The Sewing Basket by Susan White

Author:Susan White [White, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781927502006
Publisher: Acorn Press
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

“Please let me out at the top of the driveway!”

Colleen stopped the car and I slid out of the narrow space I had been squeezed into on the drive from Fredericton. We’d packed the VW as full as we could and there had barely been room for me to sit. Maybe she’ll think I want out because my legs are cramped, I thought. I didn’t really care. I needed to be by myself. I sat down under the oak tree across from the mailbox.

This was the first time I’d ever arrived at the cottage without Dad. I’d been so upset last year when he hadn’t done his routine. I could hear his voice echoing in my head and the words were not his regular ones but the words I imagined him saying now. You are not my Bean Sprout anymore. This is not a palace and you are not my princess. This is just an old log cottage with an old shed, a boathouse and a falling-down outhouse. All the years we spent here don’t matter. I have a life and it doesn’t include you and your mother. Grow up and face the fact that I don’t care about you anymore.

I hadn’t cried since the night I found out that he wasn’t coming home. I closed my eyes tightly and felt the tears come. I’m so angry at him, I thought. How could he do this to me? How could all the years as a family not mean anything to him? I needed my father. This was our favourite place. How could he not want to be here with us? He was leaving me and Colleen to look after Mom when he was too much of a coward to keep doing it himself. I was thirteen years old. Wasn’t it bad enough that my mother wasn’t really able to be a mother to me? Did I have to do without a father, too? Who was going to look after me? I hated him.

Aunt Colleen and I wrestled with the screen door and finally got it on its hinges. Mom sat on the lounge chair watching us and laughing at our efforts. We hadn’t even tried to put it on yesterday when we arrived. We’d gone right down to the beach and Mom and Colleen had waded in past their knees while I jumped in with my clothes on. After walking down the driveway it had seemed like the only thing to do to rid myself of my tear-streaked face and the dark angry feelings. Afterwards we’d sat on the sand throwing rocks into the water until Aunt Colleen had used her best teacher voice to rally us into action. We’d unloaded the car and started to get the cottage ready for another summer.

“I’m going to call Bill Titus and ask him to bring his tractor down to drag the raft out of the boathouse,” Colleen said as we carried the storm door into the shed. “Once he gets it to the shore I think we can get it out in the water ourselves and anchor it.

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