When I get downstairs, and as I walk into the kitchen, my mum asks, "Why are you still in your pyjamas, Caitlyn?"
I shrug my shoulders. "Don't know. The day got away from me."
Her curly blonde hair falls forward and covers her face, as she bends down into the cupboard to get a pot. Although she is turned away from me, I can see the tension in her body, by the way her shoulders pull up a little.
I try to sound cheery. "I found this movie, we can watch tonight."
She turns to look at me while her hands continue chopping an onion on the chopping board. "Yeah? What's it about?" I see the worry in her blue eyes.
" It's about this other earth they find and how it is a mirror image of us, but people there have made different choices."
She looks away from me, back to the onion in front of her. "Sounds interesting."
" Do you want me to set the table?"
" Please." She scrapes the chopped onion into a pot and it sizzles in the hot oil.
In the car, Hannah closed her eyes and leant back into the seat. Hours later they stopped at a roadside diner and although Hannah was not hungry, her mum insisted she eat something.
When the food came, Hannah ate sullenly while her mum jabbered on about the things they were going to see and the things they were going to do.
Later, as they drove away from the diner, the darkness in the sky around them grew thicker and they drove into a shower that turned into a downpour. The wind-shield wipers could not keep up and was worn out anyway. The window became lined with streaks.
"Looks like we won't make up as much time and distance as I hoped we would," her mum remarked. "It would be best to find a motel and to pull in for the night."
"Whatever you think." Hannah stared sullenly out of the front window into the darkness, interrupted now and again by oncoming car headlights.
About twenty minutes later, her mum turned the car into the parking lot of a motel. Hannah stayed in the car, as her mum ran through the sheets of rain to the office door.
Her mum came running back a while later and hopped into the car, slamming the door shut. She brushed the rain off her face. "We are in luck. They have a room for us."
She started the car and drove around the building to stop in front of a door numbered 302. She asked, "What do you need for the night?"