The Return Home

Part 1

"Let's make a promise." Came the small voice of twelve year old Nora.

"What's that?" Asked her friend, Dustin.

They were standing next to each other, at the end of a road. The same road they meet up to every morning on the way to their school bus.

The same road where they part ways every afternoon. Nora played with her light blonde ponytails.

She smiled shyly at Dustin. "That we will be friends forever." Her toothless smile wide.

"No matter what." Dustin agreed.

"And if one of us has to move, we will always come back to here." Nora grinned again.

Dustin nodded. "Agreed."

Nora clapped her hands, as if she was dusting them and stood straight, extending one hand.

"So we will come here and meet here if one of us moves away? We will meet here when we are twenty? And continue being friends?"

Dustin shook her hand. They both smiled at each before Nora giggled.

"Okay. I'll see you tomorrow?" Dustin asked and Nora nodded. They let go off each other's hands and Dustin dropped his to the side of him.

Nora leaned forward and quickly pecked Dustin on the cheek and ran off up to the familiar path she took every day to her home.

Dustin ran up his path to his house, merging left.

Nora ran because of her shyness, her quick stolen kiss at Dustin.

Dustin ran as fast as his legs could go. To get home and complete his chores before his step father gets home.

~~~~

Nora gasped as she opened her eyes, slightly scared. She had only just curled in to bed and immediately she jumped out. The night birds made their noises as they flew away.

Her little legs ran to her parents. "Mummy! Daddy! I heard a gun!" She stated. Nora knows what guns sound like, she had been raised all her life around guns and rifles.

"We know, honey." Her mother said as she wrapped Nora in her arms. Then another shot was heard followed by silence.

Nora tends to fall asleep to the chirps of crickets, but even they fell silent.

Then a third shot was heard, making both Nora and her mother jump.

The echo of the gunshots had finished in the dead night sky as everything went still and quiet again. The plovers had calmed down, the owls back to silent.

The horses in the barn had stop whining. Nora held her mother as her chest was rapidly rising and sinking. Nora wasn't scared of guns, but no one had a need to use them at night, making her afraid of who was out there.

She stepped out of her mother's comforting embrace and stepped to a window facing the front of their property.

Red and blue lights glowed in the near distance as sirens could be heard.

"Don't turn. Don't turn." Nora whispered as she watched the loud vehicles turn up Dustin's driveway.

Nora ran for the front door, screaming Dustin's name as she went to run to the property fence line.

"Lenora!" Nora's dad shouted as her mother shrieked for her.

Nora's body pumped her legs as fast as she could go, but a large arm picked up her tiny body as Nora cried out.

"Dustin!"

"Vickie, get her inside." Nora's dad said to his wife, adjusting the grip on his rifle.

Vickie came and took her resisting child and took her back inside the house.

Nora cried out to her friend, her loose hair a mess as her little face was red and puffy.

"Mummy! Why are the police there?" Nora asked her mother.

"Come here." Vickie opened her arms and held her daughter. They sat on the couch as Vickie rocked and soothed Nora.

Nora sobbed, unsure what was happening. She didn't know what was going on at the neighbours house. But she fell asleep before her father returned, in her mother's arms.

Nora's father gently closed the front door and met a waiting Vickie with Nora asleep against her.

"Well? What happened?" Vickie asked in a whisper, holding the girl.

Hugh looked wide eyed and pale as he looked into his wife's eyes and silently he shook his head.

~~~~

Nora didn't wait for Dustin that following morning, she was driven straight to school.

Her mother went with her to the large building and dropped Nora off at her class, before seeing the headmaster.

Nora sat at her desk, next to Dustin's, but his was absent.

Dustin wasn't in today. Nobody spoke about what happened last night, either they knew or they didn't yet.

After school finished, Vickie picked up Nora from school and drove her home. It was day time, and she could see the neighbours house.

Nora jumped out off the car and ran to it.

"Lenora!" Vickie shouted as she followed. But the energy and stamina of a twelve year old was higher than a forty year old.

Nora climbed the fence and ran up to Dustin's house. But as she got closer, she slowed down.

There were cars everywhere. Police cars, black long cars, normal cars. Dustin's mums car was there. The step dads car was there.

Was he having a party? A family gathering? Why are the police here? Nora was as confused as ever over what she saw.

Then some one stopped her. A tall man in a blue shirt. He knelt down to Nora, his kind face smiling at hers.

"You shouldn't be here darling."

Nora blinked at the police officer then looked behind him at the house.

"That's my friends house." She muttered to him.

"You're Hugh's little one. I met your daddy last night. Where is your mother?"

Nora turned and pointed to her house.

"Where's Dustin?" She asked him.

"I think it will be best for your parents to answer these questions."

Then my mother appeared behind me, breathless as she tried talking. "I'm sorry officer. Lenora is a curious girl. This was her best friend's house."

Nora scrunched her face up. She may be twelve but she knew basic English. She turned to her mother.

"What do you mean was, mummy?"