At the foot of the mountain, Mara put a paperback in the outer pocket of her pack, where she could reach it without undoing the straps. Her brother watched from the porch while she tightened her boots.
“You know we’re walking uphill?” he said.
“I don’t plan to read while I’m walking.”
“That’s what you said about the last hill.”
The last hill had been a modest rise behind their grandmother’s house. Mara had stopped halfway up because a sentence had caught her attention, and then she had read another page, and then she had sat down. Her brother, Eli, had gone on ahead and returned with a handful of blackberries and a complaint about her pace. He had given her the larger berries anyway.
Today the mountain filled the view beyond the road. Its lower slopes were dark with trees, while the higher ridges looked bare and pale, like knuckles pushing through a worn glove. A cloud rested across the summit. From the porch it appeared motionless; by the time they reached the gate, it had swallowed one of the smaller peaks.
Mara’s book had a blue cover and a crease down its spine. She had bought it at a church sale the previous autumn, mostly because someone had written For a rainy day inside the front cover. The rain had come often since then, but she had kept finding other things to do. She liked the inscription’s confidence that a suitable day would eventually arrive.
The path began gently, following a stream through the trees. Eli walked ahead, tapping a stick against stones. Mara could hear water without always seeing it. Occasionally a gap in the leaves revealed a bright strip sliding between boulders, then the path bent and the stream disappeared again.
They met an older woman coming down with an empty basket looped over her arm. She wore a yellow raincoat tied around her waist. Eli asked whether the weather was holding higher up.
“It was when I left it,” she said. “But don’t make plans on its behalf.”
After she had passed, Mara turned to watch her step carefully over a root. The basket swung lightly from her arm. Mara wondered what had been in it and invented three possibilities before she remembered that she could have asked.
At the first clearing they stopped to drink. The houses below looked arranged rather than inhabited: roofs, chimneys, a road curling past them. Mara could pick out the pale rectangle of their porch but not the chair she had left tilted against the wall. She took the book from her pack and opened it to the first page.
A man in a gray coat was waiting for a train. He had missed the earlier one, though the reason was not yet clear. A woman with a red suitcase stood at the far end of the platform. Mara read until Eli finished his water, then tucked a receipt between the pages.
“Anyone dead yet?” he asked.
“No. There’s a suitcase.”
“Give it time.”
The trail grew steeper. As they climbed, the stream became a faint, uneven sound behind them, and the trees thinned enough for the wind to reach the path. Mara’s calves warmed; the back of her neck cooled. When she paused, she could hear her breathing and, farther away, Eli’s stick knocking against the ground.
She had once imagined mountain reading as a grand occupation: a solitary figure on a high rock, hair moving in the wind, a great book open against the sky. The practical version involved shifting a sandwich away from a damp patch of ground and trying to keep her pages from folding over themselves. At their next stop she sat with her knees drawn up as a windbreak. Eli leaned against a tree and ate an apple in four noisy bites.
On the platform, the man in the gray coat had finally spoken to the woman with the suitcase. He asked if the train was late. She said she hoped so. Mara liked that answer. It made room for an entire trouble without explaining any of it.
“What’s happening?” Eli asked, reaching for the last piece of apple.
“She hopes the train is late.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Well, find out.”
She read the next two pages aloud. Eli closed his eyes, either to listen or to rest them. The woman with the suitcase had left a letter on a kitchen table, then returned for it and missed her ride to the station. By the time she arrived, she was no longer sure whether she wanted to leave. The man in gray offered no advice. He only moved his bag so she could sit on the bench.
“That’s decent of him,” Eli said.
“It’s his bag.”
“Exactly. He could have left it there.”
They walked on. Above the trees the path crossed a shoulder of rock, and the view widened so suddenly that Mara stopped without meaning to. The valley lay below them in overlapping greens, the fields separated by hedges too small now to show their gaps. Beyond it rose another ridge, then another, each paler than the one before. On the farthest, a shadow moved across the slope.
Eli pointed. “That’s coming this way.”
The cloud that had seemed to sit on the summit was no longer sitting. Its edge unrolled over the ridge, covering the rocks they had expected to climb. Mara felt a small cold drop on her wrist. Then another struck the back of her hand and stayed there, round and bright.
The shelter
They put on their jackets and continued to a low stone shelter marked on Eli’s map. Its roof was patched with sheets of dark material held down by stones. Inside were a bench, a narrow window, and a table scarred with initials. Someone had left a tin mug upside down on the sill. The shelter smelled of wet wool and the mineral chill of stone.
Rain began properly while they were taking off their packs. It rattled on the roof and ran in quick threads down the window. Across the room, Eli shook water from his sleeves, then caught Mara looking at the floor.
“Sorry,” he said, though there was already a puddle by the door.
Mara opened the book. The inscription faced her again: For a rainy day. She showed it to him.
“That’s a little smug,” he said.
They shared the bench. Eli took out the sandwiches, and Mara read while he unwrapped them. When she reached a pause in the story, he handed her one half. They ate looking through the window. The valley had vanished; the glass held only a close gray blur and the faint outline of a rock a few paces away.
“Read some more,” Eli said.
In the book, the train came and went. The woman did not get on. Neither did the man, who had been waiting for someone rather than traveling himself. They sat together afterward on the emptied platform. He told her that his daughter had written to say she might come. He had arrived early because he did not want her first sight of him to be a man hurrying.
Mara stopped at the end of the chapter. Rain drummed harder for a moment, then settled back into its steady rattle. Eli was looking at his hands.
“What do you think happens?” she asked.
“Another train,” he said. “Maybe she’s on it.”
“The daughter?”
He nodded. “Or maybe she isn’t.”
“That covers most possibilities.”
“You asked what I thought, not for a guarantee.”
They had climbed together since they were children, though not always happily. When Mara was twelve, Eli had taken her up a long path in bright weather and promised a view from the top. Fog had arrived first. They had stood in it while he pointed toward the invisible lake, naming the islands as if names could make them appear. She had cried from disappointment, which embarrassed them both. On the way down he had told her an elaborate story about a fish living in the lake, large enough to swallow a rowboat but too polite to do so. She had laughed in spite of herself.
She reminded him of it now. He remembered the fog but not the fish.
“It wore a little hat,” Mara said.
“Then it must have been somebody else’s story.”
They waited until the rain eased. When they opened the door, cold air entered the shelter, carrying the smell of wet earth. The cloud had lifted from the near slope but still hid the summit. Eli studied the path ahead and then the darkening sky beyond it.
“We could turn back,” he said. “Or we could go as far as the saddle and see.”
Mara looked down at her boots. Water beaded on the leather; one lace had begun to loosen. She bent to tie it again.
“Let’s try the saddle.”
They climbed through grass bent under drops of water. The ground was uneven and the stones slick, so conversation came in short pieces. Once, Mara put out a hand for balance and touched a rock still cold from the rain. At the saddle, the land fell away on either side of them. Wind came through the gap with enough force to make Eli catch his cap.
The summit remained out of sight. Another bank of cloud was gathering beyond it, darker at the bottom. There was no argument about going farther. They stood for a minute, looking at the small portion of the world the weather allowed, and then turned downhill.
Below the shelter they found a dry patch beneath a spreading tree. Mara took out the book once more, and Eli sat beside her, their shoulders touching. The pages had curled slightly at the corners. She read to the end of the next chapter while a thin light appeared over the valley.
Another train did come. A woman stepped off carrying a paper bag, and the man stood up so quickly that the bag he had moved from the bench fell to the ground. The book did not immediately say whether she was his daughter. It described the way she searched the platform, shielding her eyes, and how he waited for her to recognize him.
“Keep going,” Eli said.
“That’s the end of the chapter.”
“There’s another one right there.”
Mara closed the book over her finger. The light had reached their village; a few roofs shone while the fields behind them remained in shadow. From here the porch was too small to distinguish, but she knew the chair would still be waiting against the wall.
“We’ll read it at home,” she said.
Eli objected, but he helped her up and waited while she put the book safely inside her pack. They followed the path back into the trees, where drops fell from the branches long after the rain had stopped. At the stream crossing he went first and held out his hand. Mara took it, stepped across, and kept hold until both her feet were on the other side.
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