Патриция Гермес (Patricia Hermes)CHAPTER ONE
My Dad's Home
I don't remember this place, I thought. It isn't home. Not my home. My home is far away, in New Zealand. With Mum. This is a different home. My dad's home. And I don't like it.
I looked at the house, the fields and the heavy rain. No, I didn't remember it. Perhaps I didn't want to remember it. It was an old house, in the centre of wet fields. Rain. It rained the night it happened. The night my mum died. The night the car hit us. I remember I cried, I wanted Mum. And I remember the hospital and the noises in my head.
'When were you last here, Amy?' Dad said quietly. 'Seven years ago?'
I looked through the car window. 'Nine,' I said.
'Oh,' Dad said. 'As long as that.'
Yes, as long as that. It was nine years ago when Mum left Dad and moved away. My mother and I went to live in New Zealand. I was very young then. Sometimes Dad came to us in New Zealand or we came back here to Canada. Not often. But now Mum was dead and I had to stay with him. In this place that wasn't home.
Dad stopped the car. 'Ready?' he asked.
I wasn't. But we ran into the house, into the kitchen. Inside, I stopped and looked at the room. Kitchen? This was a kitchen? This was a mess! There were things on the floor. Dad makes machines, it's his job.
'I'm very tired,' I said.
He turned and we went up to my room. 'I didn't have time to make your room nice before I came to get you,' he said. 'Everything happened very quickly...'
He opened the door. My room. This was my room? It was worse than the kitchen. More things on the floor, the wing of an aeroplane, machines, boxes. And in one corner, a bed. For a long minute, we did not say anything. I walked into the room. How can I sleep here? I thought. Here in this mess? How can he use my room? Doesn't he know...? I closed my eyes. It happened quickly. He flew to New Zealand, flew there and brought me home, because Mum was...
'I'll do it tomorrow,' Dad said quietly. 'You'll remember it then.'
'I don't remember it,' I said. I sat down on the bed. This place is a mess, I thought. I don't want to live here - without Mum. I want him to go. Now.