Chapter 1

The trailer of produce he was supposed to take on to its destination had gotten overturned on the highway well before it got to him, so Bill Curtin arrived back home a couple of days earlier than planned. He turned into his street just in time to discover that his wife had a boyfriend who’d been overnighting at his house. He ran to escape his pain, leaving his broken family behind him.

I walked through the door from the truck stop washroom to the diner, heading towards an empty table in the corner. The waitress was there with the coffee jug just as soon as I sat down, my kitbag on the bench seat beside me. I turned my cup over, thanked her and stirred in some sugar before taking a sip. Yeah, freshly made, strong enough to do some good, and with a bite to savor.

I felt refreshed and relaxed. I’d called home as soon as I’d parked up, updated my log, then enjoyed a hot shower and a change of underclothes. A good meal, a sit down until my break time was up, and then I’d be back on the road.

I looked around the place. Just over half the tables were occupied, mostly by lone male truckers like myself, a couple of women drivers. There was a straggly-haired girl with a backpack going around, speaking briefly to each diner and showing them something. I took another gulp of my coffee and stroked my beard as I looked at the menu.

The girl reached the table next to me; I overheard her words to the guy sitting there, and they shocked me to my core.

“Mister, I’m trying to find Bill Curtin. This is him. Have you seen him anywhere, please?”

The trucker stared at the picture for a moment, and then shook his head.

“Sorry, miss, I don’t remember ever seeing this guy.”

She thanked him and moved on to me. I took a look at the photo. It must have been taken six, maybe seven, years before.

“Yeah, that’s Bill alright. Not a name I’ve heard for quite some time. This dates from a while back if I guess right.”

She let out a squeak; her face suddenly became more animated. The mechanical monotone, the product of repeating the same question over and over again without any hope of success, was also gone from her voice.

“You know him?”

“Sure, used to see a whole lot of him when we were both on the Mexican run, must have been five, six years ago I guess. He’s still around, still driving.”

“Omigod! At last! Someone who remembers him! Do you know where I might find him?”

I stared slowly at her face. There was a ray of hope showing where there had been sadness and resignation. She seemed desperate to find Bill, but the real important question for me was whether he wanted to be found. I’d have to take this real slow.

“I reckon that I’ve an idea where he might be. Care to tell me why you’re looking for him?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’d like to hear it. Come sit down, Miss. Will you have some coffee while you tell me about it?”

Her smile showed hope, relief and gratitude. I reckoned that she was pleased to be able to take a break from asking the same question over and over, and a coffee would be welcome.

“Please!”

She pulled off her backpack, dumped it on the bench seat, wriggled out of her coat and sat herself down facing me across the table.

I gestured to the waitress, who saw me turn my guest’s cup the right way up, brought the jug over and poured me a refill while she was there. I looked at the girl more closely. She was probably still in her teens, but it was hard to tell from her appearance. She seemed pale and worn; her hair was tangled and dirty. Her face was smudged and she wore no makeup. It looked like she was travelling real light, and not looking after herself.

“Thank you.”

She gulped the coffee like it was ambrosia, the elixir of life. It was great coffee – like most of the drivers at that truck stop, I wouldn’t have been eating there if it hadn’t been – but it wasn’t THAT great. I waited patiently until she’d swallowed it all down. I’d have said she needed it; I could almost see it giving her renewed strength. That’s why the good Lord gave us coffee, I guess.

She looked at me again, her face a little more healthily colored, but still looking tired and worn.

“I’m his daughter, Chrissie. I want to find him; he left us five years ago, and now my Mom is dead, my brother is in Afghanistan, and I’m on my own. Mom’s boyfriend was pressuring me to take her place, so I came looking for my Dad. Please, Mister, I’ve GOT to get my Daddy back!”

I let out a long breath, willing myself to speak and act calmly. With the speed my heart was racing now, it was an effort to keep myself under some sort of control. This was gonna need some REAL careful handling, and I hadn’t expected to encounter this situation when I’d parked my truck outside half an hour earlier. Heck, I hadn’t ever anticipated such an event, even in my craziest thoughts. I couldn’t afford to blow this; Bill had way too much riding on it. He’d never in a million years have thought that his daughter would come looking for him, wanting him back.

“That sounds real bad. Chrissie, I’m Steve Miller, and I knew your dad real well. Before we talk any more, when did you last eat?”

She couldn’t meet my eyes. That gave me my answer. As I’d thought, she was skimping on the meals.

“I had some lunch.”

“Then it’s surely time you had some dinner.”

I could tell that she was about to admit that she couldn’t afford to pay for a meal, so I got in there ahead of her, ensuring that her pride didn’t let her refuse.

“Bill would be real pissed at me if I didn’t eat with his daughter and catch up on her news. It’s on me.”

I waved at the waitress, who came straight over. Like in any good place, she carried the coffee jug everywhere she went, and she filled Chrissie’s cup again.

“Two specials please. With everything.”

“Cooked to order? About ten minutes?”

“That would be good. Thanks.”

She smiled at us and headed for the order counter.

“Chrissie, do you want to wash up before we eat? I’ve just had a shower and a change of clothes; you look like you haven’t stopped all day.”

She raised a half-smile on her face. That was an improvement.

“Yeah, I sure could use some hot water and a mirror. I’ve been looking for Dad for a while, and I can’t afford hotel rooms. This is the fourth truckstop today!”

“Okay, you go and get cleaned up. I’ll still be here when you come back, I promise.”

She grinned happily and went off.

I sat back on the bench seat and thought, hard. Jeez, this had come out of nowhere. Bill Curtin’s daughter suddenly appearing in search of her Dad. Now, exactly what was her motivation? I’d need to be certain of exactly why she was asking before I decided to tell her where Bill was. This was going to be real interesting, but I hadn’t a clue as to which way it would go. It was a long time since I’d talked to an eighteen-year-old girl about anything more than the truckstop menu or which fuel card they accepted.

Chrissie looked a whole lot better when she returned. She’d not had time for a shower, (I wasn’t too sure that she had the spare cash to pay for one) but she had washed her face and combed out her hair, and that had clearly raised her spirits. The waitress brought our food, and I checked with Chrissie before I asked her to add two root beers to help it down.

I ate my meal slowly; Chrissie started hungrily wolfing hers down before she remembered that she had claimed to have had lunch. I normally don’t have dessert afterwards; it’s too darn easy to pack on just a little bit of extra weight when you sit behind a wheel all day or all night, which is why I don’t carry along a selection of candy bars either – too much like temptation. For the benefit of my guest, I did order two portions of pie with ice cream; Chrissie had eaten up all of hers before I was half way through my bowl, and I very nearly offered her the rest of mine before I caught myself. That was too affectionate and natural a gesture just yet.

We sat back with another fresh coffee. I hoped she was used to drinking coffee, she’d probably gotten more caffeine in her system right now than I’d ever had when I was her age. My folks hadn’t let me drink ‘adult’ coffee until I was 16, they’d joked that I was quite hyper enough without it.

“Okay, Chrissie, you said that you had a tale to tell me about Bill Curtin.”

The girl had guts. She looked me straight in the eye as she related how her Dad had been a long-distance trucker, and some five or six years earlier her Mom had gotten herself a boyfriend to warm her bed while her husband had been out driving. One day her Dad simply hadn’t come back from a trip; there was no message, no call, nothing. His paychecks stopped being paid into the bank; her Mom was already working but had to take on extra hours. The boyfriend moved in to the house, and did pay some of the bills, but things were suddenly real tight. Eighteen months ago her brother had reached the age of 18 and immediately enlisted in the Marines; a year later her mother had been diagnosed with advanced cancer, and had died three weeks before tonight. There was no medical insurance, the house would have to be sold to pay the bills, and then the boyfriend had started suggesting that Chrissie might share his bed. She said she stood it for almost two weeks, locking her own bedroom door every night, and had then taken the photo of her Dad, all the cash she could find, and gone on the road to find Bill.

“Do you really believe he will want to see you after this time?”

Her face showed her uncertainty and pain.

“Oh god, I do hope so! I’ve been praying that I can locate him. I’ve no idea what I’d do if I can’t find him, probably have to enlist myself. I might manage to find a job, but I’ve got no experience, and I don’t know how or where I’d live on minimum wage.”

I sucked a tooth for a moment while I considered her statement. The kid was only 18 and had just lost her Mom, so it was natural she’d be worried about what was gonna happen to her. Had she been that concerned about what had happened to her father since he’d vanished? I needed to push her a bit on that before I gave away Bill’s location.

“He wouldn’t want me to leave you stuck like that. We’ll think of something. Problem is, Chrissie, he’s gone over the story with me quite a few times. He was on the Mexican produce run, and one day the eighteen-wheeler trailer he should have been picking up turned over with the previous driver. 40,000 pounds of avocados turned to guacamole right out there on the highway. One hell of a mess, I heard. So he had no load, and headed back home to his depot two days early. Got there shortly after breakfast time, walked over to his house just in time to see some strange guy kissing his wife on the doorstep, and then his kids going off to school two minutes later. He took off out of town right away, thinking that his wife had hung horns on him, and his kids were happily going along with it. He reckoned that he was better off without the whole lot of them.”

Chrissie started weeping when she heard my words. I pushed my hand over the table so she could hold it and feel my sympathy. I hadn’t intended to hit her hard like that, but she needed to see it from her Dad’s point of view.

In between her sobs, she explained that her Mom had sprung the boyfriend on her and her brother, and told them that if their father found out then they’d never see him again, so they had to keep quiet. They’d been real unhappy at covering up for their mother’s cheating on their Dad, but felt that they had no choice. Then, only a few months later, their Dad had just vanished, not returned home at the end of his trip, not been heard of since.

“We felt dreadful! Dad was just gone, we had no way of getting in touch with him; Joey and I went over to the dispatch office, but all they could tell us was that Dad had quit with no notice and they had no idea where he had gone.”

“What did you want to say to him?”

“Why, that we loved him and wanted him home again. You said that he thought we were going along with Mom having a boyfriend? No, we absolutely hated it, knew she was cheating on Dad, but she gave us no option. She swore that if we told Dad and there was a divorce, as our mother she’d almost certainly get custody, especially as he was away most of the time, and that then she’d really make us regret what we’d done. If we kept quiet and allowed Mom to have her boyfriend in the house while Dad was away, then we’d be okay for money and everything would be fine. Oh god, she’s dead, but I still hate her for doing that to our family. I’ve nowhere to go, and Dad is out there somewhere all alone too, not knowing that Joey and I still love him and need him. I’ve GOT to find him and tell him we want him back in our lives!”

I looked her in the eye. Yeah, their mother most probably would have gotten custody, even with her doing the cheating. The kids hadn’t had a whole lot of choice, hell, they were only young kids at the time, what chance did they have of getting listened to?

I was now totally convinced that Chrissie was telling the truth; she did want her father back for the right reasons. Part of me that had died five years earlier took a first shuddering breath of revival.

“So you really want to be back with your Dad, not just knowing that he’s okay?”

“Yes, more than anything. I feel like I’ve betrayed him as well, and I want to spend the rest of my life making him proud of me again, like he used to be. It’s been a long time, and we’ve all altered, but I want to be with him and make a proper home for him, because he hasn’t had one since Mom cheated on him.”

I stared at her for a few moments. I guess that she’d only been thirteen, and her brother not yet fifteen, when their mother had issued that ultimatum. Kids, just kids. Jeez, what an awful place to be. It wasn’t their fault, they’d had no say in the matter. My decision was a no-brainer.

“Okay, Chrissie, I’ll tell you about your Dad. He was heartbroken when he thought you’d taken your mother’s side, and he quit his job and hitched a ride with a friend to get away from town. He changed his name, and started driving trucks again. He grew a beard and tried to forget you all, but he couldn’t. Oh god, Chrissie, honey, you have no idea how much I’ve missed you and Joey.”

My daughter stared at me for the longest time, then threw herself round the table and grabbed me, howling her emotions into my shoulder. I put my arms around her and let her cry, feeling the body-shaking sobs as her pent-up feelings let rip. I don’t know how long she was there, but eventually the tears slackened off and she looked up. I kissed her forehead, just like I used to when she was younger.

“Chrissie, sweetheart, I’ve missed five years of your life, and we’ll never get that time back. You’ve grown up to be a woman, and I wasn’t there for you. I can hardly believe you’ve changed so much. My little girl grown up! I’m never going to let you go again. Please tell me that you’ll stay with me?”

She smiled through her tear-strewn face.

“Just try keeping me away, Dad!”

I hugged her and held her for a while. Then she stirred.

“Dad, I brought a photo of Joey with me. You want to see it?”

“You have? Great!”

She pulled away and rummaged in her backpack, pulling out a cheap card photographic folder of a guy wearing a camouflage outfit, the flags on each side showing it was a posed shot.

“Wow! He’s sure grown up. Quite a hunk now?”

She giggled.

“That’s what a lot of my school friends thought when I showed them the photo! Joey told me he put on more than ten pounds of muscle during basic training, what with all the physical exercise and as much food as he could eat.”

“He’s looking real good. I can’t wait until I can see him in person. When’s he due to finish in Afghanistan?”

“About four months, he said, unless they extend it.”

“Let’s pray they don’t. Say, do you write to him or can you email?”

“I used to email or message him from the computer at home, but I haven’t been able to do that since I wrote and told him I was going looking for you.”

“Remind me when we stop next, and we’ll send him a message that you’ve succeeded in finding me and that you’re safe. We don’t want him worrying about you any longer than he has already.”

“That would be great. He’ll be real glad to know.”

I looked at my watch. Jeez, time had flown by. My break period was up, it was way past time to get back on the road.

“Honey, you and me, we’ve got a truck to take to Atlanta. It’ll take two days, so we can get to know each other again, and then we’ll do some serious planning.”

Her happy face was both my answer and my reward. I beckoned the waitress over, asked for coffee, sandwiches, donuts and root beer to go for two, and packed Chrissie off to the washroom to refresh her ravaged face and use the facilities, warning her that we’d be on the road for a few hours.