That’s the one trouble with this country: everything, weather, all, hangs on too long. Like our rivers, our land: opaque, slow, violent; shaping and creating the life of man in its implacable and brooding image.

• WILLIAM FAULKNER, As I Lay Dying

The rain came late into March, first turning the frozen sidewalks and stones into skating rinks, and then, through sheer relentlessness, obliterating the snow and ice on the lower ground in an endless gray sheet. There was limited pleasure to be found in the slight lifting of temperatures, the prospect of warmer days ahead. Because it didn’t stop. After five days the rain had turned the unfinished roads to mud or, in some places, washed away the top layers completely, revealing sharp boulders and holes on the surface that would catch the unwary. Waiting horses stood tethered outside, their heads low and resigned, their tails clamped to their hindquarters, and cars bucked and growled along the slippery mountain roads. Farmers muttered in the feed store, while the shopkeepers observed that the Lord only knew why that much water was still hanging up there in the heavens.

Margery arrived back from her 5 a.m. round soaked to her socks, to find the librarians sitting with steepled fingers and fidgeting feet with Fred.

“Last time it rained like this, the Ohio burst its banks,” said Beth, peering out of the open door, from where you could hear the gurgle of surface water as it made its way down the road. She took a last drag of her cigarette and ground it under the heel of her boot.

“Too wet to ride, that’s for sure,” said Margery. “I’m not taking Charley out again.”

Fred had looked out first thing and warned Alice it was a bad idea, and though there was little that would normally stop her, she took him seriously. He had moved his own horses up onto high land, where they could just be seen in a slick, wet huddle.

“I’d put them in the barn,” he had told her, as she helped him walk the last two up, “but they’re safer up there.” His father had once lost an entire locked barn of mares and foals when Fred was a boy: the river had flooded while the family was sleeping and by the time they woke only the hayloft was still above water. His father had wept in telling him, the only time Fred had ever seen that happen.

He told Alice of the great flood the previous year, how water had flipped whole houses and sent them downriver, of how many people died, and how they had found a cow wedged twenty-five feet up in a tree when the waters receded and had to shoot it to put it out of its misery—nobody could work out how to get it down.

The four of them sat in the library for an hour, nobody keen to leave, yet with nothing to be there for. They talked of misdeeds they’d performed as children, of the best bargains to be had in animal feed, of a man three of them knew who could whistle tunes through a missing tooth and add his voice to become a one-man orchestra. They talked about how if Izzy were here she would have sung them a song or two. But the rain grew heavier, and slowly the conversation ebbed away, and they were all left glancing at the door with a creeping sense of foreboding.

“What do you think, Fred?” Margery broke the silence.

“I don’t like it.”

“Me neither.”

At that moment they heard the sound of horses’ hoofs. Fred strode to the door, perhaps concerned it might be an escapee. But it was the mailman, water sluicing from the brim of his hat.

“The river’s rising, and fast. We need to warn people on the creek beds but there’s no one at the sheriff’s office.”

Margery turned to Beth and Alice.

“I’ll get the bridles,” said Beth.

* * *

• • •

Izzy was so deep in thought that she didn’t notice when her mother took the embroidery off her lap and tutted loudly. “Oh, Izzy. I’m going to have to unpick all those stitches. That’s nothing like the pattern whatsoever. What have you been doing?”

Mrs. Brady dragged a copy of Woman’s Home Companion to her lap and flicked through until she found the pattern she was looking for. “Absolutely nothing like it. Why, you’ve done running stitch where it should be a chain stitch.”

Izzy dragged her attention to the sampler. “I hate sewing.”

“You never used to mind it. I don’t know what’s got into you lately.” Izzy didn’t rise to it, which made Mrs. Brady tut more loudly. “I’ve never met a girl more out of sorts.”

“You know very well what’s got into me. I’m bored and I’m stuck here, and I can’t bear that you and Daddy have been swayed by an idiot like Geoffrey Van Cleve.”

“That’s no way to talk. Why don’t you do some quilting? You used to enjoy it. I have some lovely old fabrics in my chest upstairs and—”

“I miss my horse.”

“He was not your horse.” Mrs. Brady closed her mouth and took a diplomatic moment before she opened it again. “But I was thinking we could perhaps buy you one if you think horseback riding is something you’d like to pursue.”

“For what? To go around and around in circles? To make it look pretty, like a stupid doll? I miss my job, Mother, and I miss my friends. I had real friends for the first time in my life. I was happy at the library. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Well, now you’re just being dramatic.” Mrs. Brady sighed, and sat down on the settle beside her daughter. “Look, dear, I know how you love singing. Why don’t I talk to your father about some proper lessons? We could perhaps find out if there’s anybody in Lexington who might help you work on your voice. Perhaps when Daddy hears how good you are he’ll change his mind. Oh, Lord, though, we’ll have to wait until this rain eases. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

Izzy didn’t answer. She sat by the parlor window, gazing out at the blurred view.

“You know, I think I’m going to telephone your father. I’m anxious the river will flood. I lost good friends in the Louisville floods and I haven’t felt the same about the river since. Why don’t you unpick that last bit of stitching and we’ll go back over it together?”

Mrs. Brady disappeared into the hallway and Izzy could hear her dialing her father’s office, the low murmur of her voice. Izzy stared out of the window at the gray skies, her finger tracing the rivulets that zigzagged down the pane, squinting at a horizon that was no longer visible.

* * *

• • •

Well, your father thinks we should stay put. He says we might call Carrie Anderson in Old Louisville and see if she and her family want to rest here a day or two just in case. Lord knows what we’ll do with all those little dogs of hers, though. I don’t think we could cope with the—Izzy? . . . Izzy?” Mrs. Brady spun around in the empty parlor. “Izzy? Are you upstairs?”