What the Storm Took

Elena's father had died with his hat on—a felt Stetson he'd worn since his thirties. Now it sat on her kitchen table, surrounded by untouched sympathy casseroles and the suffocating silence of a house that suddenly felt too large.

Outside, lightning splintered the sky, rain hammering against windows that had always reminded him of swimming pools, he'd said. Looking into them made him want to dive deep and stay under.

"You're bear-ing up well," her coworker Marcus had said that morning, his attempt at kindness landing with a thud. Marcus, who'd sent her eighteen emails since the funeral. Who lingered at her desk. Who somehow always found reasons to walk past when she worked late.

The cat—Barnaby, her father's constant companion—jumped onto the table and nudged the hat with his nose. The animal had been sleeping twenty hours a day since the funeral. Elena envied him.

She shouldn't have gone back to work so soon. Everyone meant well, but their concern felt like someone holding your head underwater, calling it swimming.

Another flash of lightning illuminated the yard where her father had taught her to dance in the rain when she was six, spinning her until she was dizzy and he was breathless, both of them laughing like the world wasn't already taking things away.

Marcus texted: *Saw you left early. Everything okay?*

Elena picked up the hat. It still smelled of him—tobacco and peppermint and whatever cologne he'd worn since before her mother died. She wasn't ready for this to be all that remained.

The cat meowed, insistent.

"I know," she said.

She put the hat on. It was too big, sliding down over her eyes, but for the first time in days, she didn't feel like she was swimming alone in the deep end. She could almost hear him: *The lightning doesn't last, little bear. The storm always passes.*

Elena texted Marcus back: *Not okay. But I will be.*

Then she went outside into the rain and danced.