If I had to imagine what hell would feel like, I think it would loosely resemble this car ride.

We've been sitting in the car for over six hours now and Dad still hasn't said one word. The last time he spoke to me was last night after dinner when he said, "We'll be leaving at o-five-hundred sharp." I can't remember for the life of me if we used to talk more. It feels like we used to talk, like we used to be closer, but now I think maybe I was just imagining it. Since everything else in my life used to be great, I guess I overestimated whatever there was between us.

I've realized over the last few months that I've taken a lot of things for granted. For instance my plans for this summer were very different. It's my last summer before twelfth grade, the last one I can enjoy before finishing school. It's Expo 67. Mom promised me we would go. She said we should spend a whole week in Montreal to see as many pavilions as we could. It's the closest chance I'll ever have to visit many of the countries represented there. There is also supposed to be a pavilion on space and science. I have this silly fantasy, one I've only ever told Mom, of going into space one day maybe even being the first one on the moon. I don't tell other people though, I don't want anyone to make fun of me. When I talked about astronauts going on the moon in class Jennifer Peterson said I was a lunatic and that I should just shut up and focus on my sewing. I hate Jennifer Peterson.

Unfortunately, there is no Expo 67 for me. Instead we're headed to the same place we used to go every year when I was younger, to my mother's old family estate in middle-of-nowhere-Bic, some small village by the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec.

Because even if Mom made a lot of promises, she isn't here to keep them anymore. One second she's buying milk at the closest convenient store and the next she gets stabbed in the gut. The police officers said it was really bad luck.

I haven't seen Dad cry since Mom's death. I've cried, but never in front of him. My father isn't one to show emotions. When people asked him how it felt to be there on the shores of Normandy during D-Day he always answers, "wet and loud".

Since we're not going to Expo 67, I wish we would have just stayed home in Ottawa. I don't want to go to the stupid family estate, not without Mom. It's not going to be the same without her.

I bite my lips and stare outside. This car ride is torture.

We keep driving.

I see the sign that announces we're passing Rivière-du-Loup. My chest hurts. Whenever we would drive past it, Mom would start singing her own rendition of the song Moon River, but instead of singing Moon River, she would say Wolf River. It was awful, it was off key and I used to say it annoyed me. I'd give anything to hear it now.

Instead, I roll the window down. When I was younger I couldn't touch the windows because I was always sitting sandwiched in the front seat between my parents. When I started to sit in the back, I couldn't touch them either because the ones in the back don't work anymore, courtesy of one especially bad winter.

I close my eyes and take a big whiff of air. My mother always used to do this, "to smell the river's air", she'd say.

"Roll up the window please, the sound is annoying."

His first words of the day. My father likes the quiet. I don't understand it. My mother was always so lively, full of joy and laughter. At what moment did he suddenly start to despise it?

"Yes, sir."

I keep my gaze pointedly outside while I roll it up. My eyes fill with tears. I don't want to cry. I can't cry in front of him. He'll tell me to toughen up. Maybe he'll say he should have had a son. He's never said it, but I'm sure he thinks it.

Now that Mom is gone, there's no one to patch all the cracks in our relationship.

I look at my feet, where my worn out copy of Anne of Green Gables is sitting in my bag. I wish I didn't get car sick when I read during a ride so I could do something. I could read about Matthew Cuthbert and wish my father was more like him.

Instead I close my eyes. When I open them again I'm not sitting in a car anymore. I'm in the small skeleton ship in Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. My father isn't my father, he's Death. The skin on his face becomes even tauter around his skeleton and turns a sickly shade of gray. He's just skin and bones and misery. I'm not myself either. I see my reflection in the water and I'm worse than my father, with my blood red lips and my snow white skin, I'm Nightmare-Life-in-Death. It's worse than Death because there is no relief from the pain, no oblivion; it's just constant torture and ache.

I blink and I'm back in the car. I'm myself again, but not really. Since my mother's death I've forgotten who I was.

We keep driving.

I think I'm going to suffocate in the car. It's not just the warming air of mid June, it's this dreadful feeling settling between me and my father. In the house, it's easier to ignore each other, to stay in our own room, to stay far away from the other.

Sitting beside him right now, the only thing I can do is feel the disappointment and disapproval sweating out of him. We have nothing in common. He doesn't care about what I like. I have no idea if he's even capable of enjoying anything. I don't think he's ever truly came back from the war. Mom knew how to make him bearable. I don't think he cares about making an effort anymore.

We keep driving.

Up ahead, I see the Champlain Peak with the CBC tower, or well Radio-Canada's tower sitting on top of it. I almost yell out its name. When Mom was here we would always do it. It meant we were almost there.

I stay quiet instead. I assume I'll get used to this monotonous life.

Twenty minutes later we're turning on a dirt road that leads right into a forest. It looks like we're driving into an enchanted land. If I squirm my eyes a little, I'm sure I could see fairies.

We keep driving with the forest around us, going up and down and up and down, until finally, we emerge.

Even sad and unhappy, I can't help being awed by the sight. I always wondered if the first people that found this place thought they had died and gone to heaven.

Between two great mounts of green trees and gray rocks sits in a great bay a somewhat calm Saint Lawrence River that rocks to the caprice of the tides. When the sun sets over the water and between the two hills, it's like someone painted an imaginary picture of a perfect landscape. If I saw a painting of it, I would think someone made it up.

Behind the shore there are fields of grass and wild flowers, wheat and hay on an uneven landscape.

I roll my window down again. My father can complain. I don't care. I take a big breath. It smells like fresh air, sea salt and wild roses.

There are houses and barns scattered around the fields, like a tiny village hidden away.

We park at one of the houses. The people living there are the one that keep an eye on our place during the year while we don't use it. A man is working on his fence. He smiles our way and walks towards our car. My father steps out.

"You can stay in the car, this won't take long," he tells me.

I don't argue. I've always felt a little out of place with the people living here. I've never really made friends with any of them. They all speak French.

I've had some French classes in school, but I haven't learned enough to keep up a conversation.

Sitting in the car, I can hear bits and pieces of conversation over the sound of the running engine, the man answering my father in broken English.

My father comes back.

We drive again.

The rest of the road is a little bit trickier. The bay we first see when we drive through is beautiful, but our house is on the other side, by another bay, hidden away from everyone else. The path to reach it is narrow and muddy and I keep thinking we'll be driving off into a ditch.

Finally we turn and go up a hill and I can see the yellow house. I knew it would probably hurt when I would see it again, but I hadn't anticipated how much.

Mom used to love staying here. She always said she felt more at home in this house. I'm sure a part of her would have wanted us to stay here all year long. I remember one of the last evenings we spent, sitting on the porch as Mom kid around while we were reading Anne of Green Gables. She said we could move here and my book could be called Rose of Yellow House by the Shore.

I don't feel like Anne Shirley right now. I might feel more like Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre. Someone should hide me away in an attic.

We park the car and my father turns off the engine.

I keep staring at the yellow house. The windows aren't boarded up. I assume my father called in advance to have things set up for us.

We grab our bags and make our way inside.

"We eat at eighteen-hundred sharp," my father says and heads straight upstairs to his room. For some reason I expect him to bang his door loudly, but of course he doesn't. It clicks softly and I'm left alone in the house, the only sound being the clock slowly ticking.

I wonder what would happen if I screamed. Instead I make my way to my own room. I drop my bags by the door and sit on my bed, the spring box under my mattress making a soft squeaking sound.

I stare at the wooden wall in front of me. I take a deep breath.

I hate this summer.