1743791364 (N) by Pamela Parker

Author:Pamela Parker [Parker, Pamela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Hardie Grant
Published: 2016-03-22T23:00:00+00:00

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March 2013

Mum lost everything in the big flood of ’46. She saved only a photo of her father, a piece of bone from his leg, and all of Dad’s love letters. Come hell or high water, Mum kept every letter Dad ever wrote to her, a whole bundle of them. My sister has them.

Which sister? I hear you ask.

There’s only one; I only have one sister now, but I don’t want to go there just yet.

When the cyclone struck, Dad was stranded somewhere north of Ingham—road and rail cut—but as soon as he got back to Charters Towers, he went looking for his sweetheart. Seventeen mile and two flooded creeks to cross, he hitched a lift to Little Sandy, swam it and walked to Big Sandy. He swam it—going, from treetop to treetop—then he walked on up to Fletcherview.

My mother was only sixteen when they met; Dad was twenty-six. Karmic predestination? Or is ‘love at first sight’ just another lie we tell ourselves in order to make sense of a random world?

My father wasn’t one to abrogate—delegate—responsibility.

Not to Karma. Not to God.

After sixty-five years of marriage, she was part of him: I should have known (did know?) that he could no more abandon her than he could abandon himself, and I should have known (did know?) that anguish such as his could only be erased through self-annihilation.

But I did nothing to stop it.

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