When Samantha woke up, she looked around her for the car, the paramedics, and her parents. "Mom? Dad?" she called out in a hoarse voice. When she heard nothing but her own voice echoing, her mind began to return to the present.
They were dead. Both of them. Her parents had died on the mainland, in the desert. Pryde hadn't killed her mother and abducted Samantha; her mother had been dead before that. "No," she whispered. "It's not fair."
For five years she had dreamed of going to the mainland to find her parents. Sometimes that was the only thought that had kept her going. Now after five years of hoping, wishing, and dreaming, she learned they were both dead.
"It's not fair!" she screamed. She scrambled to her feet and for emphasis she kicked the pile of clothes. When that didn't sate her appetite for destruction, she kicked the rest of the piles. Then she grabbed a dress out of the pile and tore it in half. She threw the pieces aside and then reached for another dress.
After she finally expended herself, she collapsed on the floor again. She used the remains of a yellow dress to wipe at her eyes. It all seemed like a cosmic joke. The reverend and Mr. Pryde had brought her here and wiped her memory so that for five years she could hope to see her parents again. And now, on the eve of her going to look for them at last, a storm had brought her here so she could relive their deaths.
"It's not fair," she mumbled. She reached into her pocket for the picture on Pryde's bulletin board. They had been so happy, just a normal, happy family. It had all been taken away from her first by a reckless driver and then by Reverend Crane.
She stared at the picture for a while, until her rational mind kicked in again. Not all hope was lost. If her parents had died when she was twelve, then she must have gone to live with someone. She probably had other family on the mainland: grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Not even Mr. Pryde could have taken them all away from her. Or even if she hadn't gone to live with another family member, she might have foster parents who loved her as much as her own parents had. She couldn't give up yet.
As she pushed herself up to her feet, she felt something warm and sticky in her underpants. Samantha pulled down her pants and then her underpants. A large red spot dotted the white fabric of her underwear. Her period, that was what her mother had called it. Her period had happened again, which had brought back the memory of that horrible day.