The Night I Drove Three Hours for My Kids

Red Wing

Darrell lives in Red Wing, in a little blue rambler a few blocks up from the river. It is right on the way home. I don’t think I would have gone out of my way to do it, but I didn’t have to.

I pulled up across the street at 3:05 in the morning. Both kids were sound asleep in the back. Ellie had her mouth open, and Josh had one arm over his eyes, the way his dad sleeps.

Darrell’s truck was in the driveway. It was parked crooked, with the front passenger tire up on the grass, a foot from his mailbox. The cooler was still in the bed. I could see it in the streetlight.

I sat there for a full minute with my hand on the door handle.

I thought about knocking. I thought about what I would say if he opened the door, and I knew that whatever came out of my mouth at three in the morning would be something I would have to answer for later. I didn’t trust myself, and I didn’t want my kids to wake up to it.

So I got out quietly and left the van running. I walked up his front steps. His storm door has one of those little gaps at the bottom where the sweep has worn out, and I opened it just enough to slide the envelope in against the main door, where he couldn’t miss it in the morning.

His porch light was on. I could hear the television through the window, some old western, turned up too loud. I don’t think he was watching it.

I didn’t knock. I didn’t ring the bell. I went back down the steps, and got in the van, and drove the rest of the way home with the radio off and my kids breathing behind me.

I pulled into our driveway just before five. The kitchen light was on.

Tom was standing in the back doorway on his crutches. He had gotten himself up out of that recliner and down the hall and through the kitchen alone, which I had told him a dozen times he was not supposed to do.

He didn’t say a word. He just looked past me into the van, at the two sleeping heads in the back, and he put his forehead against the door frame and stood like that for a while.

I carried Ellie in. Josh woke up enough to walk, and he went straight to his dad and put his arms around him, cast and crutches and all, and Tom nearly went over backward.

“Hey, bud,” Tom said into his hair. “Hey. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Josh said, sleepy.

Tom looked at me over his head. Neither of us said anything. We both knew it was more complicated than that, and we both knew this was not the morning to say so.

I put them to bed in their own beds. Ellie still had Ruthie’s blanket on top of her own quilt. I didn’t take it off.