Driving Rain

A Little Brighter?

"Janet, goddamnit you're just hungover." I kept muttering this as I was trying to find something to clean up. But there was nothing. For some inexplicable reason the house was spotless. This was odd for the pure reason that the house was never clean. Ever. Unless Nathan was home. And he couldn't be home. The news had said that because of the "storm that sprung up out of nowhere" (for me this was hard to believe because how could it just pop out of the ground?) has stalled travel for at least as long as the duration of the storm, if not longer for places in which flooding had occured. He must've been a little more than an hour and a half away in the first place. Our cozy little home in Cloquet was nothing compared to the grandeur of his parents massive expanse of a cabing-turned-permanent residence in Silver bay.

Even though he loved his home, every time he came back it was always, "Janet, I wouldn't trade here for anything in the world." And every time without fail I believed him. I had no reason to not to. He was my everything, and he was my world. And no matter what, Nathan was always working on making the house better, more homey. "Some place we could raise a baby," he always liked to say.

To be completely honest there was nothing more in the world I wanted than to raise Nathan's babies. But he wasn't home. And he always no matter what came home. I knew in my gut there was a reason pushing me to stay home this time. In the past I had always loved visiting Nina and Jim, they were like my own parents, but this time. There was just something different.

I had just decided to take a shower when I heard the front door solidly slam against the frame.  I hadn't stepped into the steamy abyss quite yet, in so I quietly put on my plush purple robe with Janet embroidered on the right breast pocket (cheesy I know) and padded as quietly as possible out through my room, down the hallway to sneak into the kitchen.

Standing there was a very tall, very muscular man. He was wrinkled and aged, but I'd know him anywhere. "Jim, what are you doing here? I thought Nathan was visiting you and Nina."

           He turned around and saw that I was in my robe, "Oh! Janet! Don't let me interrupt. You go take your shower and I'll be here when you get out."

"Jim, if something happened to Nathan I need to hear it. I need to know what's going on." My heartbeat had picked up a few paces and my palms were getting sweaty.

"Go on, I'll still be here when you get out." He sat his solid frame down onto a stool and turned around, ignoring me. Sighing, I went back into the bathroom in my bedroom and took the quickest shower of my life. I was clean, dressed and back in the kitchen in what seemed like a few minutes. Hearing me come down the hallway, Jim got up and poured each of us a cup of coffee. He paused to add some milk and sugar to his, and handed me mine black. "Now Janet, this is going to be hard to hear, but I felt like I had to tell you this." Jim nervously sipped on his coffee and I did the same.

"Jim, just tell me what's going on. You're like my own father for christ's sake." I tried to sit up a little straighter to feign confidence, but I knew he could tell I was bluffing.

"Janet, Nathan's gone. He took a plane from Cloquet down to the cities and left. We didn't know any of this until he called us from Oklahoma." Jim Driver never looked so sad in all of his life until that very moment, "I'm sorry you had to hear it like this. To be honest, I'm sorry he left at all."

"Jim.. I.. I don't know what to say.. He's.. He's gone?" I was getting choked up inbetween trying to find some sort of words in my brain. Everything was muddled. I knew. I knew that there was a reason that he didn't come home last night, it was because he was over 950 miles away in another state. "Well, did he tell you why? Did he give you any goddamn reason?"

"Yea, Janet. He did. And I'm sure you're not going to like it anymore than Nina or I did."