WHERE THE RAIN FORGETS OUR NAMES

Sarah’s fingers trembled as she set the newborn in an old wicker basket lined with fresh, dry towels. She found dry clothes for the girl—an oversized flannel shirt that once belonged to Sarah’s younger sister—and watched as the child changed mechanically, staring blankly at the dancing shadows cast by the stove fire. The girl’s name was Ruth. She would say nothing more about where she had been living, or whose house had sheltered her before the storm broke.

"Eat this," Sarah urged, placing a bowl of warm broth and a piece of crusty bread into Ruth’s lap. The child swallowed the soup ravenously, her small fingers tearing at the bread as though she had not seen food in days. Every few seconds, Ruth’s eyes darted back toward the baby resting near the stove, tracking his chest rising and falling beneath the blanket.

Outside, the wind dropped suddenly, leaving behind the heavy, hollow sound of rain dripping from the porch eaves. The silence between gusts was suffocating. Sarah stood by the front window, peering out into the darkness that enveloped the long dirt lane. The kitchen telephone hung on the wall, its receiver cold and dormant. When she lifted it to her ear, there was no dial tone, only a flat, dead static that suggested the storm had brought down the lines across the ridge.

She turned off the porch lantern to conserve the generator, but as the yellow light died, a faint beam sliced through the trees at the far side of the orchard. It was not the wide sweep of truck headlights. It was a single, bouncing torchlight, cutting through the wet apple trees, moving deliberately toward the back porch.