Four days of warnings. Thunderstorms sideways, flood alerts stacking on tornado alerts, the phone going off at three in the morning and again at six.
You open the windows in the morning. Close them by noon when the air turns heavy and the apartment feels like a held breath. Open them again in the evening to hear the rain start, that particular sound of a Midwestern storm arriving from across the lake. Close them an hour later when the rain comes through the screens and the sill is wet.
Repeat.
The lake is brown this morning. Not the usual gray-green of April — brown the way a river is brown after a storm, silt lifted from the bottom, everything the wind pulled loose over four days suspended in the water. A clear line a quarter mile out where the muddy shore ends and the lake it belongs to begins.
The windows are open again. For now.
