The Night I Drove Three Hours for My Kids

The phone rang at 10:02 on a Saturday night in August, and I almost let it go to voicemail because I didn’t know the number.

I was standing at the kitchen sink rinsing Tom’s supper plate. He was in the recliner in the front room with his leg propped on two couch pillows, watching the Twins lose in the eighth.

“Is this Shelly Lund?” a woman asked. Her voice was older, careful, the voice of somebody who has practiced what she is about to say.

“It is,” I said, and I turned off the water.

“My name is Ruthie. My husband Howard and I are the campground hosts down at Great River Bluffs State Park. Your kids are fine. I want to say that first. They’re right here with us, and they’re fine.”

I have been a mother for eleven years. I know that when somebody tells you your kids are fine before you’ve asked, something is wrong.

“Where’s Darrell?” I said. “Where’s their uncle?”

There was a pause on the line. I heard a camp stove hissing somewhere behind her, and a little girl’s voice I would have known in a stadium.

“Honey, he’s gone,” Ruthie said. “He packed up his truck about eight o’clock and drove off. Your boy says they had a fight on the phone with somebody. He left the two of them up at site 14 with the tent and a lantern.”

I put my hand flat on the counter. The dish towel slid off my shoulder onto the floor, and I let it lie there.

“Food?” I asked. “Did he leave them food?”

“The cooler was in the back of his truck,” she said gently. “Your daughter walked down to our site about half past nine to ask if we had a phone charger. That’s how we found out. Howard’s making them hot dogs right now.”

Behind her, I heard Ellie laugh at something. I have never in my life been so grateful and so sick at the same time.

“Josh’s phone is dead,” Ruthie went on. “He gave me your number from memory. Said his mom made him learn it. Good for you, by the way.”

I had made him learn it in the spring, sitting at this very kitchen table, because he got his first phone for his eleventh birthday and I told him phones die and numbers don’t. He rolled his eyes at me for a week.

“I’m coming,” I said. “I’m coming right now. Can they stay with you until I get there?”

“They’re not going anywhere,” Ruthie said. “Howard will wait for you at the entrance so you don’t miss the turn in the dark. You drive careful. We’ve got them.”

Tom had heard enough from my side of the call. By the time I hung up, he had both hands on the arms of the recliner and was trying to get his good foot under him.

“Sit down,” I said. “Tom, sit down. You can’t.”

“Those are my kids.”

“And you’ve got six screws in your ankle and a cast to your knee,” I said. “You can’t drive. You can’t even get down the hall without me holding your elbow.”

He sat back down. I watched it cost him something. Tom is not a man who sits while somebody else goes, and I think that night was harder on him than it was on me in some ways.

He picked up his phone and called his brother. It went to voicemail. He called again. Voicemail. By the time I had my shoes on and my purse over my shoulder, he had called eleven times.

“He’s not picking up,” Tom said. His face was gray. “Beck, he’s not picking up.”

“I know,” I said. “Stay on the phone with me. Call me back the second I’m on the road.”

I thought about the sheriff. I want to be honest about that, because people have asked me since why I didn’t call 911 the minute I hung up with Ruthie.

The answer is that my kids were safe. They were sitting at a picnic table with two kind people and hot dogs. If I called it in, a deputy would come, and my kids would ride in the back of a squad car to sit in some office until I got there. I wasn’t going to do that to them on top of everything else.

So I grabbed the keys to the van and went.