Becoming Rain: A Novel

“Hey.” A hand softly squeezes mine. I peer up into Rain’s eyes, brimming with tenderness.

Where am I? Still sitting on my couch, with a bowling ball weighing my chest down. Where I’ve been since the police told me that Rust is dead. They wouldn’t give me any details, other than that he had been identified by their forensics team and that the death was under investigation. And then they grilled me for ten minutes, asking me if Rust had enemies, if I was aware of any altercations that Rust had been in lately.

One name came to mind immediately.

But, to name him would mean opening up a giant can that I don’t know how to handle yet.

Rain told them in a polite but firm way that they needed to leave and we’d get back to them soon.

“Is Bridgette okay with watching the dogs?” My next-door neighbor, a thirty-eight-year-old wealthy divorcée with two boys in private school, has always been willing to dog-sit Licks when I’m in a jam.

“Yup. For as long as we need.” Rain holds up her keys. “Let’s go.”

She insisted on running back to her condo to pick up her car keys. I don’t know how long she was gone. I don’t know why she insisted on driving her own car. I don’t know how I’m going to get to the front door.

But I manage, with Rain holding my hand the entire way.

“This one, right?” Rain asks, pulling her car into the driveway of the tidy white bungalow where I grew up. It was my grandparents’ home, and when my grandpa died, Rust not only let my mom have it free and clear, he also sunk money into it, replacing the roof, the furnace, and the flooring, and bringing the ’60s-style kitchen and bathrooms into the twenty-first century.

Rust has always been there to take care of us.

And now he’s dead.

Bile rises up my throat for the hundredth time in the last hour. I’m about to ask Rain to stop the car so I can hop out and puke. Thankfully, the driveway’s short and I’m out of the car within seconds.

“It’s a nice, old neighborhood,” she murmurs, her eyes roaming over the giant oak trees that Ana and I used to climb. Clutching her purse tight to her side, she takes my hand. “Come on, let’s get inside.”

Even in this perpetual state of shock that I’ve fallen into, I can’t help but notice the edge in Rain’s movements. Maybe she’s wondering the same thing I am—does this have anything to do with the angry Russian from last night?

And am I next?

I don’t see any benefit to killing me. But, without Rust, the entire organization falls apart, so killing Rust wouldn’t be smart on Vlad’s end either.

Which leaves me wondering . . . who the hell did it?

She leads me up the front steps to the covered porch that my mom used to sit on, waiting for Ana and me to come home from playing with the neighborhood kids. They don’t creak like they used to, thanks to Rust, who had the entire thing replaced after Ana, at eight years old, fell through a rotten floorboard. I remember that day well. Rust and Deda went head-to-head, my old-school Russian grandpa’s philosophy of hiding imperfections behind a fresh coat of paint every year the cause for Ana’s broken leg.

It was the first time I ever saw my grandpa, a stubborn man by his own admission, relinquish power to Rust.

My mom answers the door in a red robe, the light from the porch highlighting the near black roots of her platinum-blond hair. For a woman who works as a hairstylist, I’d think she would stay on top of that more. I asked her about it once; she said she liked the look.

“Luke, what are you doing here so late?” Her worried eyes dart between me and Rain. “Is something wrong?”

That painful ball forms in my throat again. I don’t know how to tell her. She and Rust have always been close. The only reason she wasn’t listed as next-of-kin instead is because Rust knew how fragile she was. God knows what this will do to her.

Ana appears in the doorway behind her, the same confused look on her pretty face.

Rain gives my hand a squeeze. Somehow it helps. “Yeah.” I clear the rasp out of my throat. “Something’s definitely wrong.”