Remember Me
by Charity Norman
Allen & Unwin
In June 1995, twenty-six year old Tawanui woman Leah Parata went hiking in the rainy New Zealand uplands in search of the endangered native Marchant snail she was studying. She never returned to her mother’s place and she seemed to have vanished completely. No traces were found – not a backpack, a shoe, a water bottle, her turquoise beanie, nothing.
But she is still remembered, and her brother Ira has spent the last 25 years walking the Ruahine Ranges in hope of finding something. Their father had died of a debilitating disease two years before Leah’s disappearance and Ira has maintained hope that someone must know where his sister is, even though the township searched the rough terrain for ages.
Twenty-one year old Emily Kirkwood remembers Leah as she was the last person to see her. Working at the local service station at the time, she sold Leah a chocolate bar as she set off on her trek. Now an illustrator of children’s books, Emily has returned from London to care for her 75 year-old father Felix who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Todd Tillerson is now the town’s lawyer and he remembers Leah. He can often be seen flying his small Cessna over the ranges. Leah and he had been an item in high school and he had never stopped searching for Leah. Leah’s mother Raewyn remembers her daughter with a smile, thinking that she would rather be up in the ranges than buried in a churchyard.
When Emily’s father, who had been the town’s doctor, starts calling his daughter Leah, he obviously remembers the missing woman in a way that nobody else does. When he gives Emily an envelope with instructions not to open it until he dies, Felix tells his daughter that the contents could do a great deal of harm if they emerge too soon, and Emily doesn’t know what to think.
With mist gathering in her father’s brain and pieces of his mind becoming deleted, Emily feels the burden of being entrusted with a secret. What is she to do with this secret and if the person who entrusted it to her should die, does she pass it on to the people who are part of the secret? Or are some truths better off remaining buried?
Lezly Herbert
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