Sun Inside Rain

Sun Inside Rain

A novel of hope, challenge, and inspiration
M. Bassara

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Sun Inside Rain

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Book Excerpt from Sun Inside Rain

Sun Inside Rain
A novel of hope, challenge, and inspiration
M. Bassara

Fire and Water

The call came one day, just as she had known it would. As the months had stretched on, Margo had come to hope that the inevitable would never happen. But it did.
She had been living with Nana for a few months, checking on her own house every other day. She'd walk around the house and garden, see that Jane and Ezra were keeping up with things, and then check her messages.
Usually there were none. Her friends had long given up on calling her, knowing she would neither answer nor return calls. Once, she was surprised to hear Paul's voice, announcing that the record was ready for release. She erased the message and forced herself to forget it. She didn't want to deal with the pain.
Sometimes she'd sit a while on the veranda by the rock pool. Then she'd leave her empty house and go home to Nana. Today would have been no different, but for the crisp English voice on the answering machine. The summons had come. Margo knew that Caruthers had given her plenty of time to adjust, so to speak — if one ever adjusted. Now it was time to face things responsibly.
She sat by the pool for a long time that evening, hypnotized by the shimmering glare of the last rays of sun on the water. Two fireflies danced over the azaleas, and she followed their trail in the growing dusk. Margo wished she could glue herself to this chair and never move. She was scared, she realized, and there was no one to help her.
All her life someone had taken care of her. First her parents and nanny and then Hanan. She'd had a home, the beds were made and the house cleaned by someone else, and groceries were provided. When she'd needed a car to drive from home to university, it came before she thought to ask for one. Hanan had the white Opel Kadet waiting in the garage a week before classes started. A friend had found her the job with Mrs. Pim before Margo could put together a CV. And though she'd worked steadily for two years, Margo simply deposited her paycheck without a second thought. She knew she wasn't working for the money but to be busy and helpful to the elderly lady.
After the car crash that took her parents' lives, Hanan had turned over the estate to a school and bought this house. Margo realized that she and Hanan lived fairly simply compared to many of her old classmates or her parents' friends. Despite the pool, live-in help, and a weekly gardener, it was no different from the homes of most middle-class white South Africans.
Margo had always assumed it was by choice. Hanan was a very private and practical person, and a small house for the two of them seemed the obvious choice, regardless of what he could have afforded. He had never indicated to Margo that she should be careful with money, and except for the change of residence, they had continued to move in the same circles as before.
He gave her an allowance comparable to that of her wealthy classmates, who still lived in their secluded mansions and, when she began university, her own credit card, whose bills she never saw and Hanan never mentioned.
It was almost a year now that she was alone. Margo wrote checks for the bills that came in the mail without checking them for accuracy and had circled in red the first of every month on her calendar so that she shouldn't forget to pay Jane and Ezra. She felt her cheeks redden in the darkness as she realized she had never once balanced her checkbook nor looked at the bank statements.
She'd just have to learn how to do it — it didn't take a genius to figure out how to balance a checkbook or budget money. The thought brought her some measure of confidence. After all, Hanan had managed, and he'd been just twenty-one when their parents were killed, two years younger then she was now, with the added burden of taking care of his little sister.
She went into Hanan's study and took out the folder marked "Household Finances." She might as well familiarize herself with it before the meeting with Caruthers. After almost a year of living off the bank account and no longer working, she hadn't thought there would be too much left in it. Margo was surprised to see that quite a respectable sum had been deposited in the account every month, as it seemed it had been before Hanan's death. Except for household expenses, Margo had spent virtually nothing on herself since then, so her balance had actually accumulated to a rather large amount.
Now that she had suddenly awakened to the fiscal aspect of life, Margo was relieved to see that she would have at least a few months in which to decide what to do, no matter what she was to learn from Caruthers. She wondered if she would still be so unconcerned about money after meeting with him.
If nothing else, there would be insurance policies to deal with and perhaps something left from her parents' estate, although she and Hanan had been living off of it for the past twelve years. What had happened to Tanzer's in recent months Margo didn't know.
She could probably get another job like her last one. But she didn't want to leave Nana until the older lady went back to America after Pesach, and she was pleased to see that she wouldn't have to.
The summons could not be avoided. She had to face sometime the cold figures resulting from Hanan's death, overlaid on the memories of those painful months after her parents died. She steeled herself and dialed Caruthers's number. As late as it was, she knew his secretary would be there. Caruthers lived in his office. The appointment was set for the following Wednesday.

Margo wondered how she'd keep anxiety at bay for the next two days. She needn't have wondered.
On the way home — and Margo was less sure with each passing day which was really home — she stopped to pick up some things at the supermarket for Nana. As she drove closer to the house, Margo found the avenue blocked by fire trucks and a crowd of spectators. Firemen were running up the Grosses' driveway, and billows of black smoke whirled into the sky. Margo parked her car abruptly on the grassy bank and ran up the road, heart racing. At the top of the driveway, the shul was in flames. She found the Grosses at the far edge of the lawn, Rabbi Gross seating Nana on a garden chair, while Mrs. Gross tried frantically to count her children. "Yanky!" she screamed. "Yanky's missing!" <
Four-year-old Moushke tugged at her mother's skirt. "He went into the shul to get his new siddur, Mommy."
"What? Yanky went back into the shul?" Before anyone could stop her, Rivky raced across the lawn and dove into the front door of the beis midrash, dodging the fireman who moved to stop her. Her red braids disappeared in the thick veil of smoke. Flames licked at the windows.
Margo recalled later that no one moved, all of them shocked into silence, staring at the black gaping hole that had swallowed Rivky. The seconds ticked by. Only Nana's lips moved, silently.

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Sun Inside Rain

Sun Inside Rain

Book Excerpt from Sun Inside Rain

Sun Inside Rain A novel of hope, challenge, and inspiration M. Bassara

Fire and Water

Sun Inside Rain
A novel of hope, challenge, and inspiration
M. Bassara