Cloudburst (Storms 2)

“It’s not that we’re not looking after her future,” he said.

Another one of his excuses was the emotional and psychological impact it would have on Kiera.

“Let’s wait until she is more settled, more adult. Even though she is doing well—better, in fact, than I ever expected—she is still quite fragile, Jordan. You know what her therapist, Dr. Ralston, told us about sibling rivalry and how that diminished her self-esteem. Go slowly, or you’ll destroy all the progress she has made,” he warned, and my foster mother stepped back again and again.

It would be a little longer before I would understand the real reasons he was hesitant. Some of them did have to do with what he was saying, but the biggest reason lay in wait, as patient as a confident tiger who knew his prey was coming closer. He would pounce when the time was right.

And the poor lamb, innocent and trusting—I, Sasha Porter—could fall victim.

My mother’s words never were forgotten. They lingered now in the shadows of this exquisite mansion. Often, even on one of my happier days here, I would hear them as if her ghost dressed in shadows stood in some corner waiting for me to walk by.

It’s only good self-defense to be distrusting.

Remember the safety valve.

Always be skeptical.

I heard her, but would I listen?

And even if I did, could I stop any of it from happening?

My mother came to believe everything was decided for us even before we were born. It was futile to fight destiny. Why try? Why bother? She had been that discouraged and defeated.

I couldn’t blame her for feeling that way. I hoped she was wrong.

But deep in my heart, I was afraid she was right.

I was afraid that someday, I would be as stunned and lost as she was the day she died.

And that there would be a new silence.

1

Rise and Shine

What are you doing still in bed?” Mrs. Duval cried in that sharp but overly dramatic attempt at anger, with her hands on her waist and her shoulders stiffly back in the posture of a drill sergeant. She always kept her dark brown hair in a tight bun, with what Mrs. Caro said was “nary a strand free to wander on its own.” Both of them were live-in servants. Mrs. Duval and her husband, Alberto, lived in a four-room apartment over the garage that housed six cars, one of them being mine now. Mrs. Caro had a bedroom at the rear of the mansion. Other part-time maids came and went, mostly because they didn’t live up to Mrs. Duval’s standards.

She pressed the button that drew apart the curtains on my windows, and a tide of bright Southern California morning sun rushed in and over the room. When I was four, my mother told me the sun was made of rich, luscious butter. I used to dream of capturing a ray and smearing it over a slice of toast.

When I told my mother the dream, she laughed and said, “If anyone could do that, Sasha, you can, but you’ll burn your tongue on it.”

All of those sweeter moments, delicious and bright, hung like stars in the dark sky of my past life. I could pluck them as someone would pluck fruit and savor the wonderful memory. My greatest fear was that with time, they would fade and eventually disappear, leaving me in total darkness.

“Well? Why are you still sleeping, Sasha?” Mrs. Duval asked with as much of a scowl as she could muster. “Did you stay up too late again talking on that phone?”

My foster parents’ head housekeeper long ago had dropped what little formality had existed between us since the day I came to live with the Marches. I doubted she had expected I would last so long in this home, but as the years went by and the reality of it settled in, she softened and became more like one of the grandmothers I had never known.

I had suspected she liked me from the start, anyway. She knew what had brought me here. From time to time, she risked asking me about my mother in little ways but never ventured so far as to ask me about the night of the horrible accident. Like everyone else—except Kiera, who caused it, of course—it was something unspoken but something that never seemed to go away. It loomed like a stubborn, bruised cloud in the sky, no matter how bright the day. The three years that had passed hadn’t diminished it. They had hardened it, had made it muscular and angry, until it resembled a tightly closed fist, always ready to come crashing down on any moment of happiness I dared enjoy.

“I didn’t stay up that late, but I forgot to set my alarm,” I said, still clutching the soft, lavender-scented comforter about me. Only my face was uncovered.

“I thought so,” she said. “Mrs. Caro looked at the eggs she was about to break, looked at me and then up at the ceiling, and said, ‘That girl hasn’t stirred. You better go see why, Mrs. Duval.’ How she can see through walls and ceilings never ceases to amaze me.”

It amused me how the two of them always addressed each other as Mrs. Duval and Mrs. Caro. I wondered if they were that formal when they were alone. I suspected they were.

I didn’t move when she told me what Mrs. Caro had said, but I nodded in agreement. Without hearing a weather report, Mrs. Caro could predict when it would rain even days before it started. I thought she had senses not yet discovered.

“I swear, Sasha, one of these nights, you’re going to smother, wrapping yourself so tightly in that comforter,” Mrs. Duval continued as she came in to scoop up my socks and the jeans I had left over the side chair. I wasn’t sloppy, but she was always picking up after someone in this house, especially Kiera, who dropped her things disdainfully everywhere.