i blame alistair cooke

I Blame Alistair Cooke
Written by hollycole1


As he glanced out at the expanse of golden wheat, laying flat as newly pressed sheets, Jon pondered the chain of events that had led him to this fortuitous moment in his long life. He drew on the forbidden pleasure of his Cuban cigar and checked the arrivals board for the sixth time. The incoming flight from Winnipeg was still on time and a further 5 minutes to wait. In his excitement he had arrived far too early, but moments like this, at his age, and in his situation, were ones to savour like the cigar. Why was he here and why did he leave? There were answers to these questions which he was facing right now, in preparation for her arrival. He knew what he would say when she asked him why he was there…why Regina? And why the silence for 38 years.

It was all Alistair Cooke’s fault. He hadn’t given Alistair a thought till he received her letter 2 years ago - how she had found him was a mystery, a miracle. God knows he’d done his best to cover his tracks. Alistair had said, after all, that Regina was the middle of everything-the furthest place from any ocean and the hardest place to find a person. If you wanted to make sure no one ever tracked you down, this was the place to go. Here in center of the flattest plain on earth, where the horizon was forever a flat unbroken yellow line and winters were merciless. He couldn’t remember when he had last seen a hill, possibly when that plane took off from Speke decades ago, bearing him away from his children, his life, to a new and anonymous existence.


And now he was going to meet the strange belligerent child who had found him. She would be all grown up now, not the strong teenager he held in his memory, but a mother herself, married with a career. The other three had failed the test, hadn’t sought him out, believing their mother’s lies. Only this one, his favourite, his jingle bell, had solved the puzzle that led her here.

Would they have anything in common at all now after being separated for so long by ocean and years? Would he recognise her? These doubts were new, and gave him pause; was this such a good idea after all? He wondered for the first time, if she would take her mother’s side and use this reunion as an opportunity for revenge. After all, he had deserted the four of them, allowing them to believe him dead for so long.

But she was ever the tenacious one, his favourite, his jingle bell, and here she was, nervously passing through the gate, searching for him, an old dying man, her Jon, her daddy. As she fumbled for a cigarette from her bag, and asked him for a light, he silently thanked the American correspondent for the last gift he would have: a reunion with his daughter.