Miles to Go (15 page)

“Son.”

My father rarely hugged me and never in front of others, so it felt unnatural. He held me for nearly a minute before he released me, stepping back, his hands still on my shoulders. Only then did I see that his eyes were red.

“Thank God you’re okay. When I learned that you had been stabbed …” He stopped, affected by emotion. He wiped his eyes with the back of one hand. “Are you okay?”

“Much better than I was four weeks ago,” I said, my mind swimming with questions. “How did you find me?”

“Falene called me.”

His reply only raised more questions. Falene was my assistant at Madgic, my former advertising firm and the only employee who had remained loyal to me when Kyle stole the agency. After McKale’s death, when I decided to shut everything down, I had asked Falene to liquidate everything I owned and put the receipts in an account for me. I knew she had been busy—evidenced by the growing bank account—but I hadn’t spoken to her since I left Seattle.

“How did Falene know where I was?”

“She didn’t. She had been tracking your walk by your credit card transactions until they stopped just outside of Spokane. She became worried that something had happened to you, and she called me to see if I’d heard from you.

“I’ve got to tell you, when she told me that you were walking across the country, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I didn’t even know you had left Seattle.”

“I’m sorry, I should have told you.” The truth was, my father and I had never been close, I hadn’t even thought to call him.

“After her call, the first call I made was to the Spokane Police Department. They told me that you had been assaulted and taken to the hospital. I called over there, but no one could answer my questions about where you were, so I flew up here and nosed around until I found someone who knew where you were.”

“Norma,” I said.

“A nurse, about yea high, blond.” He held his hand out horizontally from his chest.

“That’s her,” I said. I stepped back a little. “Come inside, let’s talk.”

My father stepped inside. Nicole had turned off the DVD and was standing near the couch watching us.

“Dad, this is my friend Nicole. She offered to take me in when the hospital released me.”

Nicole walked over to us, shaking my father’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Christoffersen. Please, sit down.”

“Thank you.”

My father walked over to the couch and sat. I shut the door behind him and sat down on the far end of the sofa. “Join us,” I said to Nicole.

She sat.

“Your name is Nicole?” my father asked. “I was told my son had gone home with a woman named Angel.”

“Angel’s my nickname,” she said.

He nodded. “Well, Nicole, I want to thank you for taking care of my son.”

“It’s been my pleasure. In fact, you might say that he’s been taking care of me.”

My father turned back to me. “Falene said that you were walking to Key West, Florida.”

“That’s the plan.”

He looked down for a moment as if trying to process my reply. “I don’t even know what to say to that. You told me that your business was struggling a bit, but you didn’t tell me it had gone under and you’d lost your home.”

“Things fell apart pretty quickly.”

He nodded. “I’m just glad you’re alive. You’re not going to keep walking now, are you?”

“As soon as the weather permits. I’m grounded here until spring.”

His forehead creased. “Could I talk you out of it?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Could I bribe you out of it?”

“No.”

He sat back. “It’s dangerous out there.”

“That’s for sure,” Nicole said.

After a minute my father asked Nicole, “How is it that you two know each other?”

Nicole said, “Serendipity, really. We met outside a town about a hundred miles from here when Alan stopped to fix my tire. The police called me after he was attacked.”

“That is serendipitous. Did the police catch the hoodlums?”

“Yes,” I said. “As far as I know they’re in jail. The kid who stabbed me is dead.”

My dad looked at me with a peculiar expression I’d
never seen on his face before—a hybrid between shock and admiration. “You killed him?”

“No, I was unconscious. The kid attacked the men who saved me and they shot him. He died in the same hospital I was in.”

My father just shook his head. “Where are the parents these days?”

Nicole leaned forward. “Mr. Christoffersen …”

“Bob,” he said. “Call me Bob.”

“Have you eaten?”

“I had a burger earlier.”

“That’s not acceptable on Thanksgiving Day. We have a complete Thanksgiving feast in the refrigerator. May I put something together for you?”

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all. You two just stay in here and catch up,” she said, running off to the kitchen.

“Nice gal,” my father said after she was gone.

“Yes she is.”

My father clasped his hands together in his lap. “When Falene told me you lost the house…” He looked up at me. “Why didn’t you call me? I could have helped.”

“I was kind of a wreck.”

“That and you didn’t feel like you could.”

I looked down. “I guess not.”

“I’m sorry for that. I truly am.”

Ten minutes later Nicole walked back in. “Dinner’s ready.”

My father smiled and stood. I followed him into the kitchen. The table was laid out with platters and a single dinner plate with utensils.

“Now that’s a feast,” my father said.

My father was never a big eater, but he surprised me, eating large portions and seconds of everything. I sat down next to him and ate slices of cold turkey breast sandwiched between rolls.

“How long are you in town?” Nicole asked.

“I was prepared to stay as long as I needed to.” He looked at me. “But now that I’ve found my son, I’ll probably leave tomorrow.”

“Why don’t you stay the weekend?” I asked. “It would be nice having you around.”

I could see that he appreciated my offer. “I’d like that.”

“Where are you staying?” Nicole asked.

“Over at the airport Ramada.”

“You could stay here,” she offered. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“No, no. I’m fine. All my stuff’s over there and it’s not much of a drive to get here.”

“Have you had enough to eat?”

“I’ve had enough for a small village. You don’t have any eggnog do you?”

Nicole smiled. “Plenty. I’ll pour you a glass.”

“I dilute it with milk, half and half.”

“Like father, like son,” she said.

When my father had finished eating, he thanked Nicole profusely. Then I walked with him out to his rental car. He started the car, turned on its defroster and wipers, then climbed out as it warmed.

“Thank you for coming,” I said.

“Of course I came.” He stood in the cold, his breath freezing before him. “I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep
since Falene called. So if it’s all right by you, I think I’m going to sleep in tomorrow.”

“Sounds good.”

He nodded. “I’ll see you sometime after noon. Good night, son.”

“Night, Dad.”

He opened the door and then stopped. “That Falene’s a nice gal. You better give her a call. She was beside herself with worry.”

“I’ll call her tonight.”

“She’ll be glad.” He climbed inside the car, then slowly pulled away from the curb. Nicole met me in the doorway.

“I can’t believe he came,” I said.

“And he likes eggnog.”

“He does like eggnog.”

“Glad someone does,” she said. “We’ve still got a whole gallon of it in there.”

I borrowed Nicole’s phone to call Falene. Her phone rang six times before it went to voice mail. I hung up without leaving a message, then redialed the number. I remembered that Falene rarely answered numbers she didn’t know but sometimes did if the caller was persistent. The phone rang awhile again and I was about to hang up when she answered. “Hello.”

“Falene, it’s Alan.”

Silence.

“Are you there?” I asked.

“Where have you been?”

I wasn’t sure if the question was rhetorical or if she really wanted an answer. “I’m in Spokane.”

“You’re in Spokane,” she said, her voice rising. “And I’m over here worried to death. Your father is out looking for you, I’ve been calling all the hospitals from here to Denver. For all I knew you were lying on the side of some road dead. Of all the selfish—”

“Falene—”

“I’m not done. You couldn’t take just five minutes and call me? I’m not worth just five minutes of your time? Here I’ve been killing myself liquidating everything, taking crap from the vendors and trying to answer these questions by—”

“Falene, I’m sorry. You’re right, I’ve been selfish.”

“No, you’re
incredibly
selfish. You’re the most selfish, insensitive—”

“Falene. Just stop.”

Surprisingly, she did, though she was still breathing heavily.

“Thank you,” I said.

She breathed out in exasperation. “Where are you?”

“I’m in Spokane,” I repeated.

“Your father’s in Spokane right now looking for you.”

“He found me.”

“He said you’d been stabbed. Is it true?”

“I was jumped by a gang. I was stabbed three times.”

“Where?”

“Just outside Spokane.”

“I mean, where on your body?”

“In the stomach. Fortunately, he missed all my vital organs.”

“Are you okay?”

“It took a few weeks before I could walk again, but I’ve mostly recovered.”

She breathed out slowly. “I’m sorry I got so mad. I’ve been terrified for the last three weeks. I was worried that something bad had happened and I was right.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’m not saying it’s an excuse, but I don’t have my cell phone anymore, so I don’t think about it.”

“What happened to your cell phone?”

“I threw it in a lake.”

She didn’t ask why.

“I didn’t know that you had been following me,” I said.

“Of course I’ve been following you.”

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m okay. I’ve finished liquidating all the furniture from the office. About half the furniture from your home is still at the consignment shop. There’s around forty-six thousand in the account. I hope it’s okay, but I took four thousand for my salary and to pay my brother for helping me.”

“I offered you half of what you brought in.”

“I know, but that was too much. I just needed a little. Besides, I got another job. I’m now the office manager at
Tiffany’s Modeling. I’ve tripled my modeling gigs and I get my head shots for free.”

“I’m glad that’s working out.”

“You know, being at Tiffany’s, I see a lot of the other agency guys we used to compete with. They ask about you all the time.”

“What do you tell them?”

“I tell them that you took a job with BBDO in the U.K.”

I laughed. “Why don’t you just tell them the truth?”

“It’s none of their business. Yesterday, I saw Jason Stacey from Sixty-Second. He told me that Kyle’s losing clients almost as fast as his hair and that he and Ralph parted ways. Ralph took a job with some credit union doing in-house graphic design.”

“That didn’t last long,” I said. Kyle had been my partner at Madgic. While I was caring for McKale, he had covertly started his own advertising agency, stolen my clients and talked Ralph, my head of graphic design, into coming on as his partner. I had hired and trained Ralph myself, so his betrayal was especially hard on me. “It’s only been about two months.”

“Apparently, cheaters don’t prosper. In fact you’ll never guess who I got a call from the other day. Phil Wathen.”

The name sent a pang through my body. Phil was a real estate developer, and it was his $6 million account I was pitching when I learned of McKale’s accident.

“What did Phil have to say?”

“He wanted to know if you’d consider taking him back as a client. I guess Kyle’s not keeping him happy either.”