Police Report

By Chantal Meijer

'Tis sweet to know there is an eye that will mark our coming, and look brighter when we come.

~Lord Byron 

"Gee, what a hunk!" I thought, as the blue-eyed RCMP officer strode towards me from behind the police counter.

"How can I help you, Miss?" he asked, very formally.

"My father's missing," I said without preamble. "He's overdue from driving back from a job in Edmonton, and we haven't heard from him. My mother's frantic. She thinks he's gone off the road somewhere."

"I'm acting, here, for my mom," I made sure to stress, even as I felt myself shrinking to the size of a six-year-old. "She's the one who wants to file the report."

The dashing Mountie asked me a few questions, and then filled out a missing persons report.

"I'll pass the report on to the CNR Police in Edmonton," he said. "I'm not on duty tomorrow so someone else will call you as soon as we hear something."

I repeated my phone number for him — twice, seared his nametag into my memory, thanked him, and left.

It was an exceptionally cold winter. The snow, both in town and on the highways, was above average, making for dangerously icy conditions. It certainly was out of character for my dad to not call my mom along the route from Edmonton to our hometown in northwestern British Columbia — a driving distance of over 800 miles.

When I walked into the house I shared with my twin sister, I blurted out, "I've just met the most wonderful guy on the face of the earth. And... I got his name!"

"You'd better phone Mom," she said, rolling her eyes.

The next day someone, not Blue Eyes, called from the RCMP detachment to announce that my father had been located, safe and sound.

"Your dad was a little embarrassed at being pulled over by a police cruiser," the officer added. I relayed the good news to Mom and the family breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Days later, after Dad had arrived safely home, he confronted me. "Do you know how embarrassing that was? I've never been pulled over by a cop in my life."

"But Dad," I retorted in self defence. "Mom made me do it!"

Crisis passed, I searched for Blue Eyes in the phone book but he wasn't listed. Darn it, I thought, I'll never see him again.

From then on, every police car I saw took on new meaning. No longer trying to avoid them, I was now aiming for them, hoping to catch a glimpse of Blue Eyes' face. But no face was his, and a few Mountie faces even scowled at me as I nearly drove into them! After a few weeks of near misses with every police car in town, Blue Eyes was still nowhere to be seen.

Several months passed before I saw him again. As fate would have it, we crossed in the doorway of a local pharmacy. He was dressed in civilian clothes, wearing a suede leather jacket that was quite becoming. After saying an initial "Hi," I thanked him for his assistance three months earlier, we engaged in light conversation, and then slowly retreated from the doorway to get out of people's way.

Then, under the stares of other shoppers, he said the magic words: "Do you want to go somewhere for coffee?" Inside I was jumping up and down. We went to a restaurant a block away where we drank hot chocolates and talked about ourselves and our families, including my no-longer elusive dad. Before parting, we exchanged phone numbers.

"You know that wonderful policeman I told you about?" I enthused to my sister, "Well, I just had hot chocolate with him at a restaurant!"

As of this writing, we've been married thirty-eight years, and two of our four children have followed in their father's law-enforcement footsteps. I've always had an aversion to ice and snow, but when those exact winter conditions forge warm hearts, as they did with us, there's no complaint from me.

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