One

Aliyah pulled her bag out the back of the taxi, and went to help her dad. Whilst she was pulling him into his wheelchair, she asked him again.

"Dad, why did you drag me out into the ass end of nowhere with you?"

"We've been over this darling, we both needed to get away from that place, it hold's to many bad memories. This way we can make a fresh start."

"Yes dad I get that." She pushed him up the ramp toward the front door of a large, by British standards anyway, bungalow.

"But why did we have to go all the way to America to do that. Why couldn't we have stayed in England?"

"This way we can make a fresh start, no one knows us, they won't judge us on what happened before." Sighing she dropped her backpack into his lap and went to unlock the door. "Pleas darling, for me, you're old dad?" She looked at him framed in the light from the porch, he was still hansom, with strong features, and dark hair, she had her mother's hair, and those clear blue eyes.

"I'll help get the rest of the stuff in from the van, don't want those men breaking anything do we." She said leaving him in the open plan kitchen-diner.

"Thank you." He said it so quietly she could hardly hear it.

As she walked out into the cool night she pulled on the silver chain at her neck and spilled the cross into her hand. All her friends from back home in Sussex had gotten together when they had found she was leaving, and bought her a silver cross, it must have been expensive, it was nearly as big as her palm, it had come with a note saying. 'Now wherever you go, you are not alone.' And a card signed by them all.

She was brought out of her musings by one of the removal men, a burly Texan. "Move out the way missy we don't want such a pretty thing like you getting hurt."  Sighing she moved out the way and went to get some of the smaller things from the back of the van.

By ten they had finished the main unpacking, sorting all out all the furniture into each of its rooms, tomorrow they would begin unpacking the other bits and peaces, She left her dad in the living room trying to find something in one of the boxes, and went into the kitchen.

Not bothering to turn the light on she sat on one of the stools, staring off into space she began to see things, images, then she was back in the car driving home from some Golf club dinner, then the crash, and that face, she remembered it so clearly, but it couldn't have been real nothing looked like that. Nothing. A sudden crash pulled her back to reality; she jumped off the stool and dashed to the living room.

"Dad, dad, are you ok?" She called rushing in to find him fine but the box he had been routing through had been upended on the floor. She bent over and began to pick up the contents; it was all the old photographs. She began shuffling them back into neat piles to put back when one caught her attention. It was a large framed one of her mother taken at aunt Edna's wedding; she was wearing a straw hat tied down with a silk scarf, and a pale green dress. She picked it up.

Her dad move up beside her and looked at the photo.

"I think maybe that one should go over there." He said gesturing to the wall above the faux fireplace.