She Waits (Completed)

She Waits 

What I’m about to tell you, I haven’t told anyone before. I think I suppressed the memory in order to keep my sanity. Or maybe the memory was locked away in fear my parents would send me to some nut house for treatment. I keep saying to myself over and over again, “Why didn’t you stay home that day?”

My parents didn’t like to talk about it. In fact, the whole issue is a taboo subject. I almost forgot, until I had to return to my childhood home to evaluate the property for my mother. The house was being sold to make way for new apartments as the town was growing. My father had passed away some time ago and my mother wanted the house gone for good. It’s been on the market for a good ten years. I haven’t been back here since we left when I was eight years old. I’m twenty one now, and for three years it was a rental property. Over twenty tenants occupied this place for three years after we left, only to vacate shortly after moving in. Can’t say I blamed them.

As soon as I stepped out of my car the memories came flooding back almost instantly – not anything good, might I add. It was as if I stepped back in time to the day my parents fled with me in tow in our little minivan. It was summer – I remember that.

My mother was Australian and my father, American. I was born in the US, but when I turned two my mother started to become incredibly homesick and since my father couldn’t find a decent job, my mother decided we all move to the land down-under and start anew. I was just a baby so I don’t remember much.

We moved into my mother’s family home in a small town, which I won’t name. Back when I was a kid, the town only had a maximum of twenty-five hundred people. It was in the heart of New South Wales and hot as holy hell. I spent my summers outside under the hose, and my dad joined the fire brigade since the town was lacking in fire fighters. We were in bush country and, well, there were a lot of out of control grass fires that caused annoyance to the local farmers.

I remember that, as a little boy, I was always going on adventures. I was getting into mischief I really shouldn’t have gotten myself into. I also had a bit of a weird accent, so I was teased quite a bit and called a yank by the local kids. I had fun by myself, though.

Until that day, anyway

That day my mother was outside in the garden like every other day. It was a weekend and my dad was home since the fire station was only about five or six doors down from our house. It was convenient, I know. Dad was in the front room watching television. They’d only just finished renovating the old house. It was built in the late 1800’s and left that way until we came to live here. I remember he was watching rugby football and had become quite the fan. It was a hot day, so hot that my mother had to go inside and lay down for a little bit.

My parents never really commented on our neighbour’s house. They told me never to go over there and play, which of course I wouldn’t. I was curious to know if they had kids my age though. I remember Mr. Murphy, our other neighbour, told me once that they had a little girl there that was maybe a year younger than me. But he said I better not get my hopes up, because they hadn’t been home in quite a while. He then shook his head, sighed and went back to tending to his garden – as most of the older folks did around here. That depressed look on his face confused me, but I got over it soon enough and went about my playtime.

Their house was a lot nicer than ours. The garden outside was dead, though. The summer heat here tended to do that. If you didn’t water your plants at least four times a day, they’d die. My dad had told me something about water restrictions in the area from the drought.

I looked over the fence and realized not only was the garden dead, but the grass had turned to red dirt. However, the little white house was still vibrant and pretty, as if someone had been taking care of it and not anything else.