensed the glow of the TV in the den, its volume low.
The house smelled like popcorn—the twins’ favorite after-school snack. But Eureka’s chef dad didn’t prepare anything plainly. His popcorn exploded with truffle oil and shaved Parmesan, or chopped pretzels and chewy flecks of caramel. Today’s batch smelled like curry and toasted almonds. Dad communicated through food better than through words. Creating something majestic in the kitchen was his way of showing love.
She found him and the twins nestled in their usual spots on the enormous suede couch. Dad, stripped to dry clothes—gray boxers and white T-shirt—was asleep on the long end of the L-shaped couch. His hands were clasped over his chest and his bare feet were turned out, pointed up like shovels. A soft buzz purred from his nose.
The lights were off, and the storm outside made everything darker than usual, but a fading, crackling fire kept the room warm. An old Price Is Right played on the Game Show Network—certainly not one of the three half-hour programs endorsed by the parenting magazines Rhoda subscribed to—but none of them would tell.