SARA, a Canadian Saga - an excerpt
Page 42 - 43
Vivid nightmares tormented her for weeks afterward. Visions of her little dog hanging from a rafter amid the burning flames of hell; a bent, black sculpture chiseled by the devil himself began to stay with her even in her waking hours.
"The dreams won't let me be, mama," she cried night after night. "Please let me stay up. Don't make me go to bed!" But her mother had hardened her heart. She turned a deaf ear and her tongue became sharper than ever.
But it was her father's coldness that cut into Sara's soul. Sara had grown accustomed to her mother's anger but always in the past her father had been there with a laugh a hug, a story to tell. Frightened by his stony silence she drew into herself. At night when she couldn't sleep she filled page after page in her journal.
Soon her father's silence turned into something more dreadful. Sara lay in her bed and listened to the ugly words being hurled back and forth between her mother and her father.
"It's the act of a coward!" she heard her mother yell through angry tears. "This is my home! I won't be moved!"
"Then you'll live in it by yourself!" her father stormed.
"Let the neighbours help, Brent!" Rebecca begged. "We can rebuild the garage. We can start over!"
"Neighbours be damned, woman!" he roared. "Are the neighbours gonna pay the high interest on the money we'd need to borrow? Take a look at me, Rebecca, I'm sixty years old. We're movin' and that's final! I don't wanna hear another word about it!"
A few weeks later Sara watched the men pack all their belongings into the old truck. She sat between her sisters in the back seat of the car and tried not to cry as their neighbour drove her family to Summerside. Her papa's new Ford had gone up in smoke. Poor papa! He was so proud of that car, kept it so highly polished Sara could see her face in it. Their neighbour stopped his car in front of a narrow, old, two-storied white house on King Street. Sara stood on the sidewalk and stared up at her new home. Even to a child's eyes it wasn't much of a place.
"It was the best I could do with what little money I had," Brent insisted to his wife.
"We'd have done better to stay where we were, Brent. It's not too late. We can still go back," she pleaded.
"I tell you there's no goin' back. I hired with a company here and it's here we're stayin'. Now, once and for all woman, will you let that be the end of it!"
Upstairs in the shabby townhouse Sara and Martha clung together. "I can't stand to listen to them fighting all the time, Martha. I'm scared," Sara whimpered.
"I'm scared too, Sara. I believe our world has collapsed!"
SARA, a Canadian Saga is available in Kindle, Paperback, and Audiobook formats on all Amazon sites. You will find it on my Amazon Author's Page at https://amazon.com/author/audreyaustin
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