𝓕𝒐𝒓𝒈𝒆𝒕-𝒎𝒆-𝒏𝒐𝒕

𝓒𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝓞𝒏𝒆

As she drove her beaten up old station wagon down a quiet suburban street in Los Angeles Samantha Martin couldn't help but stare at the rain being swept from her windscreen by the wiperblades. The weather perfectly suited her mood right now - miserable. She toyed with the idea of putting the radio on but quickly thought better of it and instead looked at the perfect little houses as she passed them by. This was definitely a cookie-cutter street. Each house was a perfect replica of the one next to it. As a child she had loved this street. Her father had taught her to ride her bike down the sidewalk and he had taught her to drive on this very road, but now she couldn't wait to leave.

Sam pulled her station wagon up into the driveway of one of the houses and turned off the engine. While the rain slowly filled her windscreen again she sat and stared at the house, a wave of sadness welling up inside her when she realised that this was the last time she would ever come here.

With a heavy heart and a deep sigh she pulled the hood of her coat up over her head and stepped from the car finding herself looking at a very large SOLD sign hammered into the grass. Sam quickly turned away from it and went to the trunk of her car where she removed several flat packed boxes. After securing the car she ran up the steps to the front porch and stood staring at the front door, her key ready to slide into the lock. Memories of the times she had unlocked that door and called for her father flooded her mind and the sadness inside her grew. She physically shook her head as if to shake the sadness away and then unlocked the door. Sam placed the stack of flat boxes on the floor and turned to close the door again but as she did she caught sight of the coatstand. Hanging on it in pride of place was her father's flying jacket. After pushing the front door closed Sam took the jacket down and held it against her chest, wrapping her arms around it and breathing in the smell of him. With a loud sob she fell to the ground and wept into the old, worn leather.

With no more tears left to cry Sam stood back up again and placed the jacket back on the coatstand putting her coat next to it. 'Not a good start Sam' she thought to herself as she grabbed a couple of boxes and headed up the stairs. When she reached the top she found herself looking at three doors. The one directly in front of her was the bathroom and she had already cleared that room out. Looking to her left she saw a door with a carved wooden nameplate on it and she remembered when her father had put that there. Walking over to it she ran her fingers over the three letters of her name and sighed. She took the swiss army knife from her pocket and used it to unscrew the nameplate. That was definitely coming with her.

Inside the room she set the boxes on the bed and put them together before throwing the nameplate into one of them. She glanced at the closet but it was empty because she had already taken her clothes when she moved out. In the corner of the room was her desk and Sam sat down to go through the drawers. She found a few cinema ticket stubs from movies she had seen with her father and a couple of photographs of them together. All that went into the box. In the bottom drawer she found an old firing range target that she had folded up and kept. When she opened it out she saw the near perfect score she had achieved but it was the hand written message from her father that was special. "Never doubt yourself Sam." She quickly folded it back up and placed it carefully into the box.

Sitting on the bed Sam checked the nightstand she found a couple of her favourite books. She put them in the box and looked in the next drawer. There was her jewellery box and with shaking hands Sam took it out and rested it on her lap. Now most little girls have a jewellery box with a little ballerina that danced as a cute song played and it would be filled with lots of pretty jewellery. Sam however had never been a girly girl. Her mother had killed herself when Sam was just six months old so she had been raised by her father and with no female influence in her life Sam grew up as a proper tomboy. She opened up the simple wooden jewellery box and found a set of dogtags that her father had made for her so she could look like him. There was also several shell casings in the bottom. Each one had a date engraved on it because her father would take her shooting on her birthday and then he would keep one casing and got it engraved with the date. She pushed them around with her finger and found the one she was looking for. January 30th 1985. Her nineteenth Birthday. That was the last one they had spent together. Three weeks later a drunk driver crashed into their car as they drove home from an evening out together. Her father had been driving and it had been his side of the car that suffered the worst damage. Sam had been lucky and apart from being shaken up she was relatively unhurt however her father had been pinned in the wreckage. Closing her eyes Sam could still see him looking at her with such scared eyes as blood poured from a cut to his head and ran into his eyes. She slammed the lid of her jewellery box closed hoping the noise would banish the memory from her mind. "Not today" she said loudly as she stood up and placed the jewellery box in with the other mementos.