Free The Road to Grace (The Walk) by Richard Paul Evans Page B

lunch.”
    “I’ll have the meat loaf and the chef’s salad with Thousand Island dressing.”
    She scribbled down my order. “You got it. I’ll be right back with your water and some bread.” She walked back to the kitchen.
    Outside my window there was a Shell gas station. On the near side of the station was a family sitting on a grass patch next to their minivan. The father was looking at a map spread out over the hood of their car, while the mother assembled sandwiches for the three children. Watching them brought back memories of the family trips we took before my mother died.
    My father, like me, was a sucker for tourist traps and probably would have stopped at the same places I had, the Petrified Gardens, Wall Drug, 1880 Town, all of them. As different as I had always thought I was from my father, I was discovering that there was still a lot of him in me.
    Molly returned a moment later with a pitcher of water, a tall glass filled with ice, and a small plastic basket witha mini-loaf of bread and two foil-wrapped squares of butter. “There you go,” she said pleasantly. “Your meal will be right up.”
    I looked back out the window at the family. The man was still bent over the map. The woman was now at his side, her hand resting on his back.
    Something about this little drama both fascinated and conflicted me. The scene was so simple and real, maybe hopeful, yet it made me feel incomplete. Why did it make me feel so uncomfortable? As I pondered this I realized that what I was witnessing had been taken from me not just once, but twice. First, when my mother died. Second, when McKale did. I was missing my past and future simultaneously.
    Would I ever have what this family had? Would I ever remarry? Would I ever have children? I honestly couldn’t imagine it. Yet…
    My thoughts were interrupted by Molly returning with my dinner. I asked her if she knew of a place nearby where I could stay.
    “There’s a KOA about a quarter mile up the road,” she said, pointing out the window. “A lot of my customers stay there. They have cabins for rent.”
    “Are the cabins nice?”
    “I wouldn’t know. But I haven’t heard anyone complain.”
    “Would they complain if they didn’t like it?”
    She rolled her eyes. “Some people complain if the ice in their cola is too cold.”
    I grinned. “You’re right.”
    I finished eating, got a piece of apple pie to go, then headed out toward the KOA. The campground had several vacancies and the man who ran the place reminded me that there were no sheets in the rentals.
    “There’s a mattress but no sheets,” he said. “There’s a sink and toilet, but if you want to shower you come to this building right here.”
    “Perfect,” I said. Maybe not perfect, but for forty-five dollars a night, with an air conditioner, porch swing, and television, I could do a lot worse. I rolled my sleeping bag out on the bed, turned on the television to the David Letterman show, then lay down and promptly fell asleep.

C H A P T E R
     
    Ten
     
    My hair is getting long. I’ve got to
    find a barber before someone
    mistakes me for a rock star.
    Alan Christoffersen’s diary
     

The next day I did nothing but walk. It seemed like the same scenery kept repeating itself, like the background of a Flintstones cartoon. I only passed one house the whole day, until evening when I reached the town of Murdo. I ate at the Prairie Pizza and spent the night at the American Inn.
    The next morning I woke with a headache, though it passed fairly quickly. I packed up then ate a breakfast of sausage and biscuits with white gravy at the diner at the World Famous Pioneer Auto Show.
    While I was eating, I noticed that the time on the restaurant’s clock was an hour different than my watch. I asked my waitress about the time, and she informed me that the time zone changes at their city from Mountain to Central. I had officially passed through my second time zone since leaving Seattle. I adjusted my watch, then