One Hundred Days of Rain Read online

  It comes to her that she is lonely. She rests her arms on the rail, feeling the familiar weight in the middle of her body, the heavy sag of it under her skin. She’ll spring back, won’t she?

  While she is standing there the view of the sea, beyond the big sloping slab of rock descending to the shore, begins to dull and haze over. The blue of the forested slopes down the island lightens to grey. The line between ocean and sea has snapped: in its place, an inexact boundary blurs the division.

  There come to her softly, like the softest little steps of the smallest tiptoeing person, the first tiny sounds of rain. How hesitantly they come across the water, on this quiet shore. Deer grazing on the slopes. Bunnies hopping along the grass. The quiet of rain quietly beginning to fall.

  Acknowledgements

  While this novel takes its inspiration from the lives we all lead day to day and year to year, it is a work of fiction and the characters are in no way meant to represent real people. Real people did, however, have a great deal to do with any art in the narrative that follows. I would like to thank, first and foremost, my writing group for seeing this book before I did: Mindy Abramowitz, Kate Bird, Shannon Underwood, Rhonda Waterfall, and others. Further thanks are due to Archer Pechawis, Peter Nosco, and Carson, for being a ray of light. And finally, my favourite gang of Thugs: Malcolm Sutton, for thoughtful editing and design; Hazel Millar, for publicity; and Jay Millar, for the leap of faith.

  About the Author

  Rhodes Scholar Carellin Brooks is the author of fresh hell: motherhood in pieces (2013), Wreck Beach (2007), and Every Inch a Woman (2005). She edited the anthologies Carnal Nation, with Brett Josef Grubisic, and Bad Jobs. Winner of the Books in Canada Student Writing Award for poetry (1993), the Cassell/Pink Paper Lesbian Writing Award for non-fiction (1994), and the Institute for Contemporary Arts New Blood Award for prose (1995), Brooks lives and works in Vancouver, where she was born.

  Colophon

  Distributed in Canada by the Literary Press Group www.lpg.ca

  Distributed in the United States by Small Press Distribution www.spdbooks.org

  Shop online at www.bookthug.ca

  Edited for the press by Malcolm Sutton

  Copy edited by Ruth Zuchter

  Print edition designed by Malcolm Sutton