Elaine was rushing to get her four-year-old daughter Jenny out the door so she could pick up her son Connor after school. “Come on, kiddo. Connor will worry if we’re not there when the bell rings,” she said.
By March, Elaine was counting down the days until the end of hockey season. Two practices a week plus a game most weekends was a lot of time at the arena and in the car for a first-grader. But Connor loved it, so what else could she do but drive him to the rink?
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She was already running late. Earlier in the afternoon, she’d chopped up vegetables and beef to stew in the crockpot. Then she’d worked on reconciling the farm’s February bank statements. One typo entering the phone bill had made the process take at least 30 minutes longer than usual. That meant Jenny woke up from her nap before Elaine was finished filing the quarterly GST report. Elaine sent Jenny to play in her room while she checked the numbers one more time. When she finally hit “send” to file the numbers with the CRA and get their refund in the works, Elaine realized the house was oddly quiet.
“Jenny?” she called.
“I’m in my room. Like you said,” Jenny answered.
“Sorry, honey…” Elaine began. Then she got to the door of Jenny’s room. And tried to calm down before she shouted.
“Jenny,” she began. “I thought we agreed you were only going to paint at the table. With a grown-up.”
“You were busy,” Jenny said. “I thought it would help if I played by myself.”
Elaine’s husband Jeff came in while Elaine was still assessing the damage.
“The good news is we’ve got a big GST refund coming,” she said. “The bad news? We might have to spend it replacing Jenny’s carpet.”
“I had to use blue,” Jenny explained. “I was painting a nice sunny day!”
“Are you still going to town?” Jeff asked.
Elaine checked the time on her phone. “Oh no! I have to go right now!”
“Can you stop off at Home Hardware?” Jeff asked. “I need a couple of belts for the cleaning plant.”
Elaine looked a little frazzled, so Jeff tried to make it simple. “I’ll text you the details and a photo,” he said.
Jeff put Jenny into her snowsuit while Elaine brushed her hair and changed her sweater. But when Elaine was ready to go, Jenny was out of her snowsuit again.
“I should’ve asked her if she had to go to the bathroom first,” Jeff said.
“Between snowsuits and hockey, I’ve had about all I can take of winter,” Elaine said.
Soon Jenny was re-dressed and Elaine had found her shopping list and put on her own jacket. Elaine picked up Connor’s hockey bag and went outside.
By the time she got the hockey gear in the back and Jenny belted into her car seat, Elaine was really running late. “We’d better drive fast, Jenny,” she said. “Or Connor will be standing outside the school doors all alone.”
As she was getting into her SUV, Elaine’s cellphone rang. It was her mother-in-law, Donna.
“Hi Elaine. Does Connor have hockey today?” Donna said.
“Yep,” Elaine answered, holding the phone in one hand and turning the key to start the ignition with the other.
“Could you pick me up some milk while you’re in town? Dale’s taken a sudden liking to oatmeal.”
“Sure,” Elaine said, backing out into the driveway.
Bang.
The air bag exploded out of her steering wheel in a rush and hit Elaine in the face. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. Then she remembered Jenny.
“Jenny, are you okay?”
“Yes!” Jenny yelled from the backseat. “What happened?”
Elaine groped her way free of the air bag, opened the door and got out of the SUV. It didn’t take long to figure it out what she’d hit. It was the Co-op fuel delivery truck. Right in her own driveway. On its way to fill the Hanson’s tanks with diesel. What were the odds of such terrible timing?
The driver, Jim Hart, was already out of the cab. “You alright?” he asked Elaine, before he bent down to look at the damage on his truck.
Jeff came out of the house. “How did this happen? Didn’t you see him?”
“Look at this,” Jim said. “The door to my hose reel compartment is all smashed up. I don’t think I can even get these hoses out.”
“Nothing’s going to catch fire, right?” Elaine asked.
“Only because your vehicle’s too low to hit the tank,” Jim said, grinning.
“Jeez,” Jeff said, looking at the fuel truck. “Don’t think I can fix this in my shop.”
“Probably not,” Jim said. “I’ll have to take it back to town. Hope you don’t need your tanks filled right away.”
“We’ll get by for a few days,” Jeff laughed. “I can’t exactly complain.”
While the adults were talking Jenny had unbuckled herself and climbed out. “What happened?”
“Your mom forgot to look behind her,” Jeff said. “You okay, kid?”
“It was scary,” Jenny said.
Dale had noticed the commotion from the shop and came over to see what was going on.
“How did this happen?” he asked.
Elaine just shook her head. “I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t looking.”
“I guess not!” Dale looked to Jenny. “Must’ve been exciting, hey Jenny?”
“Yeah!” she told her grandfather.
Donna came running over from her house on the other side of the yard. “I heard the crash over the phone!” she said, panting. “I was so scared! Is everyone okay?”
“Connor’s going to be jealous!” Jenny said, giggling.
“Connor!” Elaine said. “Now I’m really late. And what am I going to do about that air bag?”
“Never mind the air bag,” Jeff said. “You took off the whole bumper! We’ll have to call the dealership!”
Elaine groaned.
“Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off,” Jeff said. “Jenny and I’ll take Connor to hockey in my truck.”
“Thank you,” Elaine said. “I think I do need a break.”
“Come on Jenny,” Jeff said. “Let’s get Connor’s hockey bag.”
Elaine texted a friend who had a son in Connor’s Grade 1 class. “Heather will drive Connor over to the rink,” she told Jeff. “You can meet him there.”
That night, after Jeff and the kids came home from town and they’d eaten beef stew, and put Connor and Jenny to bed, Elaine sat next to her husband on the living room couch. Jeff was using his iPhone to google “blue paint beige carpet.”
“I feel so stupid,” Elaine said. “I don’t know how it happened. I could’ve killed Jenny. What if I did something like that in town? Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”
“No,” Jeff said. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’ve got a lot going on.”
Elaine smiled. “Remember when I was single and I worked as a chemical rep? And the hours were so long, and I was so exhausted by the end of the week?”
“Yeah,” Jeff said.
“That was like a beach vacation compared to this.”
“Would you want to go back?” Jeff asked.
“Not for a second,” Elaine said.
