Somehow, she managed to sneak outside. It was warm, and even in her sleeveless dress she wasn’t cold. She unbuckled her sandals, tiptoed to the middle of the lawn, and lay down on her back. It was hard to keep her eyes open with the drops coming so quickly, but she could open her mouth. If the drops came fast and hard enough, they would trickle down her throat, no room for air, no room for breath. This was how her brother had died. Accidental aspiration. She said the words like a jump rope rhyme. Ac-ci-den-tal as-pir-a-tion. Their mother had given him a bottle and put him down for a nap, but when she came to wake him, she found him lifeless. He had thrown up and it had gone the wrong way—down his throat and into his airway—no room for air, no room for breath. Ac-ci-den-tal as-pir-a-tion. Josie had heard mumbled voices tell her mother that there was nothing she could have done, that hundreds of babies every year died this way, that they weren’t strong enough to cough their throats clear, and Josie figured that at least some of their little baby airways had been filled with rain. She lay there for a long time, long enough so that when Alba finally found her, almost everyone had gone home.

Last night the memory had flashed before her. It was quick, nothing more than one burst of remembered water in her open mouth, but it had so immediately forced her back to her body that Devesh’s hand against her skin was intensely painful, and she was grateful when he pulled her up abruptly and put her on her back.