PART 2
“The truck stop motel,” I said. “Room 6.”
Vic didn’t say another word. He dropped the clipboard in the snow and ran to his pickup.
I followed him in my own car. I don’t know why. I just did.
When he knocked on the door of Room 6, it opened a few inches.
April Tamblyn stood there in yesterday’s clothes, holding her little girl on her hip.
She looked at her father for a long time.
“Dad?”
Vic’s face crumpled. I’d known him for twenty-eight years. I’d never seen him cry.
“You called my line,” he said. “Last night. I didn’t recognize your voice. It’s been six years. I hung up on you. I told you to call your husband.”
“I don’t have a husband anymore,” she said quietly. “He left in June. I was driving home. To you. I was going to knock on your door on Christmas morning and ask if we could start over.”
Vic put his hand over his mouth.
“I almost let you freeze in a ditch,” he whispered. “Over four hundred dollars.”
The little boy, Bodhi, peeked around his mother’s legs.
“Mom, is that Grandpa? The one in the picture?”
April nodded.
Bodhi looked up at Vic very seriously.
“Mr. Ernie came and got us,” he said. “He had cocoa. You should be nicer, Grandpa.”
Vic knelt down in the motel doorway, in the snow, and held his grandson for the first time.
He didn’t let go for a long time.
They spent Christmas Day at Vic’s house. April told me later her father cooked a turkey for the first time in six years. He burned it. Nobody cared.
On December 26th, Vic called me.
“Ernie,” he said, “come back to work. I’ll double your Christmas bonus.”
“I don’t want a bonus, Vic.”
“Then what do you want?”
I thought about it.
“A new rule,” I said.
So now there’s a sign on the wall of Tamblyn Towing, right above the dispatch phone.
“FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN: NO CHARGE. NOT ON CHRISTMAS. NOT EVER.”
April and the kids moved back to Grand Forks in January. She works the front desk at the tow company now. Bodhi wants to be a tow truck driver when he grows up. He says he’ll keep blankets in his truck, just like me.
Last Christmas Eve, the blizzard came back. The phones rang all night.
Vic picked up every single call himself.
He didn’t ask anyone how much money they had.
At 3 a.m., he climbed into a truck and went out on a call himself. First time in fifteen years.
When he came back, he stomped the snow off his boots and handed me the clipboard.
“Family of four,” he said. “Ditch on Highway 2.”
He smiled.
“No charge.”
THE END.
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