Riptide

➳1

➳Chapter 1

The rain falls in sleets, the sound pounding across the tattered roof above.

"Rosemary," Remy calls from the couch.

Dusting my hands onto my skirt, I round the small kitchen counter and peer over the couch to see Remy sitting on the ground with a knife in one hand and a wooden stick in the other. The ends are pointed dully, wooden shavings on the ground.

Remy looks up at me, a frown on her face. When she looks up, it suddenly strikes me that she looks just like her.

It has only been a year  since she died and there is still an ache in the center of my chest, the liveliness in the house seeming to snuff out shortly after her death.

Shaking myself from my thoughts lingering on the uncanny resemblance Remy had to my mother, I rest my hand on her head.

"It is turning out great!" I say, injecting as much enthusiasm as I could.

She rolls her eyes, a small grin on her face. "I know that."

"Then why did you call me?" I ask, confused.

She presses her lips in a grim line- an action much too mature for a twelve year old- and nudges towards the corner of the house.

A steady stream of water drips from the roof, ricocheting off the wooden floor.

"Shoot," I mutter, sprinting for the tin pot. In my haste, I knock another pot off the counter and it goes clanging to the ground.

A loud, sharp cry from the crib near the couch rings out, mixing in with the cacophony of the rain and the still rattling pot on the ground.

"I got him!" Remy hollers, bending over the crib as I stop the spinning pot and place the bowl under the leak.

Mopping up the mess on the floor, I glance up to see Remy holding baby Gale in her arms, her small frame comically struggling with his weight.

Standing, I laugh gently as I take gale from her arms. "Easy there, you might just tip over with him."

She shakes her head in denial, making her way to finish up cleaning the mess. "I'm not that small. I am a big help.'

There is a smile on my face, watching her try to mop up the water with the soaking rag.

Yes, she was a big help. While other kids her age got to play, she helped me with everyday chores without me even having to ask her.

Looking over at the opposite wall where my parent's bedroom once was, there is a tightness in my chest that I can't seem to place. Plastic is stretched over the door to try to shield the rain and cold from seeping into the house, the large gaping hole from the fallen tree demolishing the small room.

I was lucky the tree didn't smash the entire house, the rickety home hardly big enough to be called a house.

With one bedroom demolished, the house only had the living room area that combined with the kitchen and two small bedrooms that fit only a bed, a dresser and a trunk for clothes.

It was rural in this part of Alaska, my father's dream to settle in the wild obviously backfiring after his disappearance.

It was a pitiful way of living in all honesty, a gas stove, a heater that only worked half of the time and a beat-up pickup truck the only 'modern' things in this house.