MORNING ARRIVED WITH a sloshing sound. The younger child’s hands were cold after a night in short pajamas. Out the windows, the view passed through various kinds of obscuring gray: drop-streaks on windows, mist, the blur of actively falling rain. Everything was saturated and dark. Umbrellas collided by the corner. It was raining just hard enough that it would have been uncomfortable to take down the hood, and it was not quite chilly enough to keep the hood from being stuffy. Everything that could catch water had a little pool in it—tree wells, pavement joints, the top of a trash bag, the rounded grain marks in the sidewalk cement. A truly shabby robin, looking part drowned and part plucked, flew off with a worm or something wormlike in its beak. Grime had settled out at the bottom of clear puddles; the water by the curb braided itself flowing around the leaves and twigs, rather than carrying them off. Everything was soggy and nothing was being washed clean.