Chapter 6
Story: The Girl at the Flooded Window
They got her out of the house before the water could take it.
The rowboat ride back across the flooded street was slow, Marisol pulling against the current while Dean sat in the bow with Riley in his arms, the girl's face buried in his shoulder, her rabbit pressed between them. She didn't speak. She didn't cry. She just held on, and Marisol saw her fingers gripping the back of Dean's flannel shirt like she was afraid he would turn to water and slip away.
The lights were on in their house when they got back — the generators had come up, the neighbors' houses glowing warm against the grey flooded street. Marisol climbed onto the porch first, then took Riley while Dean tied off the boat. The girl felt impossibly light in her arms, all small bones and damp cotton nightgown.
Inside, Marisol wrapped her in the blanket from the sofa and put a mug of hot chocolate in her hands. Riley sat on the couch, the rabbit tucked under her chin, looking around the room like she'd never seen a house before.
"Everything's okay," Marisol said. "You're safe now."
Riley looked up at her. "Where's Dean?"
"He's talking to the sheriff's deputy down the street. The one who came up by boat to check on the neighborhood."
"The sheriff." Riley's face went very still. "He'll take me away."
"No. He'll help you. There's a lady there, a social worker. She's going to make sure you're taken care of."
Riley was quiet for a long moment. Then, in a small voice: "Do I have to go tonight?"
Marisol looked at Dean, who had come in through the kitchen door, wet and pale. He met her eyes and shook his head.
"They said we can keep her tonight," he said. "The social worker will come tomorrow. They'll need to talk to her about what happened, about her dad. But for tonight, she stays here, with us."
Riley looked from Marisol to Dean. Then she put the rabbit aside and, very carefully, climbed off the couch and walked to Dean. She stopped in front of him and held up her arms.
Dean knelt. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he held her, cradling the small warm weight of the sister he had thought was dead.
"I have something for you," he said. His voice was thick. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, cracked and worn, and from it he unfolded an old photograph — a family on the porch of the very same clapboard house across the street. A woman with one hand on the shoulder of a small girl in a floral nightgown. The girl holding a grey rabbit with a stitched ear. A teenage Dean standing apart at the edge of the frame.
"I kept this," he said. "All those years. I kept it because I couldn't throw it away, because you were in it, because I thought you were gone."
Riley looked at the photograph for a long time. Her small finger traced the shape of the girl in the floral nightgown.
"That's me," she said.
"That's you."
"I remember that day. The day that picture was taken. Mom made us stand still for so long." She looked up at him. "She liked that picture, didn't she?"
"She had it on the shelf in the front room till the day she died."
Riley was quiet. Then she put her hand over his, still holding the photograph, and pressed it gently.
"Dean," she said. "What happened to Mom?"
He took a breath. "She got sick when I was in college. Cancer. She passed when I was twenty-two."
Riley nodded slowly, like she'd already known.
"She used to sing to me," she said. "When I was little, before — before Dad took me. She used to sing to me at night. That's the song I was singing, upstairs. I still remember it."
Dean's face crumpled. He pulled his sister into his arms and held her, and the photograph crinkled against both their chests, and the rain that had stopped came back, soft and steady against the windows.
Marisol stood at the kitchen door, watching them, and felt something loosen in her chest that she hadn't known was tight. The girl was safe. The truth was out. The man she loved had been carrying a weight she couldn't have imagined, and it was finally, finally lifting.
Later that night, after Riley had fallen asleep in the spare room with the rabbit clutched to her chest, Marisol found Dean on the porch, looking across the street at the dark hulk of the Whitaker house.
"Hey," she said, coming to stand beside him.
"Hey."
"You okay?"
He took a long breath. "I don't know. I think I might be, eventually. I've been lying to myself for so long, telling myself it was just a story, that she drowned, that there was nothing I could have done. And now she's here, sleeping in our house, and I have to figure out what happens next."
"What happens next is you help her heal," Marisol said. "You help her get back to the world. And you let me help you."
He looked at her, and his eyes were wet.
"I should have told you," he said. "About her. About all of it. I should have told you the first time we talked about families."
"You should have," she agreed. "But you didn't, and that's part of who you are, and I love who you are. And now I know the rest of it, and I still love who you are. That's what matters."
Dean pulled her into his arms, and they stood together on the porch, the flood water still lapping at the bottom of the steps, the abandoned house across the street dark and empty now, its secret finally told.
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