It felt silly to even think such a thing, but it was true, wasn’t it? The skies hadn’t been clear since they had started building that church.
Almost three months ago. When it didn’t rain, the skies hung in sullen grey heaps of cloud like a water-rotted ceiling just waiting to break through. The air stayed damp and chill, which meant everything else did as well; it seemed like forever since she had last used a dry towel, or snuggled into bed without the clammy sensation of her sheets clinging to her.
Everyone commented on the weather, of course, when they left their houses at all. When the rain let them – more and more, they were mournful faces staring through windows, and she was one staring back. But none of them, as far as she knew, had made the connection she was still trying to tell herself meant nothing.
It was just a drab little clapboard building going up down on the corner. A hollow, unpainted shell as yet, and she’d thought more than once that it must be ruined inside, what with how much rain had filled it before they’d gotten the roof in place. The clapboard was already striped and warped with moisture, and the shingles stood up like an owl’s ruffled feathers.
Yet they just kept building it. Smiling men with easy laughter who would wave to anyone watching but wouldn’t answer any questions. They ignored altogether any voice that wasn’t one of their own, though clearly they could hear each other just fine. They climbed out of their motley pickup trucks in the morning, a reassuring little caravan of bumper stickers and rusted fenders, and left the same way at night.
She had never seen a pastor standing in the drizzle, watching his ambitions be built and rotted through at the same time. No one she had spoken to in the neighbourhood knew what denomination the church stood for, or had any plans to attend it.
So who was it for? Why had the rain flooded it that first day, drowning the hole of the foundation in great muddy gulps, and why hadn’t they seen the sun since?
It was silly. Even to think, and she couldn’t possibly ask. The workmen, or her neighbours locked in their houses against another rumbling spit of rain that promised to become thunder and a downpour.
All she could do, in secret, at least, was what she was doing. She’d taken an umbrella, pretending at going on a walk, though she hardly cared anymore if she got wet. The church’s gaping, empty windows already drooled with rain; she could only imagine the stains and pools that would warp the sanctuary floor.
She wouldn’t have to imagine for long. The windows weren’t high above the ground, and the workmen were gone for the day. Grey was already closing down towards dark in the east.
Most likely she would just find a high, moulded room, someone’s dream dead and spoiling before it could even properly be born. But the damp under her collar crawled, and the questions she’d been asking herself at night seemed to trickle, tickling and filling the lowest corners of her mind. She hooked the umbrella’s handle over her shoulder, cast one more wary, wet, blinking glance down the empty street, then set her hands on the slick windowsill and levered herself inside.
