It’s raining. The woman and her sister are walking the High Line anyway. To their left, the black Hudson River. Beyond the dim lights of New Jersey, a sailboat light’s flicker. Fog, drizzle, the city’s hum.
The woman has given her umbrella to her sister. Tonight, she doesn’t care if she gets wet. She lifts her head to the rain and opens her mouth, then wipes the water from her cheeks. Her sister huddles under the umbrella. She holds her hand under the drops and yanks it back. “That’s freezing.”
“It’s soothing.”
“It’s flu season.”
They keep walking. Far off, a car alarm wails. Her sister says, “Dad’s watch doesn’t keep great time.”
“You have to shake it a lot,” the woman says. She fingers her father’s wedding ring in her pocket. The only piece of his things she took.
The woman says, “It’s so strange he’s finally gone.”
“I know.”
In the rain, her wool jacket grows sodden. Heavy.
The woman kneads her tight shoulders. They flew out and back together in two days. She’s talked out. Beginning to think that this walk was a mistake. She can’t tell her sister this. She’s not like her. Doesn’t understand the strange comfort of quiet at night in the rain, with the city’s lonely sounds and the somber glow of hazy lights.
They went through this, she and her. She can’t just leave. They were even together when the minister spoke about his saintliness. His devotion to the church. The prayer books with their father’s name in each he gave to both. Another fool he duped.
“I didn’t think this walk would take so long.”
“Me neither.”
Her sister checks her phone. “Just ten more blocks until the exit.”
“That was pretty funny, us both ditching the prayerbooks in the airport garbage,” says the woman.
“I should have done it sooner.”
They keep walking. More drizzle, fog. Below, a bus lumbers past, resolute, steady. The woman says, “I’ve always dreaded this day. I knew it would be bad but not like this.”
“How could it be otherwise?”
The woman holds her face up to the rain again. It was her idea to walk the High Line, something new they’d never done together. A couple passed earlier when she was twirling in the rain. She wonders what they made of her, spinning there, a middle-aged woman, no umbrella. Probably thought she was drunk celebrating an engagement. A public celebration anyone can understand. She can’t show this one, this relief. She didn’t understand before that a giant chunk of her would be gone, too. How will she unlearn a lifetime of ducking for cover? Then there’s all the children out there who are suffering the same way at the hands of another. How would anyone suspect? She and her sister never told a soul. Remembering, she stiffens.
Her hair is completely soaked now. Her sister holds the umbrella over the woman’s head.
The woman says, “It’s okay, I like the rain.” She doesn’t say, “I need to be alone.” But it’s this too.
The woman spins. The rain hits her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth. As she turns faster, the streetlights, red Don’t Walk signs, and headlights bleed together. After she stops, everything keeps spinning, until the image slows and the outlines of her sister and the walkway return. A few more steps and they’re at the exit.
Back on the street, her sister hails a cab. The car pulls up. “Do you want this one?”
“No, you take it.”
“You sure?”
“I’ll be fine.”
The sister hands her the umbrella, enters the cab, closes the door and speeds away.
By herself on the empty sidewalk the woman watches the traffic stop and start. The rain drizzles. The woman holds her umbrella but doesn’t open it. Another bus lumbers by belching thick exhaust. She notices the rain rushing down a gutter. Then she reaches into her pocket and drops the ring into one of the holes. She watches the eddying water until she’s sure it’s gone.
