Someone who didn't know they were loved - No Chance of Rain

In Bellweather, everyone was born with a forecast.

It appeared above your house on the morning of your birth and followed you for the rest of your life. Some people got sunshine. Others got snow, thunderstorms, fog, or the occasional inconvenient tornado.

My forecast was clear.

Not partly cloudy.

Not sunny with a chance of rain.

Clear.

Every day.

Every year.

Clear.

The weather officials called it unusual. My neighbours called it lucky. I called it what it was.

Proof.

Nobody loved me.

I had figured out the rules when I was eight.

Love made rain.

My neighbour's grandmother adored him. His house had drizzled every Tuesday for forty-three years.

My teacher loved her husband. Her forecast was permanently pink with sunsets.

My best friend once received a birthday letter from her older sister and woke up to snow.

I had never received anything.

Not rain.

Not snow.

Not even suspiciously aggressive wind.

Just blue skies.

So I stopped expecting anything.

It wasn't particularly tragic. You get used to things.

Besides, there were advantages.

Laundry dried quickly.

Umbrellas were unnecessary.

And nobody ever asked me to hold their coat because it was "probably going to rain."

I was seventeen when the weather department finally became concerned.

"Your forecast is broken," the inspector told me.

"Join the club."

He frowned.

"Forecasts don't break."

"Then perhaps mine has simply developed a strong personality."

He did not appreciate that.

He installed three instruments on my roof and left.

For six months, they recorded absolutely nothing.

Then, one morning, it rained.

I woke to the sound of water against my window.

I sat upright.

Rain.

Actual rain.

I ran outside in my pyjamas.

The neighbours stared as I stood in the street with my arms raised, laughing while water soaked through my clothes.

For the first time in my life, I had proof.

Someone loved me.

I spent the entire day wondering who.

That evening, the rain stopped.

The next morning, the sky was clear again.

So was the morning after that.

The rain returned exactly one week later.

Then again the week after that.

Always on Tuesday.

Always for exactly seventeen minutes.

I became obsessed.

I checked weather reports. I questioned neighbours. I interrogated the inspector.

Nothing.

Then I noticed something strange.

Every Tuesday morning, before the rain began, there was a small envelope underneath my door.

No name.

No address.

Just a little blue cloud drawn on the front.

Inside was always one sentence.

𝑰 𝒉𝒐𝒑𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖'𝒓𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒅𝒂𝒚.

I didn't understand.

So I started keeping them.

One.

Then two.

Then ten.

By winter, I had forty-three.

I convinced myself they were from someone who pitied me.

That was almost worse than being unloved.

So one Tuesday, when the rain began, I followed the sound of footsteps outside.

Across the street.

Around the corner.

Down the hill.

The trail ended at the old weather station.

The door was unlocked.

Inside, I found hundreds of jars.

Some contained snow.

Some contained tiny clouds.

One held a miniature thunderstorm that grumbled whenever I got too close.

At the centre of the room sat an old woman surrounded by papers.

She looked up.

"Oh," she said.

Then she sighed.

"I was hoping you'd take longer to figure it out."

I stared at her.

"You."

She smiled.

"Me."

"Why?"

She looked toward the window.

"Because when my daughter died, the weather above her house disappeared."

I said nothing.

"She was twenty-seven. Brilliant girl. Terrible cook. Once managed to burn water."

Despite myself, I smiled.

The old woman continued.

"After she died, I learned something strange. Weather doesn't always come from the people who love us."

She pointed toward the jars.

"Sometimes, it comes from the people who refuse to let the world forget us."

I looked at the blue envelopes scattered across her desk.

"You've been sending those?"

"Every Tuesday."

"For how long?"

She hesitated.

"Seventeen years."

I stared at her.

"But you don't know me."

"No."

"Then why?"

She gave me a puzzled look.

"I knew your mother."

My chest tightened.

"She couldn't have loved me."

The old woman became very quiet.

"She did."

I shook my head.

"Then why was my forecast always clear?"

The woman smiled sadly.

"Because she didn't give you the weather."

She walked to the window and looked at the sky.

"She gave you something much harder to measure."

I didn't understand.

Then she handed me a photograph.

It showed a young woman standing beside a newborn baby.

Me.

On the back, my mother had written four words.

𝗟𝗲𝘁 𝗵𝗶𝗺 𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲.

I looked outside.

For once, I wasn't looking for clouds.

The sky was clear.

Beautifully, painfully clear.

The old woman stood beside me.

"Your mother thought love should give you freedom," she said. "Not weather."

I looked down at the photograph.

For seventeen years, I had treated the empty sky above my house as evidence.

I had never considered that maybe...

it wasn't empty at all.

Maybe it had simply been given to me.

That Tuesday, the rain lasted eighteen minutes.

The old woman claimed it was a mistake.

I think she was lying.

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