Rain, Rain Go Away

It was still raining when Rosie pulled out of McNulty’s parking lot and headed towards Jackson Street. Her thoughts were teetering between rationality and fear. There was a chance that note meant nothing, there was no threat and there was no danger. But Rosie had learned not to throw caution to the wind.

Though she was only a few minutes behind Carter, Rosie still hadn’t seen any sign of his blue pick-up truck. The rain was coming down harder and the headlights of passing cars were blurry through the windshield of Rosie’s black sedan.

Maybe he went a different way home, she thought. Surely there had to be a faster route, she hit every red light she came to. She seemed to be the only car headed out of town, except for a sole pair of glowing white orbs in her rearview mirror.

“145 Shooks Pond Lane,” Rosie said to herself. The silence of her panicking thoughts was broken.

She was almost there, but still no sign of Carter’s pick-up.

POP!

Rosie suddenly felt her driving become more uneven; there was now a flapping sound coming from the backseat.

This is great, she thought. There was no shoulder on the back country road she was climbing and the rain was now making it impossible to see further than a few feet in front of her. She needed to make sure Carter was okay and if that meant her rim would have to be replaced, then so be it.

She rounded the final bend that would take her to Shooks Pond Lane, where she hoped to find some kind of answer to the note left in Carter’s tip.

Carter lived on a hill with a handful of neighbors. His mailbox stood as a marker for visitors and an invitation to travel down a gravel driveway to Carter’s humble abode. Rosie parker her car next to the mailbox and climbed out to make the rest of the way on foot.

She checked her tires and her right rear tire was blown. As soon as she figured out Carter’s fate, she’d call a tow truck.

Halfway down the driveway, Rosie could see there were no lights on in the house. It was a small, gray two-story with a porch, a carport at the end of the gravel and a shed around back. As she got closer, she realized there were children’s toys scattered in the yard.

But Carter never mentioned having children. And the way he hung around Brewery Boulevard certainly didn’t help his case for ‘World’s Best Dad,’ Rosie thought.

“Hello?” she yelled at the front door. “Carter! Is anyone home?” Her voice didn’t echo in the stillness, the damp trees surrounding Carter’s house muffled the sound.

She walked around the house, peering in windows and banging on doors, hoping to arouse some kind of life from the house. After twenty minutes, she gave up and headed back up the driveway.

I’ll ask the neighbors if anyone has seen Carter’s truck come home tonight, Rosie thought. Though the other homes seemed to be tucked away from the road, perhaps someone had seen his headlights in the rain.

There was light at the end of the driveway, she noticed through the trees. The driveway wasn’t a straight shot to the house, it turned twice, but Rosie could just see the outline of another vehicle parked behind her.

Relief swept over her. Carter was in the pick-up truck and he was waiting for her to get back to her car to help her with the flat tire.

“Carter!” she cried, running the rest of the way up the hill. “Carter, it’s—“

But she knew then that it wasn’t Carter.

Two men stepped around the back of the truck, which Rosie now recognized was a police car. Rosie wasn’t running anymore. She stopped in her tracks. Police cars didn’t go over well with her.

“Do you know where Carter is?” asked the shorter of the two officers. “We’re looking for him.”

“No. I don’t,” Rosie replied. “Why are you looking for him?”

“We found his pick-up truck abandoned on the other side of the hill. The driver side door was open. We ran his tags and found out whose it was. Thought he might have gotten a ride.”

“The lights aren’t on in that house,” said Rosie. “No one’s home.”

“You’re right. The house was foreclosed on last week,” said the taller officer. “Carter doesn’t live in that house. No one does.”

Brewery Boulevard

It was raining outside as Carter walked into the bar. His coat dripped a steady stream of water as he made is way to his usual seat. The stool rocked while Carter sat down forcing him to grip the bar for balance.

“I’ll have a glass of—,” he said before he was interrupted.

“Water,” Rosie, the bartender, finished.

“That’s not what I had in mind,” objected Carter, shaking his head vigorously.

“No, but that’s what you need right now,” said Rosie, placing the tall glass in front, but just out of reach, of Carter. She watched him attempt to move the glass closer, but he misjudged the distance, knocked the glass, and sent water sloshing over the rim.

“I’m fine,” insisted Carter. But he didn’t look at Rosie. He starred down at the glass, shaking his head.

“Where have you been already tonight, Carter?” she asked carefully. “I know this isn’t your first stop.”

Carter seemed to be contemplating his answer, but remained silent. He was one of Rosie’s regulars, but he also frequented the other bars that lined the street, often on the same night.

“Can I have a straw?” he asked.

“I could call every bar from here to Jackson Street, but I’m not going to waste my time, Carter. I’m not serving you alcohol. You can thank me in the morning when you’re not hung over,” said Rosie. She handed him a straw and walked to help another customer.

Despite his wanderings up and down Brewery Boulevard, Carter’s favorite place was McNulty’s, Rosie knew that. He always came in at the same time every night she worked, regardless of where he had been drinking right before. Sometimes he stumbled in, having already drank somewhere else. Sometimes he walked in, and stayed all night. But she always poured him a glass of water when he sat down and he knew better than to ask for alcohol until she offered.

Carter was a relatively infamous topic of conversation for the bartenders of the boulevard. He wasn’t old enough to be drinking away the days until he died, like most of the bar-hopping locals. But he wasn’t so young that he drank for the sheer reason of becoming intoxicated. Carter had to be in his late twenties, the bartenders assumed because no one had ever checked his driver’s license.

He drank alone at the bars, never speaking to fellow patrons or bartenders.He did talk to Rosie, but never about anything personal, regardless of how many drinks he’d put down.

“I think I’ve had enough water for tonight,” said Carter.

Rosie had been refilling his glass like a Chinese restaurant waiter, never letting the glass get half empty, for over an hour.

“Do you need me to call you a cab?” offered Rosie.

“It’s been raining on my liver for the last hour. I’ll drive myself. There’s no sense in making someone else drive out in this rain to pick up a perfectly able man.”

Rosie knew Carter lived on the outside edges of town since she had called a cab for him many times before and though she had never been to his house, she knew the address by heart.

Though he didn’t drink anything worth paying for, Carter left money on the bar and collected his mostly-dry jacket. As he made his way to the door, he waved a good night to Rosie and disappeared out the door, the bell clanging his official departure.

As Rosie collected the tip Carter had left behind and smiled to herself, knowing he’d be back in two days when she worked again.

But there was something tucked into the folded twenty dollar bill when she picked it up.

Don’t go home tonight, the note said. It was written on a torn napkin.

Rosie wasn’t sure who the message was intended to reach, but she felt a strange prickle of fear trace down her spine. Looking around the bar, Rosie smiled at the last couple left for the night. She was alone and her thoughts started spinning.

If it was meant for Carter, she thought, he probably already saw it. But wasn’t he driving himself home? So perhaps he wasn’t actually going home, which meant he was safe. But what if he had intended the note to be for her and disguised it so the hand off of the message would be discrete?

Her mind couldn’t focus.

Carter had just left. She could still catch up with him to make sure he wasn’t on his way to his house. But what if she wasn’t supposed to go home? Well, she wouldn’t be going home if she was following Carter, so that would temporarily fix that issue, she figured.

Rosie scrambled around the bar looking for her car keys, decided she’d come back in the morning to clean before her boss arrived, turned off the lights and locked the doors behind her.