In Case It Rains

The little girl stared up at me with candid curiosity, waiting while her mother finished inspecting the produce. I looked back down at her. I could see the question in her eyes, and she looked like the sort who would ask it. So I waited. She did not disappoint.

“Why do you have an umbrella?” She did not sound at all mocking; she’d merely had an honest question, and had honestly asked. I sighed, and glanced down at the ordinary looking black umbrella I held at my side.

“Just in case it rains,” I told her. Her eyebrows quirked together.

“But it’s not cloudy,” she said. I looked up at the sky, which was, as she had pointed out, very blue, and very cloudless.

“Very true,” I said, my eyes coming back to hers, “But you never know.” She paused, mulling over this. But before she’d finished mulling and reached a conclusion that was at all satisfactory, her mother paid the employee and reached down to take the girl’s hand.

“Come on, Sarah, time to go,” The little girl reluctantly followed her mother, perhaps still pondering the woman with the umbrella.