He said he was sure the house they’d stayed in had been halfway between a rock at the end of the beach and the Maori pa site. He remembered paddocks opposite where the owners kept their horse. And a garden full of lemon bushes and a path that led down to the beach. The librarian brought out maps and summoned a couple of locals to help. Perhaps the house had been demolished? Perhaps there’d been floods? Erosion? Perhaps he was mistaken about the area? Twenty three years was a long time.
They walked on the beach. Pale blue silk covered the sand where the tide was retreating. The sea was polished glass. This was what she remembered, she said, when their daughter was young. She remembered their dog-at-the-time ignoring the seagulls so he could guard the little girl, making sure she didn’t swim out of her depth, pulling her back if she did, ignoring her protests.
This can’t be the right place, he said. What he remembered was the scent of lemons. Lifting their daughter up to feed the horse. Watching her flying along the sand, arms outstretched, pretending to be a bird. The dog racing alongside, keeping close watch.
“She’d have loved our present dog,” she said.
They watched him swimming, unencumbered by responsibility, scattering seagulls, chasing their shadows on the sand, his young body quivering with the sheer joy of being alive.
“I’ll try google maps,” he said. “Places don’t just disappear.”
* First Published Flash Frontier November 2016
Sandra Arnold lives in New Zealand. Her flash fiction and short stories appear in numerous journals including Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine and New Flash Fiction Reviewand the anthologies, Sleep is a Beautiful Colour (National Flash Fiction Day, UK, 2017), Fresh Ink (Cloud Ink Press, NZ, 2017) and is forthcoming in Bonsai: The Big Book of Small Stories (Canterbury University Press, NZ, 2018). Her work has been nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize and 2018 Best Small Fictions.
www.sandraarnold.wordpress.com
So this story is about a couple who lost their daughter 23 years ago?
ReplyDeleteNo, Riham. They stayed in the house 23 years ago when their daughter was a child. She died but the story doesn't say when. The couple were trying to find the house again to relive memories.
ReplyDelete