Chapter 5 - AN OFFER OF FREEDOM AND AN ULTIMATUM
Inside, Dad had shut himself in his den, and Mom was wiping a spotless counter. No one spoke to me for the remainder of the morning, though my phone kept lighting up.
Strangers had commented beneath Dana’s bakery post: one woman who’d once operated county plows with Walt, a nurse from Duluth, and a grandmother in Fargo who was praying for me. Then I received a message from a name I’d not seen in years: Ava Linkfist, now twenty-one and attending college in Mano.
“Is this you? You waited with me in that parking lot when I was 14. I never forgot it. I hope you’re okay.”
Reading her words on my bed, I had to set the phone down.
Just before one, Marisol answered my job inquiry.
“It’s yours. You start February 9th. I’m proud of you, kid.”
Her pride came without a warning or qualification, unlike Dad’s. I replied simply.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Mom appeared holding a laundry basket she didn’t seem to have any use for.
“Was it really that cold?” she asked, barely meeting my eyes.
I could have pointed out the bruises on my knees or told her everything she’d allowed to happen. Instead, I stated the temperature.
“It was 12 below, Mom.”
She nodded faintly and left. Tyler crossed past my bedroom twice without looking through the doorway.
I changed, put on my coat, and took the Corolla keys. It still belonged to Dad, but the afternoon was mine. I drove toward the hospital in St. Cloud along roads the snowplows had finally cleared to bare pavement.
Walt had been transferred out of intensive care to a fourth-floor step-down unit. When I arrived, he sat upright, eating red Jell-O with intense concentration. A heavy cast covered his left arm to the elbow, and a dressing protected the cut on his forehead. Dana sat beside the window.
He lowered his spoon when he recognized me.
“Blue scrubs,” he said. “Without the scrubs. You clear tailpipes for a living now?”
I burst into laughter so unexpectedly that I covered my mouth. It was the first genuine laugh I’d managed in almost a day. Walt patted the mattress with his uninjured hand.
“Sit. Dana tells me you had a worse night than I did.”
“I didn’t break anything,” I said.
“You gave away your coat in a blizzard,” he said. “That’s not nothing.”
He talked about his thirty-one years clearing county roads, often working through the night while other people slept.
“You know what I learned out there? The road doesn’t care whose rule it is. A drift is a drift. You either clear it or somebody freezes.”
He peered at me over his reading glasses.
“In this state, they’ll find you if you drive past somebody in trouble and don’t at least call it in. Did you know that? Minnesota says you have to stop. Your father’s house says you have to be home by 10:00. Seems to me you only broke one of those, and it was the smaller one.”
Dana shifted forward in her chair.
“Okay, I’m just going to say it. Dad owns a duplex in Sock Rapids, 10 minutes from your folks. The upstairs has been empty since my mom died. The doctor wants somebody close by when he goes home in that cast, at least 6 weeks, and he won’t let me move in because he says I hover.”
Walt grumbled.
“She hovers.”
Dana ignored the interruption.
“The last tenant paid 750. No deposit. Please.”
I looked down at my aching hands. Even inside the warm hospital room, the previous night still seemed to linger in them.
“I’d pay the deposit,” I said. “And I need to think about it.”
Walt accepted that without trying to rush my decision.
“Thinking’s good. Just don’t do it in a driveway.”
I returned to my parents’ house at 5:58 that evening. Everyone was already gathered around the living-room television, tuned to Channel 7, with the solemn faces of people attending a funeral. Nobody greeted me.
The report lasted ninety seconds. It showed Walt in his hospital bed, giving a thumbs-up with his good hand; Dana outside her bakery describing how I’d saved him; and me beside the Corolla explaining the danger of blocked tailpipes. Then the recording of my voice played.
“Yes. I got home at 10 after 12, and the chain was on.”
Dad switched off the television before I could finish my next sentence. His phone vibrated on the coffee table. After reading the screen, his jaw tightened.
“Kitchen,” he ordered. “All of you.”
He occupied the head of the table and placed his phone facedown beside his plate, just as he did at school meetings when he wanted everyone aware he possessed information they didn’t. Mom sat on his right; Tyler chose the distant end. I remained standing until Dad indicated a chair.
“That was Dr. Kesler,” he said.
She was his principal.
“She asked whether I’d prefer to sit out the character counts assembly on Monday. Sit out. Three parents have called the school today. Three.”
After allowing that to sink in, he read aloud from his screen.
“Is this the same Mr. Mercer who gives kids lunch detention for being 2 minutes late to homeroom?”
He scrolled to another comment.
“Somebody should check on that girl.”
He turned his phone around, showing us the bakery’s logo above the post.
“26 years I’ve spent in that building teaching other people’s children that actions have consequences. And in one morning, my own daughter has made me a joke in the comments of a cupcake shop.”
The accusation in his eyes suggested I’d personally authored every response.
“So, this is what’s going to happen tonight. You’re going to post on that bakery’s page. You’re going to say the story got exaggerated. The lock froze. You chose to stay in the car, and you’re going to apologize to this family.”
May you like
He added his ultimatum.
“Or,” he said, “you can move out by next Friday, and the car stays here because it’s mine.”
