Three Cups of Rain

Agnes called just after one.

I stepped into the quiet passage near the staff room, where the fair sounded like a distant household with too many guests.

“Everything safe?” I asked.

“Yes. The wind's turning. The flags have agreed for twenty minutes. We're going to keep watching before deciding.”

“What about the coat?”

“Three cups since the last check.”

I looked through the window at the rain running down the glass.

Our collection cups were marked containers, not tea cups, though imagining the coat patiently filling Agnes's blue mug made the number feel less alarming. Three was more than the previous interval. It did not mean a flood. It meant the holding cycle was taking more moisture from the damp air and passing it through the same unresolved paths.

“Can we wait until tomorrow?”

“We can keep it isolated. But if this airflow holds, we have a better release window this afternoon than the forecast suggests for the next few days. Stan and I would prefer to use it. I want you here for the support order you designed.”

Not because nobody else could fetch towels. Not because I would feel less guilty standing near the problem. Because there was a particular part of the work I knew and had agreed to do.

I looked at the programme pinned to the wall. Mae's main set began at three. The second children's demonstration period was being handled by another local craft group; my contracted session was complete. There was no promise I had to break to leave, only something I had wanted to see.

“I'll come,” I said.

“Eat first. Bring the current diagram, not the earlier one in the green folder. We won't begin until the whole team is here and the flags still agree.”

The call ended.

I stood for a moment with the phone in my hand. The fair continued beyond the door. Someone had won something in the raffle and was reacting with more enthusiasm than the prize appeared to justify. I wanted to stay inside that noise. I also wanted to finish the coat, for reasons that were no longer entirely about earning the right to leave it.

Eli found me by the window.

“Agnes?”

I nodded and explained.

He checked the time.

“I'll tell Stan I'm on my way after I move the last equipment box.”

“You don't have to come because I'm going.”

“I helped build the frame. I'd like to see it work.”

The answer was so straightforward I felt slightly foolish for preparing to argue against a sacrifice he hadn't offered.

Dad drove us to the shed. Before leaving, I told Hazel where we would be and checked that the empty demonstration equipment could stay in its marked storage place. Bex came over while I was packing the diagram.

“The coat?”

“Yes.”

“Are you missing Mae?”

“Probably.”

She winced in sympathy, then squeezed my shoulder.

“I'll save cake. Not the dry one. I have influence.”

“I appreciate your connections.”

We hugged. She didn't tell me it was all worth it before we knew how the afternoon would go. I liked that we had stopped trying to make every choice immediately comfortable for each other.

In the car, Dad asked whether he should stay.

“The clear yard needs only the four of us,” I said. “Agnes and Stan have the work arranged. Could you take the empty transport straps back to the shop afterwards?”

“Yes.”

A specific request. A specific answer. It felt easier than trying to prove I needed nothing from him.

At the shed, the rain had become steadier but less wind-driven. The covered return frame stood open towards the screened yard. Beyond the screens, water fell onto bare gravel and ran into the existing drainage channel. Nothing had been placed there that couldn't get wet. The neighbouring timber store remained shut, its contents clear of the airflow.

Agnes showed us the flags. All four streamed in the same direction now, away from the frame. She showed us the temperature and humidity readings, the limits we'd agreed and the point at which we would pause rather than proceed to the next loop.

Then she held up the three marked cups.

“That,” she said, “is why we measure. It looks dramatic in the tray. It's a manageable amount with an increasingly short interval. We have a problem to end, not a catastrophe to perform.”

I breathed out.

We moved the coat into the supported frame. Its blue shell darkened where a small patch of damp had reached the outside. I recognised every inch of the photographed lining and still felt as though we were meeting it for the first time.

Stan checked the sleeve support. Eli laid out the numbered tails. I placed the current diagram on its dry stand and clipped the earlier versions shut inside the folder.

Outside, the fair's distant music reached us briefly between gusts. Then the rain covered it.

Agnes looked at each of us in turn.

“Ready to begin the first stage?”

We answered separately.

This time, yes meant a thing we had actually checked.