“Are you going back?” he asked.
I heard how quickly the answer came. “No.”
He nodded once. “Good.”
It rained three nights later.
Not a summer shower. A full midnight downpour with sustained wind, the kind that finds every imperfect seam in a roof installation and applies pressure until the seam gives.
My phone began buzzing at 12:17 a.m.
My sister first. Then my mother. Then my father. Then my sister again. I let all of them ring to voicemail and listened to the messages in sequence while sitting up in bed with the dark and rain pressed against the windows.
My sister was shrieking. “The ceiling came in. Audrey, what the hell did you do?”
My mother’s voice was colder, which landed harder. “You need to fix this immediately.”
My father’s message began with several seconds of breathing, then one sentence: “You’d better pray the damage is limited.”
