The white liquid sprayed all over the ground. Harriett looked at the bottle of coffee milk in her hand. If the colour of the dirt wasn't enough by itself, the date on the bottle was definitely a clear indication that Harry was now living remote; it was only a week past the used by date.

Washing her mouth out using the nearby tap, she wiped the last of the putrid taste from around her mouth, slicked back the loose strands of her long auburn hair, and traipsed back towards the car.

It wasn't hard to find. They were the only ones in the carpark.

"I wonder how often this servo sees people," David chuckled, smiling over at Harry.

"If my drink's any clue, then not very often." She grabbed the bottle of water off the backseat to replace the iced coffee she didn't get to drink, and unceremoniously dropped herself into the passenger's seat of the car.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" David inquired dubiously. "We could always just turn around and drive back to civilisation. We'll just say that you changed your mind. You're a woman, changing your mind is your prerogative, right?"

Harry grinned. "Yes, it is. And, no, I'm not changing it this time... It's only eight months. It'll go past in no time. Plus, there is no way that I could stand another 15 hours in the car, and I very much doubt that Charlie could either."

Looking over her shoulder, Harry pulled a face at Charlotte. The toddler giggled back, reaching her chocolate covered fingers towards her mother. Harry's eyes scanned over the child. Charlie's face closely resembled her hands, and her short light brown curls had lumps of Dairy Milk fusing it together like resin on the burnt edge of a ribbon. The arms of the car seat and the seat belt, not to mention Charlie's panda t-shirt, had streaks of brown crisscrossing haphazardly over the surface. Harry's mind conjured the image of the chocolate animal that was once a Furry Friend, as part of a violent murder scene, where her daughter was the vicious serial killer.

"That'll be a fun clean up job," she said to herself. 'Ah well, tomorrow's problem. At least it's not real blood."
David glanced at her quizzically, clearly thinking she'd gone insane, then began to reverse.

After driving past a half dozen sparsely populated streets, a sign directed them to the town centre. Harry couldn't for the life of her figure out who would need the direction, but she had heard that people in the country were a little bit more backward than regular folk. Her little knowledge of the outback, and the sign in front of her did little to prove differently.

Driving through the town, Harry was greeted by an image from an old Western. Though the streets were bitumen, they were wide enough that David could have driven their car down the centre of the road, while a car parked in each gutter, and a vehicle coming in each direction would still have had ample room to go around him. Next to what was obviously the grocery store, a grand old weather board pub stood displaying the establishment's name in large saloon style block letters.

"Mercy Hotel... Good to see their names are original." Harry commented sarcastically.

"This is your last, last chance. Are you sure that you want to go through with this?" David's eyes implored her. 

She really was asking a lot from him. She may have been putting herself out of her comfort zone by taking a Principal's gig in a small school when she'd only been a teacher for six years (and six months of that she'd been off on maternity leave), but she was demanding even more from him. She hadn't had to give up her livelihood, her daily purpose, her social connections, knowing that she was going to be trapped in a house with no-one to talk to but a toddler for the majority of the time for the foreseeable future. While she went to work and continued to stimulate her mind, David would be stuck on babysitting duty. It may have been his choice as much as hers, and he may have had the option too say "no" but Harry knew that this was a sacrifice that David was making for her, and despite his little digs, he would make it with fairly little complaint, no matter how much it taxed him.

"The answer was 'yes' when we signed the break lease form, and 'yes' when the removalists arrived. It was 'yes' when we backed out of the drive way, it was 'yes' when we got onto the highway, and still 'yes' when we took the turnoff in land. It was 'yes' when we left the last McDonald's, 'yes' when the last radio station dropped out, 'yes' at the service station, despite the nasty milk, and it is still 'yes' now. Mercy Creek is going to be good for us, and if we hate it, it's only until the end of the year."

"Well, at the very least, we shouldn't need to worry about dying in a car accident. Have you noticed the width of the roads?"

As Harry smirked in acknowledgement, she pointed to her right. The local courthouse stood just around the corner, back from the road. The only thing that differentiated the colonial style building from the houses they'd passed as they'd driven through town was the official looking sign posted on the fence, and the wheelchair ramps sign-posting the entrance to two separate front doors.

David pulled up in front. "I'll get Ranger a drink while we wait." he said.

"I've just got to get the keys," Harry replied as she eagerly rushed up the ramp.

When Harry finally got back in the car, it was obvious that she was ready for the day to be over. She pulled off her baby pink thongs and rested her feet against the cup holder in the car door. Her shoulders slouched and her green eyes drooped. As David opened his mouth to make a comment about the length of time she'd spent in the courthouse, she provided him with a fierce glare that firmly put him back in his place. 

The wait had seemed an eternity. There had been a teenager sorting her learner driver's licence, a man trying to re-register a tractor that he had gotten from a friend of a friend, the women behind the counter were learning a new computer system, and one of them was set in to have a good chat with every customer, making her virtually useless when it came to actually getting anything done. And this was all before Harry had been given her paperwork.

Harry jingled their new keys in her left hand, while absently rubbing her clavicle with her right. The gesture produced the same familiar dull pain it always did when she played with her collarbone but on this day, Harry hardly noticed it.

The car pulled back onto the road, turning north towards the edge of town. David slowed the car to a crawl behind a young girl working her horse. Harry would have normally made a quip about the unusual scene but at that moment, it was just slowing her down from the hot shower that awaited her at their new house.

"You know where we're going, right?" she inquired absentmindedly.

"The only house behind the school?" 

David pointed ahead as he began slowing the car.

Two minutes from the town centre, and they were already there. It was time for Harry to discover what life had in store for her for the next eight months.

Thanks for reading Part 1 of Mercy's Hope? Are there any key details that you feel I've overlooked that you need to know? What would you like to learn more about it the chapters to come?