The Probable Future

“Everybody’s troubled,” Stella informed her mother. “Including you.”

Here was the argument, about to fall harder than the stone rain outside, about to hurt just as much, maybe more, causing wounds that might or might not be permanent. But just as their argument was about to become a full-fledged fight, the strangest thing happened, and as it did, their disagreement fell away as though it were a shadow. For there on the highboy, beside the sugar bowls, one of the lit candles flickered high into the dark air. There seemed to be a bit of silver, a radiant light. Outside, the stone rain fell harder, but here there was a brilliant spark. The pin Stella had stuck in the wax.

“Where’d you get the candles?” Stella had a panicky feeling, as though she worked a charm all wrong.

“In a drawer behind the napkins. It was so dark when I first got in. There’ll be a dozen turtles in the driveway today when I get home.”

Jenny had stopped wiping down the counter. She had noticed the spark as well. The rain fell like a river of rocks, a thousand hard drops that were as clear as the first ice that covered Hourglass Lake in winter. Stella was holding on to her backpack and her umbrella and a yellow rain slicker Liza had lent her. The rain hit against the screen door and splashed drops at her, cool and sweet and unforgiving.

When the light touches the pin, your beloved will walk in. Close the door, you need not see more.

“That’s how you’ll know it’s true love,” Juliet Aronson had told her. “You’ll know for sure.”

The fire had reached the pin, but nothing had happened. So far no one had appeared, and maybe that was just as well. Stella couldn’t control who would walk through the door any more than she could choose whom she would fall in love with. At least she could now tell Juliet she had tried the silly game.

“I’d better go,” Stella said.

“I could drive you.” Jenny wrote out Eli Hathaway’s bill. She’d been right; he hadn’t complained about the strudel.

“No. You’re working. Don’t worry. I can take care of myself. I won’t drown.”

Still, it was dark as night, the parking lot illuminated only by the headlights on a truck pulling in. Matt Avery ran through the rain, in his old duck-weather jacket and his leaky work boots. That oak had another reprieve, it seemed. This was no day to cut down a tree. Matt let the door slam behind him, and he stood in the threshold, wiping the rain from his face.

“Hey, there,” he said when he almost bumped into his niece. She was standing right there, mouth open like a fish’s. The flame was burning the pin and she saw the way Matt turned to look at her mother.

“See you.” Stella was actually embarrassed; she could use a dose of the cold, windy weather. She opened the screen and let the rain splatter into the tea room.

“Do you need a ride to school?” Matt said.

“You’ve got more important things to do,” Stella told her uncle.

He laughed. “Such as?”

“Whatever. But good luck. You’ll need it.”

“Teenagers,” Matt said when he took a seat at the counter.

“They’re crazy,” Jenny agreed. She poured Matt a cup of coffee, but she didn’t meet his eyes. She felt quite crazy herself, in the dim tea room light with Matt staring at her and Eli Hathaway clinking his spoon against his water glass as a way of calling for another slice of raspberry strudel.

“Come on, girl,” Eli called. “I’m starving to death. I’ll have another jelly doughnut.”

Girl, Jenny thought. She laughed at the notion. “I thought you had diabetes,” she called back to Eli. Eventually, she’d have to look at Matt, so she did so now. Outside, a chorus of frogs called from the puddle beside the steps. The only other sound was of the rain falling, the sort of rain that occurs in dreams, endless, invisible, the pulse of the universe.

“How’s your brother?” Jenny said as she cut a last piece of strudel for Eli and handed Matt a menu.

“Ah, Will.” Matt added cream to his coffee. “Always Will. We can never seem to get away from him, can we?”

They both thought this over as Jenny delivered Eli Hathaway’s order. Will, it turned out, had moved in with his brother. He and Henry Elliot had gone to the judge and explained the theft of the little house. Will had cooperated, of course, and had described the individual who had claimed to be a reporter and might easily be a murderer, so that an artist could draw a likeness. Now, Matt informed Jenny that the judge had decided to allow Will to live in Unity while the case was pending, in his brother’s custody.