18. Bryan
18
brYAN
“ N ova!” Amelia yelled as she ran into the kitchen. “We’re back!”
“I don’t think she’s here yet, sweetheart,” I said as I followed her into the kitchen. I hadn’t seen Nova’s car.
“But she said she would meet us at home,” Amelia pointed out.
“And she will. She said she had a lot of grocery shopping to do. I’m sure she’ll be home soon.”
“I wanted to surprise her with her lunch.”
“You still can. Just because we’re here before she is doesn’t mean that she knows we bought lunch for her,” I pointed out. “Do you want to eat yours now, or do you want to wait for Nova? Your French fries will get cold if you wait too long.”
I pulled out the items from the paper bag and set them up in front of Amelia on the kitchen table.
“Give me your coat,” I said, holding my hand out, expecting her to take her coat off and hand it to me. Instead, she held her arm out and pulled her hand inside. I looked at the sleeve without the hand before I realized she needed me to pull on the cuff. As I pulled on the coat sleeve, she retracted her arm and twisted until I was left holding the coat.
She ate her French fries, delicately, one at a time, carefully chewing and pausing between bites to take the sip of her drink. She ate so slowly and methodically. I was convinced that she would still have food left over by the time Nova returned.
I sat and ate my cheeseburger and fries with her. I had easily twice as much food, but it still took Amelia longer to eat.
I pulled out my phone and checked to see if maybe I had missed a message from Nova. There were no messages or texts. Nothing.
“What do you normally do in the afternoons?” I asked Amelia.
She shrugged.
“What do you and Nova do after lunch?” I asked again.
“We color or watch a movie.”
“How about I put a movie on? I’m sure Nova will be back in no time. Will you be okay if I do that and go into my office to do some work?”
Amelia shrugged. “Can I come in color in your office?”
I needed to be able to focus, and I knew my daughter could be a bit of a chatterbox, but I also wasn’t going to leave her on her own. I was certain that Nova would be back any minute.
“Sure, why not? Grab your things. Come on.”
I didn’t expect Amelia to be in my office for more than ten minutes. So after an hour had passed and Nova had still not returned, I started to be concerned. The snow was falling thicker and harder, and she had expressed a real concern about being able to drive in it. That was not a good combination.
I sent her a quick text and followed up with a call. The call didn’t go through. It went straight to voicemail. Maybe she was driving? She shouldn’t be answering the phone anyway, if that was the case.
But I didn’t like it. It was going to get dark soon. Being the shortest day of the year combined with the storm was not a good combination, especially for a nervous driver in a little car.
Her car might have been a good choice for driving in the city of Atlanta, where Nova was from, but it was not a good choice for the wintry roads up here. If she wasn’t back in a half an hour, we were going to go out and look for her. I managed to wait for another ten minutes before I was barking for Amelia to get her coat on.
“Where are we going?”
“I think we need to go find Nova. I’m afraid she might have gotten lost and forgotten how to get to the house from the grocery store.” As I started to explain it to Amelia, I realized that I didn’t need to make her nervous and scared for Nova. But I had an increased tightening in my shoulders and an uncomfortable flutter of nerves in my gut.
“Do you know which grocery store she goes to?” I asked Amelia as I fastened her into her car seat in the back. As if I expected a six-year-old to pay attention to where the cook shopped.
Of course, she wouldn’t know. How many grocery stores were there in town?
If I was going to go in search of Nova, I needed a plan. Taking my daughter out in a snowstorm was questionable at best, but Nova was out there, and I needed to find her.
I drove to the first store I could think of. I didn’t see Nova’s car on the road or in the parking lot.
“I don’t see her,” Amelia said mournfully.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find her.” But I felt a building anxiety at her absence.
I drove to the next grocery store I could think of, and from there I made my way back to the house. I did this back and forth driving as the road conditions got worse from home to store, to store to home.
She needed to be somewhere.
I hit the GPS to give me yet another route. It recalculated and directed me down a road I wouldn’t have thought about taking.
A thick layer of snow covered everything. But then through the snow, I saw flashing lights off the side of the road. I hit the brakes and turned my hazards on.
“Stay here,” I commanded Amelia as I pulled over and jumped out of the car.
The snow on the ground was not smooth and even. It was lumpy and churned up like there had been a fight. From the position of the car halfway in the ditch, it looked like Nova had lost.
“Nova!” I yelled as I yanked open the car door.
“Bryan,” she cried and fell into my arms.
“Are you okay? What happened?” I ran my hands over her hair and over her arms and shoulders. “I’ve been calling you. We’re so worried.” I clutched her to my chest.
“Stupid deer.” Nova’s teeth were chattering together. She was wrapped up under a tattered quilt. “My phone battery died. I didn’t think I could walk. It’s too far, and these boots suck at keeping the cold out. I hoped somebody would drive this way,” she said through gasps of stuttered talking. She sounded as if she wanted to cry but was entirely too cold for any other emotion to take hold.
“What took you so long?” she asked.
“Come on, let’s get you warm.” I lifted her out of the car and carried her to the warmth of the SUV. I yanked open the passenger door and set her inside.
“The groceries,” she called out as I started to run to my side of the car. “They’re in the trunk.”
I let out a heavy breath of air. If she could tell me what to do, she was going to be fine. It took me a few trips to move the bags of groceries from the trunk of her car into the back of mine.
“Should we call a tow truck? My phone died as I was about to call for roadside assistance.”
“Not for a couple of days. Not until after the snow clears up, at the very least. They have to help people in bigger trouble.”
“But my car,” Nova said as I started to pull away.
“Your car isn’t going anywhere, and we need to get you home and warmed up. I can’t believe you’ve been out here all this time.”
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she admitted.
“Next time, you’re going to make sure you have a car charger and an extra battery for your phone.”
“I have those, but I left them at my apartment. Next time, I’m not driving when it’s snowing like this. That sounds like a better plan.”
“That is also not a bad idea,” I agreed.
She held her hands out to the vents and rubbed her fingers to get warm. It looked like the gloves I got her for a Christmas gift were needed.
“When we get back, I’m making a giant mug of hot chocolate,” she said.
“When I get you home, you are getting wrapped up in blankets and put in front of a fire. I’ll make the hot chocolate. How are your toes?”
“Cold,” she said.
“Can you feel them? Wiggle your toes.”
“They are cold and wet,” she admitted. She reached down.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking my boots off. I told you they are crap at keeping my feet warm and dry. I want to put my feet in front of the heater.”
I grunted. She was cold. She deserved a chance at warming up. “You’ll have to put them back on once we get to the house.”
“Yuck, cold, wet socks.” She let out a sigh. “I’ll leave them on for now.”
She twisted and reached back for Amelia in the back seat. “Thank you for coming to get me. Did you do anything fun while I was stuck in the car?”
“Your French fries are probably cold,” Amelia said.
“You got me French fries? And I missed it?”
“We got lunch at the drive-thru,” Amelia said. “It was supposed to be a surprise, but you weren’t at home.”
“I love that you got me lunch. I’m sorry I messed up your surprise.”
“Have you had lunch?” I asked. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m too cold to be hungry. But now that you’ve mentioned it, I should probably eat something. I’ll heat up some soup when we get to the house.”
“I’ll heat up some soup. You are going to get warm,” I reminded her.
“Do you even know how to heat up soup?” she teased.
“Amelia can always show me how to use the microwave.”