Richard surprises his daughter with a visit to celebrate his eightieth birthday with her, but she answers the door in tears and sends Richard away. Richard guesses something is wrong but doesn’t realize how much trouble his daughter is in until he peeks through her front windows.
Richard grinned widely as the highway took him into the town where his daughter, Deidre, lived. Fall had come early to Minnesota that year, and the trees put on a spectacular display of color as he headed for the neighborhood where Deidre lived.
He tapped his fingers nervously against the steering wheel while he drove. He’d been planning this surprise visit for weeks and couldn’t wait to see the look on Deidre’s face when he appeared on her doorstep.
He hadn’t seen his daughter since his wife’s funeral, four years ago. They spoke on the phone every week, but it wasn’t the same. Nothing was really the same since his wife died. Deidre used to drive through every Thanksgiving, but those visits stopped after the funeral. As the years rolled past, Richard missed his daughter more and more.
At last, he pulled into her driveway. Deidre started a home business the previous year. She rarely divulged any details about her life, answering all his questions with ‘everything’s fine,’ so he was curious to see how well she was doing for himself.
Richard knocked on the door. When Deidre opened the front door, he spread his arms wide and yelled: “Surprise!”
“Dad? What are you doing here?” Tears ran freely down Deidre’s face as she looked at Richard in horror.
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“I came to celebrate my birthday with you…it’s the big eight-oh, and I wanted to spend it with my daughter.” Richard reached out to take Deidre’s hand. “What’s going on, honey? Why are you crying?”
“It’s nothing; everything’s fine.” Deidre quickly wiped her eyes and smiled a little. “I just… I wasn’t expecting you and this isn’t really a good time.”
“I know you’re probably busy, but I can wait.” Richard leaned sideways to catch Deidre’s eye as she glanced over her shoulder. “I’ll quietly camp on your couch and watch TV—”
“No, you can’t come in.” Deidre closed the door until only half her face was visible. “Sorry, Dad, but I…uh, need to focus. On my work. We’ll have dinner later, okay?”
“But I—”
Deidre shut the door, leaving Richard standing on the doorstep feeling hurt and confused. Mostly, he was worried about the way Deidre was acting. His daughter was crying when she answered the door and hadn’t told him why.
Something strange was going on here. Richard stepped back from the front door but couldn’t bring himself to leave. Instead, he stepped over the short, flowering shrubs lining the path and snuck up to peek through the front windows.
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Richard peered through the glass and immediately ducked down. Two rough-looking men were in the sitting room with Deidre. They stood on either side of her like they were keeping her penned in.
“Who was that?” One of the men asked in a rough voice.
“Nobody,” Deidre replied in a shaky voice. “The neighborhood kids sometimes prank people by ringing their doorbells and taking off.”
“Back to business then,” the second man said. “You’re now six months behind on your loan repayments, Deidre. Mr. Marco is starting to get impatient.”
“I just need a little more time, please!” Deidre pleaded. “Business is sure to pick up again in the winter.”
Richard slowly turned and peered through the windows again. His heart broke at the sight of his daughter hunched over and begging before one of the men.
“Deidre, sweetheart, time is the one thing you don’t have.”
Terror froze Richard in place as he watched the man pull out a gun.
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“See this gun?” The man asked. “People who owe Mr. Marco money don’t have a great life expectancy. They tend to end up feeding the fish in the lake…I’m sure you know what I mean. If you keep skipping your payments…”
The man pointed the gun at Deidre, and she sank to the floor, sobbing. Soon, he stepped back with a look of disgust and tucked the gun away in the waistband of his trousers.
“Fine, we’ll give you one last chance. Danny, look around this dump and see if there’s anything valuable we can take back to Mr. Marco. She’s a businesswoman so there must be a computer around here somewhere or some kind of equipment.”
“But I need those things!” Deidre started to reach for the man but seemed to change her mind. “I won’t be able to earn the money I need to repay my loan if you take my equipment.”
“Don’t be ungrateful, Deidre.” The man patted the butt of his gun. “I can still change my mind.”
The men left the room, leaving Deidre curled up in a sobbing heap on the floor. Richard struggled to process what he’d just seen. Deidre had never mentioned that she’d loaned money from rough folks like these.
Nothing made sense, but one thing was clear to Richard: Deidre needed his help. He crept back to his car and parked a little way further down the street, where he could watch Deidre’s house.
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Fifteen minutes later, the second man appeared at the front door carrying a computer printer. He loaded it into the trunk of an SUV parked at the curb, then went back inside. The men loaded several more appliances from Deidre’s home. When they finally drove away, Richard followed them.
The men led him to a two-storey brick building downtown. Signage on the wall beside the entrance stated that it was some kind of club. Richard watched them carry Deidre’s possessions inside with a frown.
This was clearly a front for some kind of criminal enterprise, but Richard didn’t hesitate to go in after the men. The door was unlocked, even though the club was closed, and no staff was nearby to stop him as he entered the building.
The men had joined a large table where several other rough-looking men were seated. One of them stood and swaggered toward him.
“The club’s closed,” he growled. “Come back later.”
“I’m here to discuss Deidre’s debt,” Richard announced.
“Oh?” The man seated at the head of the table rose and stared at Richard. “Speak fast then old-timer because Deidre’s on thin ice already and I don’t have the patience for any more time wasting.”
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Unlike the others, this man wore a well-tailored suit and, with the exception of a nasty scar above his left eye, looked like a gentleman. Richard assumed he must be the leader of this gang, the ‘Mr. Marco’ he’d heard the thugs mention earlier.
“Well, I want to pay off her debt.” Richard straightened his shoulders so he’d appear more confident than he felt. “How much does she owe you?”
Mr. Marco smiled. “A good samaritan, huh? But you have no idea what you’re offering… Deidre took out a business loan from me to the tune of 80,000 dollars. She was supposed to pay me back from her monthly profits, only she never made any.”
Richard frowned as he recalled various phone conversations with Deidre where he’d pressed her for details about her business and what she did. He’d been excited that she’d set out to do something for herself and happy every time she replied that the business was doing well.
Deidre had been lying all along. This realization made Richard sick to his stomach.
“I have around 20,000 dollars in my savings,” Richard said. “You can have all of it—”
Mr. Marco interrupted Richard with a heavy sigh. “That’s only a quarter of what she owes us. However, there’s something else you can do to make up the difference.”
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Richard didn’t like the sound of that, but he had to do whatever it took to save his daughter from the mess she’d gotten herself into.
“What do you want me to do?” Richard asked.
“It’s a small job.” Mr. Marco grinned at Richard and beckoned him closer to the table. “My partner and I recently started a small business importing cars to Canada, but some of the paperwork has been delayed so we’re having difficulties getting the merchandise across the border. That’s where you come in.”
“A kind, innocent-looking Grandpa like you should have no trouble crossing the border in one of our cars,” the man continued. “I’ll even arrange transport back into the States for you. Simple, huh?”
Richard chewed his lower lip as he thought about the gangster’s proposition. Exporting the car without the proper papers was undoubtedly illegal, but it seemed reasonably low risk compared to what was at stake for Deidre if he refused.
“Okay,” Richard said, “I’ll do it.”
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The gangster walked up to Richard with a wide grin, put an arm around his shoulder, and escorted him to a parking lot at the back of the club. A row of cars were parked there. Soon, he followed the GPS app on his phone to the border crossing in the next town.
The car wasn’t at all what Richard had expected. He’d assumed the gangster would be exporting muscle cars to Canada, or something similar, not a beat-up old Valiant. Nonetheless, the car ran smoothly as he zoomed down the Freeway.
Richard pulled into a gas station near the border town to use the bathroom and parked beside a patrol car. He climbed out and got the fright of his life when a dog barked in his ear.
He spun around. A German Shepherd in the back of the police cruiser was barking at him and pawing at the window. That struck him as strange.
Surely service dogs were trained not to bark at random people unless…Richard glanced over his shoulder at the Valiant.
A chill ran down Richard’s spine as he realized there might be more to the old car than met the eye. He quickly climbed back in and started reversing. The police dog went crazy.
Two cops hurried out of the gas station store. They glanced at the dog, then turned to glare at Richard.
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“Stop right there!” One of the cops yelled as he raced toward Richard.
Richard ignored him. Tires squealed as he peeled out of the gas station and raced away. His GPS app voiced directions, but Richard shoved it in his pocket to silence the darn thing. His only thought was to get as far away from the cops as quickly as possible.
Sirens sounded behind him, and Richard swore as he spotted the police cruiser’s flashing lights in his rearview mirror. Panicked and desperate, Richard drove like a maniac down the highway. He pushed the old car to its limits as he wove through traffic, leaving a trail of outraged drivers and narrowly-avoided collisions in his wake.
But those flashing lights remained in his rearview mirror. He was reaching his wit’s end when he noticed road signs for a national park ahead. That might be his chance to escape.
Richard soon spotted a narrow unmarked dirt road veering into the forest up ahead. He sharply turned, leaving the road behind him as he raced into the forest.
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The muddy trails were awful to navigate in the Valiant, but Richard pushed on. Golden tamarack trees towered overhead, but the dark, peaty ground made the area seem ominous. Richard turned down a narrow track leading downhill.
He wanted to find cover so he could stop and figure out his next move. Branches scraped along the car’s sides as Richard skidded and bumped deeper into the park. He turned up a slight rise and instantly regretted it.
The car was now stuck in a precarious position, balanced on a narrow rise above a wide river. Richard tried to reverse back the way he came, but the tires spun without getting traction. In fact, the car was sliding closer to the water.
“No!” Richard desperately pulled up the parking brake, but it didn’t seem to be working.
The car’s nose hit the river with a loud splash, sending a wave of dark water flooding over the bonnet.
There was only one thing for it. Richard shoved the car door open, desperate to escape the sinking vehicle.
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The pressure from the water started to push the car door shut against Richard’s legs. He frantically crawled backward and threw his weight against the door. The Valiant tipped sideways, and water flooded inside.
Richard splashed around in panic as the river filled the interior. Soon, it was up to his neck. There was only one way he could escape. As the water level crept up his face, he tipped his head back, took one last breath, and pulled himself underwater.
He braced himself against the dashboard and kicked the door. It opened and stayed open as it jammed against something hidden in the muddy river bottom. Richard squeezed himself out of the opening and pushed himself up toward the surface.
Richard gasped in a lungful of air and swam toward the river bank. As he clawed out of the water, he looked over his shoulder to see if he might somehow rescue the car.
As he looked on, the car’s back end suddenly swayed almost vertically into the air, and a series of bubbles boiled along the surface of the water.
It seemed like only a few moments passed before it vanished beneath the water.
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Richard stared at the water. He was shivering, and every breath burned his throat. Dear God, he’d almost drowned. He rubbed his arms as he looked at the spot where the car sank.
A realization colder than the brisk Fall chill settled on him then. All his hopes of saving his daughter had drowned alongside that stupid car. There was no way he could retrieve it from the river. He and Deidre were screwed.
Eventually, Richard realized there was one last thing he could try to get the full 80,000 dollars he needed.
He slowly stood and climbed up the bank. Before he could implement his plan, he needed to get back to civilization and out of his wet, filthy clothes.
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Richard hitchhiked home to Hibbing. He hated to leave Deidre, but he needed paperwork from his home to pull off his plan. He took several documents from his locked desk drawer and went straight to the bank.
“I need to mortgage my house,” he told the assistant who helped him. “And I need the cash in my bank account fast.”
Richard waited impatiently as the bank employee processed the paperwork. A day had passed, and he realized the gangsters must be concerned about the fate of their car. He was terrified they might take their frustrations out on Deidre in the meanwhile.
He jumped in fright when his phone started ringing. The caller ID showed Deidre was calling him.
“Deidre, is everything okay?” he asked.
“No, Dad, it isn’t. Some thugs from a local gang were just here asking about you…what on Earth is going on?”
“Just let them know I’ll be there soon. I arranged to pay off your debt for you, but it’s become a little more complicated than I anticipated.”
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“What? But how did you even find out about that? I never told you I had to take a loan from those gangsters.”
“I know, but you should’ve,” Richard sighed.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t come to me first, Deidre, but this isn’t the time to discuss this. Tell those men I’ll meet them in about three hours with the cash to cover your debt.”
Richard ended the call and signed the papers the bank employee pushed toward him. He left the bank with a muddied sense of relief. On one hand, he’d just mortgaged the house where he’d made most of his happy memories with his family. He didn’t want to give that up, but it was the only permanent solution to Deidre’s problem he could think of.
A few hours later, he pulled into the club’s parking lot in a rented car and headed toward the entrance.
“Dad, wait!”
Richard looked back as Deidre ran toward him. She threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. Richard shut his eyes as he squeezed her. His beautiful daughter…he’d missed hugging her. It seemed like such a small, silly thing, but he wished he could bottle this moment and keep it forever.
