Veteran Phil's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

The case sat clasped and ready by the door. Phil waited for the van with his hand on the satchel. Then the phone rang. Mary answered, listened, and set it down slow. "That was the senior center," she said. "A storm's coming. Big one. The driver's worried about the road." Phil's stomach dropped. Three hours of highway, and snow or wind halfway could strand him far from the farmhouse, far from the sister waiting without knowing he came. "Did he cancel?" Phil asked. "Not yet," Mary said. "He wants someone to decide." Claire was still on the porch, her bag on her shoulder. She came back in when she heard. Claire was the counselor who had taught Phil how to tell the dead man's sister the news. She did not waste words. "When's the storm hit?" she asked. "Afternoon," Mary said. Claire looked at the clock. "Then the morning's clear." She pulled out her phone. "I'll call him back. If he leaves now, he beats it there. He waits it out at the farmhouse, not on the road." Phil shook his head. "And if he's wrong? If it comes early?" He pictured the van stopped on an empty shoulder, the pages he had bound so carefully going nowhere. Claire did not argue the weather. "There's a coffee shop near the center," she said. "Warm. Open. If the driver won't risk the full run, you ride that far and wait there. You don't sit home another week." Phil knew what another week meant. He had waited four chapters of his life already, afraid of the wrong words, the dead car, the loose pages. Each time something had stopped him. He looked at the case. Forty-three pages. Tommy's unfinished one among them. The sister was ninety-one. She did not have endless weeks either. "Call him," Phil said. "Tell him we go now." Claire stepped onto the porch and made the call. Phil heard her plain voice, no pleading, just the plan laid flat. She came back in. "He'll do it. Leaves in five. If the sky turns before the halfway point, he pulls off at the coffee shop and we wait. If it holds, we drive straight through." Mary took Phil's coat from the hook. "Then we're going," she said. The van pulled up outside, wipers already set, the driver leaning to wave them on. Phil lifted the satchel and the case. His hands shook, but the clasp held. He stepped out into the gray morning air. The wind had an edge to it already. He climbed in. Mary beside him. Claire behind. The driver pulled away from the curb, and the house slid back in the mirror. For the first time, the road was under them and moving. The storm was still coming. But Phil was going toward the farmhouse now, not sitting still, and whatever the sky did, it would have to catch him on the way.