Page 19 of In Sheets of Rain

I widened my eyes purposefully at Dad.

He said nothing.

“Has he proposed yet?” my mother asked all of a sudden.

“What?” I said, laughing nervously. “Who? Sean?”

“Unless you’ve moved onto another man,” my mother said.

Cold water slid down my spine and I straightened.

“We’ve only been dating a short time, Mum,” I said.

“You’re not getting any younger, Kylee,” my mother declared. “You’ll miss your chance if you don’t marry this one. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that.”

My brow furrowed and I looked at my Dad. He just shrugged his big shoulders.

“Everyone keeps asking me when you’re going to settle down,” my mother went on relentlessly. “I tell them, it’s different in a big city. But you know how they are, they insist their child is doing better than mine. Everyone I know has more grandchildren than me. Sharon can’t be the only one to give us grandkids, you know.”

“I’m not ready for kids, Mum.”

“Don’t be silly. You’re nearing thirty. I’d had both of you girls well before then. Sharon had her two before then, as well. You’re letting life pass you by. You can’t be a paramedic forever, Kylee. What will the parish say?”

“I don’t think the parish really cares,” I muttered.

“Nonsense,” my mother said, rubbing her hands together as if to clean them of something distasteful. “Let the parish be your conscience, Kylee. Then you can’t put a foot wrong.”

“Whatever you say, Mum,” I said, backing away toward my car.

“Bring him home for Christmas,” she shouted.

“I’ll ask,” I said, opening my car door.

“I’ll cook a ham,” my mother said, probably thinking about going out and buying one right then if the way she jumped from foot to foot was anything to go by.

I waved goodbye.

Dad wrapped an arm around Mum’s shoulders and waved with her.

Mum never once looked at my car as it backed down the driveway.

* * *

Sean proposed the next week.

I wasn’t certain and I didn’t ask, but I thought he’d been talking to my mother without me.

The proposal was unexpected but he’d put thought into it—champagne and chocolate dipped strawberries, someone filming my reaction but unseen—so I decided to believe this was his idea and not my mother’s.

I said yes, because it seemed like the right thing to say and people were watching and cheering as they ate their picnic lunch on Mission Bay beach.

I didn’t know it was coming. I didn’t know about Weet-Bix boxes and choirs full of angels singing heartbreakingly. I was living the dream. Working out of the busiest ambulance station in all of New Zealand. Loved by a man who could do anything. Making my sick mother proud of me.

I had two families who understood me.

Or so it seemed.

Reality, though, is not always as comforting as the fantasy we create. And I’d started to create a wonderful fantasy.

I kept telling myself, I was living the dream.

But the dream was slowly morphing into a nightmare full of blood.

And it was coming down in sheets of rain all around me.