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“You’re the angel, like the one in my book.” She pointed to the colorful cover. “See?”
“I’m not an angel,” Starla denied, glancing at the picture of the platinum-haired celestial being. “I’m just a person.”
Meredith shook her head. “Says you’re a angel right on the door of this truck, don’t it?”
“That’s just the name of the truck. Men are silly like that. They name things. Like trucks. My dad calls his truck Silver Angel.”
“You’re the angel,” the child insisted, pointing. “This one.” She opened the book and turned pages until she came to a picture of the woman sprinkling sparkly dust. There was a smear that appeared to be ketchup across the corner of the page. “See right here?” Meredith turned enormous blue eyes on her. “My daddy needs some of your miracle dust. Please say you’ll help him.”
“That’s just a story,” Starla told her. “It’s pretend. If I was an angel, what would I be doing driving a truck across Iowa in a snowstorm?”
Not to be dissuaded from her cause, Meredith ignored the denials and used five-year-old logic to explain, “Aunt Edna who lives at the nursey home said she was in a car crash once, and a beautiful angel in a white robe sat right on the seat beside her and kept her from going off a bridge.”
“Your aunt Edna is in a nursing home?”
“She’s not my aunt. That’s just her name. She’s prob’ly somebody’s aunt, though.”
“Well, as you can see,” Starla replied, gesturing to her cashmere V-neck sweater and jeans, “I don’t have a white robe.”
“Uh-huh.” Meredith nodded and pointed to where Starla’s white satin dressing gown and pajamas hung on a plastic hook.
“Those are my pajamas.” Starla shook her head in negation. Or was it confusion? “How did you get in here?”
“I watched when Miss Rumford carried dishes to the back. When you got your coat, I followed. I was behind the gas pumper and saw you take your papers from inside and walk around, looking at the tires and the lights and stuff. You left the door open.”
She certainly had. After all Dad’s warnings.
Meredith scooted toward the edge of the bed. “I have to go potty.”
Starla held her forehead in her hands, her mind thrown into overdrive. She would have to take this child back to her parents. To her father. To that café. She was going to lose…her gaze shot to her watch…nearly three hours, even if she made good time!
The child’s family would be frantic by now.
“Meredith,” she said suddenly. “We have to let somebody know that you’re okay.”
“Daddy’s going to be mad. Really mad.”
“I’m sure he’s more worried than mad.”
“I really have to go potty.”
Ten minutes later, after showing Meredith the camper-size toilet, digging a bag of popcorn from a supply cupboard, then buckling her into the seat belt on the passenger side, Starla asked. “Do you know your phone number?”
Meredith nodded and reeled off the number. Starla jotted it on the edge of a log sheet on her clipboard and unplugged her phone to dial. She got an answering machine. “He’s not there.”
Of course he wasn’t there. He was either at the café or at the sheriff’s department, reporting a missing child.
“He gots a cell phone, too,” Meredith told her.
“Oh! Do you know that number?”
Meredith shook her head.
“That’s okay. I’ll call information for the café. What’s it called?”
“Miss Rumford’s restaurant?”
“Yes, what’s the name of it.”
“Miss Rumford’s restaurant.”
“Of course.” Starla called long distance information and asked for the café in Elmwood, Iowa. She jotted another number down and called it.
“Waggin’ Tongue,” a male voice said.
“Oh, hi. Um, is there a man there who is looking for his daughter?”
“Charlie! It’s for you!”
At the man’s shout, Starla jerked the phone away from her ear, then returned it tentatively. “Hello?”
“Hello!” a man said into the phone. “This is Charlie McGraw.”
“I don’t quite know how to say this,” she began. “I have your daughter with me—”
“Oh God,” he said. “What do you want? Is she all right?”
“She’s fine, she’s just fine. I…I don’t want anything.”
“Please don’t hurt her. Let me talk to her!”
Starla held out the phone. “Meredith, tell your father that you’re all right.”
Meredith sank back against the seat and shook her head, her chin lowered to her chest.
“Just say you’re okay, so he knows. He’s worried about you.”
Meredith shook her head, and her lower lip protruded enough to park a truck on it.
“She’s afraid,” Starla began to explain, talking into the receiver.
“What’s wrong? What have you done with her? Where are you?”
“I haven’t done anything! She thinks you’re mad at her. We’re on I-80, almost to Rock Island. I just discovered her in my sleeper about fifteen minutes ago.”
“Discovered her? What do you mean?”
“Well, she’s a…a stowaway.”
“You’re telling me she got into your truck all by herself?”
“Apparently. She keeps calling me the angel lady and asking me to sprinkle you with miracle dust.”
An audible groan came from the other end of the line.
“I’ve tried to explain that I don’t have any special powers, but she’s convinced I can do something she wants me to do.”
“Put the phone to her ear, will you, please?”
Starla reached out and placed the phone to the little girl’s ear. “You’ve got her.”
Meredith’s wide blue eyes accused Starla for a moment, then she turned her gaze away while she listened. She gave a half nod, caught her lower lip between her teeth. A tear formed at the corner of her eye. “I love you with my whole heart, too, Daddy,” she said finally. “I will. Okay. I will.”
She looked at Meredith. “He wants to talk to you.”
“I’m really sorry about this,” the man said to her. “And I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’ve been out of my head with worry.”
“I can imagine.”
“Look, I can come get her.”
Starla glanced at the clock on the dash. “No, I’ll bring her back. I’d rather do that than sit here and wait. We’ll be there in an hour and a half or so.”
“The weather’s getting worse,” he said. “Take your time.”
“I’ll drive carefully. I have to find a place to turn around.” It was easy for him to tell her to take her time. She was the one losing precious hours needed to deliver her load on schedule. They exchanged cell phone numbers and he told her to let Meredith call him if she wanted and he’d pay for the charges.
Starla buckled in, pulled out onto the pavement and watched for an Exit sign.
“Can we listen to your music some more?” Meredith asked.
Starla flipped on the CD player, and music filled the cab.
“Is this angel music?”
“Nope. It’s a soundtrack.”
“Oh. Some angels don’t have wings that show, isn’t that right?”
The windshield wipers cleared two arcs and Starla peered into the driving snow and spotted the green sign indicating an exit. “I wouldn’t really know about that.”
Within minutes they were headed back the other direction.
“Do you know my mommy?”
Starla kept her attention on the white blur of road and sky. “I don’t think so. I don’t know anyone in Elmwood.”
“No, my mommy’s in heaven. She’s a angel, too.”
She absorbed that information with equal measures of understanding and sympathy. “Meredith, I’m not an angel. I’m just a person. I was a baby once and I went to school, just like you.”
The child straightened in her seat, settled the book squarely on her lap and opened it. “This is the mommy and daddy,” she explained, pointing to an artist’s rendition of a couple in a house with a roaring fireplace. “The daddy has lots of work to do, and he goes to his job with his beefcase.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“He comes home too late at night and the mommy and the little kids are sad, ’cause they miss him.” She turned a page. “See they make cookies, but the daddy isn’t there. And they decorate the tree, but the daddy isn’t there.”
Starla was listening, but her concentration was on her driving.
“Then, the beautiful angel on the top of the Christmas tree hears how sad they are and she comes to life. See, she looks just like you.”
Starla glanced over at the white-robed apparition. Pale blond hair would be a comparison, she supposed.
“She sprinkles miracle dust on the mommy and daddy. The daddy comes home and kisses the mommy under the mistletoe, and then he stays home and opens presents with the kids. Isn’t that a nice story?”
“Very nice. What do you like the most about the story?”
“That there’s a mommy and a daddy. Two of them.”
The yearning in the child’s voice was plain. “Sometimes a daddy is enough,” Starla said. “Especially if he loves you as much as a mommy and daddy put together. That’s how much my dad loves me.”
Meredith picked up on that right away. “Is your mommy a angel, too?”
“She died when I was twelve. I was older than you, but I still had only a dad for a lot of years. He taught me to drive a truck.”
“He did? What else?”
“He taught me how to load and fire a weapon. He made me go to a martial arts school.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s where they teach you to protect yourself.”
“Oh. Can you flip guys and stuff, like the Power Puff Girls?”
“Nothing that fancy,” she replied.
“But you’re a angel, can’t you just zap bad people?”
“Meredith, I’m not an angel. How am I going to convince you?”
Meredith shrugged.
The questions continued until Starla asked Meredith to read the book to her again. The child tired and fell asleep for about half an hour, then woke groggy. “Where are we?”
“We’re almost there.”
“Can I call my daddy?”
