She thought he was talking about a ghost.
“Thank you,” he whispered to the empty room.
The next morning, he brought the Rainmeter inside the house. He set it on the kitchen table, next to his father’s empty chair. And when his sister called to argue about the property again, Elias said: “I’m not leaving. The house and I have an agreement.”
Elias froze. He read it again. Then again.
The first thing Elias noticed about the Monterey Rainmeter wasn’t its precision, but its sound.
The device chimed. A new notification, soft as a held breath: “Probability of emotional precipitation: ninety-four percent. Barometric pressure inside this room has dropped three millibars since you sat down. You are not weak. You are weather, same as the rest of us.”
The Rainmeter’s blue ring flickered once. Then it displayed, in small gray letters: “You’re welcome, Elias. Now go to bed. A cold front is moving in at dawn, and you forgot to shut the chicken coop.”