HONEYBEE| Sam Uley

six

It seemed so peculiar, being back at work after such a long time away but despite her prolonged trip, they accepted her back with open arms. That's what happens when you work for people with whom you are close. The bakery on the edge of Forks was a relatively quiet establishment, visited mostly by people picking up orders, a birthday cake here, a wedding cake there; perhaps a batch of cinnamon rolls to celebrate a good day- and she loved that about it. She had tried the college thing, tried it for a year before she realised that she had already been right where she wanted to be.

Estella wanted to live there, it was home. She wanted to bake in the shop, and then go home and cook for her family- she loved it, nothing suited her more. She wasn't like Leah or the other females in the Rez for that matter- she didn't dream of adventure, she dreamed of being right where she already was, until her very last day. Perhaps that was idiotic, to want for nothing, to have no real dreams and goals but to Estella, a girl who'd only ever dreamed of living the American dream- She saw no reason to unnecessarily waste time.

The death of her parents had really put everything into perspective for Estella- there was no time to waste doing things you don't enjoy. And that evening, when she returned home from work- she felt oddly as though she hadn't worked at all; that was the way it was. When you're doing a job you love, you'll never work a day in your life- that's what her father said and now that she was doing it, she finally understood his meaning. It wasn't all the ramblings of an ageing man.

The second Clearwater daughter of her generation walked calmly through her house, stepping across the floor that had so often felt her weight, the walls warmly welcoming around her. Estella had never dreamed of this house being hers- in her mind, she had had her own house not too far away from this one. She had dreamed, in the paranoid and dark hours of the night when the weather prevented a sound sleep, that when her parents finally passed from old age, she'd have her own children standing at her side to hold her hands and as she stood there in their embrace, she would be crushed with the grief of course but she would know that eventually, everything would be okay, that she wouldn't be drowning forever. Now, that didn't even seem like a possibility.

Her hand came to rest on the door of her parent's bedroom, fingertips smoothing over the chipped paint that her mother always begged her father to sand off so they could repaint it. He had always refused, adamant that he liked the 'rustic look' that the faded paint gave off- really it was just his excuse and Katherine knew that. With another deep breath, she finally pushed the door open to reveal the perfectly preserved room. Six months it had been and with windows locked uptight and the door closed- the second she stepped inside, she felt as though she was stepping into the embrace of her mother and father themselves.

Everything was as it had been on that fateful day, the curtains sat only partially open because Michael had been the one to do it and he didn't see much use in using the curtain holders. Her mother's wardrobe door hung vaguely open, just a crack that could be blamed on the unevenness of the doors themselves that always allowed for a slither of the darkness to escape. The bed was neatly made, sheets tucked in the way that Katherine had taught Estella. And splayed across the bed were three dresses, all still on hangers while on the floor, shoes scattered.

It had been date night. Their anniversary and as in love as they had been in high school; Katherine and Michael Clearwater were adamant not to miss a single date even if a storm brewed outside the window, they were residents of the rainiest town in the continental US after all, they could survive a little rain- what a fateful mistake that had been. Absentmindedly, Estella's hands brought the perfume bottle from the vanity up towards her nose and smelt it, taking in the mirage of flowers that hit her nostrils, a homemade concoction that she would never waste. It was Katherine Clearwater in a bottle.

Estella's feet seemed to move in slow motion as her hand slid across the sheets, the very place she had sat as she helped her mother choose out that beautiful blue dress she had worn- that was the reason for the discarded dresses on the bed. Estella hadn't entered that room since that day and as she perched on the edge of the bed once more, she could practically hear her mothers voice flustering over which dress to wear, wanting to look beautiful even for the man she had been married to for twenty-five years.

That was one of the things that scared Estella the most, that one day she would forget. That one day the perfume bottle would run dry and the room wouldn't smell like them anymore. She worried that she wouldn't be able to hear them in her mind anymore, to clearly picture their faces without an image at hand. She was terrified of losing them further than she already had. She could not make any new memories now- so she had to preserve the old ones forever.

That was the first day back in La Push that Estella had broken down into tears, allowed all the pain to flow through the floodgate she had enforced and her hands grappled at her father's pillow, fisting it into her arms as if that could somehow take the pain away as she sobbed into the fabric. There was nobody to hear her, even as she cracked because Estella Clearwater was more alone than she had ever been...

She felt like she was drowning.