I started writing as a hobby while living and working in the music business in New York in 1995. TO BE SOMEONE was first published back in 2000, the first novel to come with its own CD soundtrack (on Virgin Records). Then came ARE YOU MY MOTHER?, LIFESAVER and GAMES PEOPLE PLAY.
I now have a new lease of my writing life, publishing thrillers with Mark Edwards. In Feb 2011, we self-published our first co-written novel, KILLING CUPID, a stalker thriller that reached No.2 on Amazon.co.uk. In May 2011, we published our second, CATCH YOUR DEATH, which became the first ever fully-independent British book to reach No.1 on Amazon. It stayed at No.1 for a month. We sold almost 100,000 copies of the two titles.
Both novels are now being published in new editions by HarperCollins. Publishing on Kindle has changed our lives and we are hugely grateful to everyone who has bought either of our books.
Find Louise online at vossandedwards.com
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Christine Nolfi
Dear Dad,
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Your death changed my life.
On a Sunday night in 1992, as you graded papers from your students at Kent State, you suffered the first sharp jabs of a heart attack. You would die on December 6th, St. Nicholas Day.
Your passing would devastate all of us who loved you. Yet the bittersweet timing of your death with the day set aside to celebrate the patron saint of Christmas seemed a special grace awarded for an exemplary life. I grew up thinking you were Good St. Nick.
At Higbee’s Department Store, you were in charge of many areas including The Santa Shop memorialized in the 1983 movie, A Christmas Story. If you were alive today, you’d be amused to learn the movie still airs every holiday season. I can’t watch the scenes depicting Higbee’s without remembering you striding beneath the massive chandeliers that decorated Cleveland’s premier department store. You seemed in constant motion across those marble floors, chatting with the salespeople in your employ and snapping commands at the managers following on your heels. You were loud, expressive, commanding, a dynamo in a blue suit and a red power tie. You were also irrepressibly kind, honorable and damn funny when you cut loose.
Several years ago, in January 2010, a blizzard socked in all the airports east of the Mississippi. I was stranded in Las Vegas. The check-in clerk at Bally’s Casino, noticing my name, asked, “Are you related to the late Mario Nolfi?” It turned out he was one of your former employees. While the line of stranded travelers grew behind me at the counter, he regaled me with stories of how well you had managed the Higbee’s staff. When he’d finished, he gave me a penthouse suite for a bargain basement price.
But to return to the first, sharp stabs of pain you felt as you sat grading papers: It was late on Sunday night, past 10 P.M. By the time Mom realized you were seriously ill, she was too frightened to think straight. She called Tom. He was your oldest child and only son, and lived a mile away. Tom immediately called 911. Right before he sprinted out the door for the short drive to the hospital, he called his sisters.
I’ve never asked, but I suspect Tom called us in order of age: Laurie, me, Stacy and Leslie. I’ve always assumed he didn’t call Trish, the baby in our family, because, unlike the rest of us, she lived out of state.
At dawn on St. Nick’s day, it would fall on Tom and I to call Trish together.
But I digress. As Tom grabbed his coat and scrambled for his car keys, he wasn’t able to reach Laurie, Stacy or Leslie. They’d already gone to bed and would sleep uninterrupted until Monday’s dawn brought the most unbearable news. He did reach me.
Scott and I were still awake, embroiled in our usual argument about when we’d finally adopt children. Four years into marriage, with my mid-30s bearing down, I’d begun to give up hope of getting my husband excited about the prospect of becoming parents. His payroll company was expanding and my PR firm was finally off the ground. Before marriage we’d agreed to adopt children but now, the climb to financial stability was enough for Scott—more, perhaps, than he’d ever dreamed. Raising children no longer factored in.
So there we stood in the kitchen, tossing verbal cannonballs, when the phone rang.
Like Tom, I dashed to the hospital and arrived within moments of the ambulance.
As I write this in 2013, the ironies of that night fill me with a surprising peace. Watching you die was a horror I wouldn’t wish on any adult child. Watching Mom crumble to the ground—no, I can’t find comfort in those moments. But the rest of it? Yes.
Yes, I do.
As the gurney clattered down the hospital corridor, it was clear you were in agony. Tom steered Mom and I into the room. It was pandemonium as doctors shouted orders and nurses scrambled to obey. You were awake, and I clasped your hand and shouted the only thing that came to mind, the life lesson you’d taught us since childhood:
Do you want to be a follower or a leader?
You’d always asked the question whenever we were unsure of the correct path to travel or the best decision required by the situation. It was a question about ethics, about leading an honorable life. Some decisions are hard; they take courage, especially if the choice means standing up for the greater good or putting one’s own needs behind the needs of a group. The finest choices demand sacrifice. They prove one’s mettle—or fashion it with the heat of conscience.
And so, as it became clear you were losing the good fight, I shouted the question back at you: “Dad, you have to fight! Do you want to be a follower or a leader?”
As the life ebbed from your veins, you offered a father’s smile and said, “Always a leader.”
A man’s last words are sacred. They stand as a final gift, a summation. Always a leader. Your words changed me profoundly.
I found that building my PR firm was no longer enough. Despite Scott’s disinterest, I began searching for a sibling group in Ohio’s foster archives. One disappointment led to another, and soon I was contacting social workers in Kentucky, Texas, Tennessee—I was determined to find a sibling group of children who might never leave the foster care system if I didn’t intercede.
Here’s the part you’ll love, Dad: One day at work, I missed a deadline for a manufacturer in Willoughby, Ohio. Horrified, I rushed the news release over to the company president’s home. His wife opened the door, and out spilled a tumble of adopted children, seven in all.
Was this divine intervention? Dad, you were a devout Catholic, which indicates where you’d stand on the subject. And where I stand as well: The company president’s wife gave me the name of a social worker in Seattle, Washington who handled overseas adoptions. I called her the next day. The social worker, in turn, had returned an hour earlier from her latest trip to the Philippines. Right before she had boarded the plane, a missionary she’d met that day stopped her in the airport—he’d just been faxed paperwork on a sibling group that had entered his children’s shelter in Cebu a few minutes earlier. Thanking him, the social worker stuffed the information about the four siblings into her briefcase and boarded the jet for Seattle.
The next day—the day I called—the case studies on those four kids went out in the packet the social worker sent to me.
She’d sent about twenty case studies on various sibling groups, but I was immediately caught by the story of those four kids. They’d been abandoned in the jungle; somehow, the oldest girl, age seven, kept her younger brother and two younger sisters alive. The kids were severely malnourished, with a host of physical ailments I knew would take years to heal. And they’d been dumped like garbage in a jungle—how many years of counseling with a first-rate child psychologist would they need?
Reading the pages, I thought, Four kids? Can I handle four? Unsure, I photocopied the information and dropped it off at Mom’s house. I needed a second opinion because my heart had already taken my common sense hostage.
A few hours later, Mom called me back. It was clear she’d been crying.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
The deep breath she took carried something sweet across the phone line. “Christine,” she said, “Look at the oldest girl’s birthday.”
The girl, Christian, was born on December 6—your death date, Dad. Mom and I both took it as a sign I’d finally found my children.
And it was.
Dad, those four grandchildren you never lived long enough to meet are now happy, busy twenty-somethings. I’m happily remarried to a man who raised his two kids and helped me finish raising mine. We no longer live in Ohio—two years ago, we escaped the snow and moved to Charleston, South Carolina. As I write this in the sun and salt air, waves crash into the Isle of Palm beach in a soothing rhythm.
In my home, ten minutes from the beach, my cozy office is a spacious room above the garage. I begin most days with your question on my lips. Do you want to be a follower or a leader? I lead, Dad. Young writers, whenever I have the opportunity to help them learn the ropes in publishing. More importantly, I’ve been leading my children ever since I led them out of the jungle and planted them in a new life in America. They’ve grown up hearing the story of how your death date signaled that I’d found the children I’d call my own. We celebrate the story every December 6th as we light the birthday candles on Christian’s cake.
Each day, as I power down my Mac after many hours of writing, I take a moment to talk to you. Your photograph hangs on my office wall for inspiration. I try to live up to your example. Were you a follower or a leader?
A leader, always.
Me too.