Free One Hundred Days of Rain by Carellin Brooks

lightly, but she doesn’t feel a thing on her as they pass over the brick streets with their allotment of grey. They end up in a warm cloudy restaurant, full of people whose innocence is not in doubt. Try to eat, he says.
    Back to the judge, who says simply: I don’t know who to believe. She is acquitted on all counts. I frankly do not think this belonged in a courtroom, the judge says.
    I am sure she believes what she says is true, he says of M, kindly.
    M stands up after the verdict, all five foot three of her quivering. The small head lifts in an invisible wind. Bullies always win, she says bitterly.
    Unusually a riposte comes to her at once. Not this time, she replies, before the bailiffs crowd in.

61.
    Saturday again, raining again. Looking out the window at the sliver of air between her and the next building she sees no space into which her body, the size of a human being, might insert itself. The wet presses down so unrelentingly that she turns to her son.
    Let’s just leave.
    And the child, all of six, replies at once: Okay.
    They take the elevated railway to the bus station. The bus for Victoria has gone, another will not come for hours. Outside again, the rain unchanged, they dash for the el station where she has left the transfers for anyone who needs them. Nobody has. They are still there on the floor, only slightly damped.
    They get on a bus in the rain. They get off. They get on another bus in the rain. They get off. They get on another bus in the rain. They get off. They get on the last bus, the one that will take them to the ferry. Movement, she’s decided, is what she needs, that and some distance from the piles of paperwork she should be doing. In her pack are a couple of pieces of paper, a pen, but no matter how long she sits and where she goes she knows she won’t even uncap the lid.
    The next ferry to Victoria won’t leave for an hour and a half. The cashier glares at the man in front of them as they idle in his wake. He is buying a ticket for the boat to Nanaimo. She tells him he has ten minutes.
    You’re lucky you’re getting on, says the cashier sourly. Behind them, outside, the rain is a soft, unrelenting murmur on the concrete apron of the drop-off area. The automatic doors whisk open and shut. Drops linger in their hair and speckle their bags. It’s the last ferry of the night, continues the clerk.
    Two to Nanaimo, she says.
    The cashier tries to glare at them too, but has used most of it up on the man in front. I’m busy, she says instead, when asked about buses into Nanaimo. I don’t have time. But she has time to give them instructions, extremely detailed ones, about how to get to the ferry’s car deck.
    They run through the rain for the open maw of the boat. Her son is game, his superhero knapsack bouncing behind him as he trots with great concentration. The workers await them on the ramp, their pickup truck drawn up with lights flashing. Inside, the echoing hold is stained with the wet tracks of their predecessors. The ferry workers direct them up the stairs with a fine offhand concern, one that feels almost like love. The kind she wants, not the kind she can get.

62.
    In the morning in the unfamiliar room (three beds, no table, no chair) the mist is a low-lying thing on the rooftops. Gathered rain and leaves lie in the hollow of the flat roofs.
    You come to Nanaimo to get away from rain? snorts the woman in the polyester housecoat, the one who lives here for the winter. She has waffles and syrup for breakfast, taking up the last of the sweet with her spoon. Good luck.
    She is a know-it-all, this woman. She is disappointed that they are locals; otherwise she could give them advice.
    There’s a great train trip, she turns to the two girls with accents. You go up to Prince Rupert. Across to Jasper.
    You can’t do everything, one of the girls murmurs, before they shoulder their giant packs. They take everything with them, like extra bodies