Eave

The rain came in the night, and by morning it hung in a row of slow beads along the eave of the garden shed. Nyra stood beneath it with the girl beside her and watched the water decide, one bead at a time, whether to fall. There was no hurry in it. Each drop gathered what weight it needed and then, in its own hour, went.

The ledger inside named the rain. It had a column for the day the rain came and a column for how much it gave, measured by the mark the barrel kept against its staves. But the ledger had no column for the eave, for the long pause the water took there before it let go of the wood. That pause belonged to the morning, not to the page.

Nyra had built the eave herself, some years back, a short reach of boards past the wall so the rain would fall clear of the sill. It was a small mercy made of timber. The book could hold that the shed stayed dry. It could not hold the sound the water made on the far side of the dry, the patient count of drops that fell for no one who was writing them down.

The girl reached up and took a bead early onto her finger and laughed, and Nyra let her have it. A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there. The eave kept the having-sheltered. The page would keep only the staying dry, which is a true thing, and a smaller one.

When the last bead fell, the eave was only a board again, plain and gray and done with its work until the next rain. Nyra took the girl inside and opened the ledger and wrote the one number the day had earned. The rest she left along the wood, where it would wait, as it always waited, for whoever came out to stand beneath it and look up.