Page 89 of The Rebound
“No.” I stab a potato, testing its firmness. “Did you ever want to leave Clonard?”
“I did leave.”
“For college. That doesn’t count.”
“Then no.”
“Not even to Poland? I bet Tomasz must miss home.”
“He does. But he hasn’t lived there in years. He says this is home now.”
“Right.”
“Starting to get homesick?” she asks casually.
“Not for here if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just… I used to think you were mad at me for leaving.”
She snorts. “I wasmadthat you went to work for MacFarlane, not that you left. How could I be mad at you for that?”
She turns to me when I don’t answer, something in her expression softening slightly. “Abby, you were eighteen. And you ran off into the world with your arms wide open. You didn’t look back because you didn’t need to. But not everyone is like that. For me…” She sighs. “I know Clonard isn’t perfect. I know it’s small and shabby but I can’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s home. I’ve never needed more and I’ve never been mad that you did. Turn the temperature down.”
“What? Oh.” I lunge for the stove as the water starts to spill over, hissing down the side of the pot.
“Great job.”
“Shut up,” I mutter, and she smiles as Tomasz lets out another wail in the next room.
It was the nicest evening we had in a while though Louise is right. I can’t cook. But she lets me stir the gravy. Afterward, I go to bed early, scrolling through Stewarts’ website before I awake a few hours later to an earth-shaking, heart bursting boom of thunder. It’s like nothing I’ve heard before and for a few moments, I simply lie there, staring at the ceiling where the twisted shadows of the trees outside don’t so much dance as they do contort above me.
When it sounds again, I reach blindly to flick on the light, but nothing happens. One look at my alarm clock confirms it. The electricity is gone.
I fling off the covers and go to the window to see the rain coming down in sheets, almost sideways with the force of the wind.
A noise from the hallway draws me outside and I peek my head out to see Tomasz standing by his bedroom, dressed in old flannel pajamas.
“I have to be up at five,” he says when he sees me.
“I have to be up at seven.”
“So I win.”
I grab a cardigan from the end of my bed as I step out. “The electricity is gone.”
“I’ll check the fuse box. Do you want coffee? I don’t think we’re going to get any sleep tonight.”
“Can you make coffee with no power?”
He pauses, face falling. “No.”
I give him a sympathetic smile and head into their bedroom to see Louise in a mirror image of the position I was in, her hands on the windowsill as she stares out at the storm.
“What time is it?” she asks when I join her.
“No clue. Either very late or very early.”
We both gasp as the room lights up as bright as a camera flash and we count in unison, waiting for the thunder.
“It’s right above us,” Louise murmurs when it sounds.
