Chapter 6: On Air

Nils said my name four more times before the first commercial.

He said I was from Two Harbors.

He said I'd run the snack bar at the college rink in Duluth.

He said I'd been hiding in North Dakota under a fake name and I'd "turned up at a children's hospital with a sad story."

He did not say the word leukemia.

He did not say the word daughter.

Erik was in the hall in a T-shirt and sweatpants, listening with his phone against his ear.

"I'll call the station," he said. "I'll call the owner. I'll call."

"And say what?"

He didn't have an answer.

By seven there were three news vans outside the hospital's main doors.

Erik drove us around to the ambulance bay.

A reporter was already standing there in a red coat with a cameraman.

"Ms. Skoglund! Were you driving drunk the night Nils Haugland lost his leg?"

Erik put his body between me and the lens all the way to the doors.

He didn't say a word to her.

Upstairs, Ingrid was still asleep.

Jodie had come in with us.

She took one look at my face and pulled the curtain across the glass of 614.

"Nobody's telling her anything," she said. "Not before her pancakes."

Erik had morning skate at ten.

He wanted to skip it.

"Go," I said. "If you don't show up, they'll say I'm hiding you too."

He kissed my forehead in the hall.

It was so fast I wasn't sure it had happened.

Then he was gone.

I sat in the family lounge with the radio app playing on Jodie's phone.

Nils was taking calls.

A woman from Brainerd said she'd prayed for him every December since.

A man from Cloquet said people like me should be locked up and the key thrown in the lake.

A trucker said he'd seen the wreck that night from the road and it was the worst thing he ever saw.

I held out my hand for Jodie's phone.

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