Between Lost and Found

by Shelly Stratton

  “Pops?” she cried, no longer angry at him. She was too happy to finally see her grandfather again. He was alive and well; that was all that mattered.

  But her elation quickly deflated and her smile disappeared when she realized it was Connie, not her grandfather, standing in the doorway with the sun silhouetting her.

  “I’m guessin’ he’s not back yet, then,” Connie said, raising her brows.

  She was wearing hip huggers again, but this time there was a winding pattern of gold sequins along the side seams and hem. She also had on another pair of Uggs—purple and suede with a faux-fur trim that looked like it had been shaved off of a Muppet. The woman was in her fifties but for some reason insisted on dressing like she shopped exclusively at Forever 21 or some other teen store with bright lights and booming sound systems.

  How could you marry this woman, Pops? And if you didn’t marry her, how could you have even considered doing it?

  “No, he’s not back,” Janelle muttered, not hiding her disappointment. “I thought you were him.”

  Connie stared over her shoulder at the driveway and her Silverado and stomped a foot like a sullen four-year-old.

  “Damn it,” she murmured. She then dropped her hands to her hips and turned back to Janelle. “Well . . . have you eaten lunch yet?”

  Janelle frowned, confused by the subject change.

  “I bet Bill doesn’t have a lot of food in there. That man has never been much of a cook. You want to grab something to eat in town? I’ve got some fixings back at the shop if you’re hungry.”

  Janelle hesitated. Connie had been right. Janelle wasn’t looking forward to the limited sampling of food Pops’s fridge and cabinets had to offer, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to have lunch with Connie, either.

  “You need to get out of this house,” Connie urged.

  Janelle’s frown deepened. Why did Connie insist on talking to her like she was a child?

  “You’ve been cooped up in here all morning probably waiting on Bill, am I right?” Connie nodded in reply to her own question before Janelle could respond. “Have lunch with me and my pain-in-the-ass daughter. We’ll have ourselves a Girls’ Day.”

  Janelle eyed the older woman. “What did you say?”

  “I said we’ll have ourselves a Girls’ Day.” Connie paused. “What? You’re telling me that you’ve never had one of those?”

  “Well, yes, but . . . not for a long time.”

  The last “Girls’ Day” Janelle had had was twenty-seven years ago. She was supposed to meet her father for a scheduled weekend visit. It had been a fifty-fifty chance (well, closer to seventy-thirty) that he would be a no-show, but a naïve nine-year-old Janelle had excitedly sat on the windowsill and peered out her grandparents’ living room window, scanning the roadway for her father’s cream-colored Lincoln Continental with the fuzzy pink dice hanging from the rearview mirror and the rust stains on the passenger door. She had pressed her forehead against the cool glass, her hot breath forming a two-inch circle of condensation by her lips. She kept her skinny rear end on that wooden ledge long after it started to hurt. But she kept looking and kept waiting despite the muscle soreness and a stinging bum because she was certain her father would come like he promised, like he always promised. Of course, she didn’t see his Lincoln at nine a.m. when he was supposed to arrive. Nor did she see it hours later. By noon, Janelle had been almost in tears.

  “I say we have a Girls’ Day,” Nana had whispered into her ear, making Janelle pull her reddened eyes away from the window. The old woman had wiggled her perfectly arched gray brows and squeezed Janelle’s narrow shoulders. “No stinky men. Let’s just go out and do the things that girls do!”

  That day, Nana had taken her to a local nail salon for the first time to get her toenails painted bubblegum pink. She had bought her a taffeta dress that was both girly and impractical with its wide, poufy skirt, flouncy bow at the waist, and lace trim around the bottom. They had ended the day at the local bakery, feasting on lavender-and-orange-flavored petit fours that had been ignored thanks to the apple fritters and colossal donuts beside them. Nana had sipped tepid Earl Grey tea and Janelle had drunk ginger ale out of a real porcelain teacup.

  It had been a lovely day, so lovely that it had almost erased the memory of Janelle’s father ditching her for either the warm embrace of one of his girlfriends or the siren call of Jim Beam and Crown Royal.

  To have Connie make the same offer that Nana had made twenty-seven years ago was . . . disconcerting.

  “So are you coming?” Connie asked, turning back toward her truck and striding down the cabin steps.

  “Uh, yeah. Sure.” Janelle gestured over her shoulder. “Just let me grab my coat.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “I’ve got Lean Cuisine chicken paninis!” Connie yelled over a strumming of a guitar and banjo and banging of drums. “I’ve got some microwaveable flatbread pizza, too, if you wanna try that instead.”

  “Either’s fine!” Janelle shouted, trying her best to be heard above the crooning voice on the loudspeaker.

  The voice and the music were coming from the stage several blocks down on Main Street where a band Janelle had never heard of played. A group of twenty or so people gathered around in front of the stage. Some were dancing; a few couples were even doing the two-step.

  Janelle and Connie passed a line of Porta-Potties that gave off a faint aroma that Janelle knew from past experiences with county fairs and carnivals would only get worse when the temps increased. The line in front of each potty was at least five deep. But as she gazed around her, she saw that the rest of Main Street was almost entirely vacant. She had seen more people in downtown D.C. at noon on a Sunday than seemed to be here today in Mammoth Falls. Several of the vendors stood at their tables, looking keenly at the few passersby, holding out coupons and flyers. Some didn’t even bother to look up and instead read magazines or stared down at their cell phones. Even the horses hitched to a post near Toby’s Bar & Grill looked bored.

  Maybe Sergeant Bachmann had been right. It was just too damn cold for popcorn and cotton candy. It looked like the first annual Black Hills Wild West Festival was going to be a bust.

  As Janelle and Connie walked toward the shop’s entrance, Janelle tried her best to avoid the vendors’ eager gazes. Instead, she focused on taking careful steps to avoid any falls on the icy sidewalk. Connie seemed oblivious to the snow and took long, purposeful strides in front of her.

  The older woman tugged a set of keys out of her coat pocket. “We’ve got a microwave in the stockroom. A fridge, too.”

  Janelle was barely paying attention to what Connie was saying. Instead, she gazed up at the “HOT THREADS & THINGS” sign painted over the shop window in cursive letters. The silhouette of a curvy, naked woman was drawn leaning seductively against the last “S,” like the naked woman that appeared on the back of tractor trailer tire flaps.

  Tasteful, Janelle thought derisively. She guessed she should have expected as much of any shop Connie owned.

  “Well, this is my baby!”

  As Connie made the proud declaration, she unlocked the door and shoved it open with a flourish. A bell jingled overhead. Janelle stepped inside the boutique as Connie flipped the “CLOSED” sign hanging in the door window to “OPEN.” Connie flicked a switch and series of track lights overhead blazed bright.

  “Go on! Look around,” Connie urged.

  Janelle took off her coat, happy to be rid of it. Thanks to last night’s dousing, it now had the musty smell of rotting books in abandoned libraries. She hung the parka on a hook near the entrance and discreetly sniffed her turtleneck, relieved that it didn’t smell like mildew, too. She then wiped the palms of her hands on her jeans and did as Connie said. She looked around the shop.

  Toward the front of the store was a six-foot-long display case/checkout counter that had a mix of costume jewelry including rings, necklaces, and bangles on the shelves inside of it. A bust sat near the cash register wearin
g a ruby red cowboy hat with silver sequins along the brim.

  Beyond that were several racks filled with clothes, most of which Janelle could never see herself wearing: lots of low-cut tops, plenty of short Lycra dresses, and of course, bedazzled hip huggers. Several mannequin torsos hung along the walls, featuring ensembles that Janelle fought the urge not to gawk at openly or burst into laughter at.

  “If you want to buy anything, I’ll give you a discount,” Connie said before taking off her coat and hanging it on a hook beside Janelle’s parka. Connie adjusted the front of her royal purple, cowl-neck sweater, revealing the “Buddy” tattoo on her left breast again. “Just let me know.”

  Janelle glanced at a quilted pleather jacket with an orange mohair collar that was hanging on one of the sales racks. “Oh, I will,” she replied, barely masking her sarcasm.

  The store bell jingled again. Janelle turned to find a woman with bright green hair standing in the doorway—the same woman Janelle had seen on Main Street yesterday while she was walking with the police chief.

  “Well, look who finally showed up at the crack of noon,” Connie muttered. “Yvette Black Bear, where the heck have you been?”

  “Does it matter?” Yvette croaked, tugging off her dark sunglasses and lowering the zipper of her leather jacket. She had the bleary eyes and wrung-out look of someone recovering from an epic hangover. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

  And then she walked across the shop toward them. Well, more accurately, Yvette strutted across the shop. Janelle had always admired women who could walk like that, like they were on a Milan runway or like they came accompanied by their own sound track of heavy bass and guitar riffs. She watched in bemused awe as Yvette yanked her jacket off her shoulders and tossed it on the jewelry counter, making its metal buckle ricochet off the glass top in such a forceful way that Janelle was sure a crack might appear on the glass.

  “Yes, it does matter,” Connie answered, her lips tightening. “I expected you here at eight a.m.!”

  “I had something to do this morning. I told you’d I’d be a little late. So now I’m a little late. What do you want me to say?” She glanced around her. “You got any coffee around here?”

  “You know it’s in the back room!” Connie barked. “And ‘a little late’ in my book is fifteen minutes . . . maybe thirty. It sure as hell isn’t four hours!”

  Yvette groaned in exasperation before turning her focus on Janelle. A smile crossed her maroon-painted lips as she pointed at her. “Hey, don’t I know you?”

  Janelle watched as Connie’s anger dialed down from a boil to a simmer. The older woman sucked her teeth in exasperation, walked behind a counter, opened a drawer, and tossed her purse inside. She locked the drawer with a key connected to a lanyard that she threw over her head. She tucked the dangling key between her bosoms.

  “I saw you around town yesterday, didn’t I?” Yvette persisted.

  Janelle nodded and extended her hand for a shake. “Yes, I’m Janelle Marshall. I’m Bill Marshall’s granddaughter. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Aren’t we formal?” Yvette glanced down at Janelle’s hand and laughed. “You can save the curtsies and the handshakes, honey. I’m not the first lady.”

  Janelle’s face warmed as she slowly lowered her hand back to her side.

  “So when we have the festival fashion show next week, you are going to show up on time to help me, right?” Connie asked.

  “Oh,” Janelle said, forcing a smile, “you’re having a fashion show?”

  “Yeah,” Yvette murmured drily, “some overweight housewives and flat-chested teenagers in too-tight dresses prancing around on stage like they’re in the Miss America pageant.”

  “That’s not how it’s going to be at all,” Connie insisted. She turned to Janelle. “I’m going to have my prettiest gowns and dresses. We’re going with a rodeo queen theme with cowboy hats and—”

  “Which is boring as hell and something people have seen a hundred times before,” Yvette argued. “I thought it would at least be cool for them to rip off their clothes and unveil a banner at the end. It would be in support of the NoDAPL protests in North Dakota . . . you know, the one against the pipeline going through tribal land. And then the models could all give the finger at the end,” Yvette said, shoving her middle finger into Janelle’s face, revealing her chipped black nails. Janelle took a step back. “Like a ‘Fuck you!’ to the whole Wild West Festival and all that fake bullshit.” She lowered her finger and shrugged. “But Mama shot down that idea.”

  “I shot it down because it doesn’t have anything to do with a fashion show.”

  “But it’s for our people, Mama! Come on! It’s about more than some stupid dresses and—”

  “Evie,” Connie said tiredly, “when you have your fashion show, you can do it whatever way you want. But this is my show, all right?”

  Yvette crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Can’t you just do what I ask you to do?”

  Yvette turned on the heel of her combat boots and glared at her mother. “I said I would, didn’t I?”

  “You say a lot of things,” Connie grumbled before angrily marching to the stock room. “Come on. Let’s eat,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Man, what a bitch,” Yvette muttered under her breath. She then followed her mother.

  So this is Girls’ Day, Janelle thought. I should have stayed at the cabin.

  * * *

  “Damn! These are good,” Yvette said with a mouth full of panini. She then leaned on the back legs of a wooden chair with one booted foot propped up on the stockroom table, revealing thick layers of dirt and pebbles embedded in the sole of her shoe.

  “They’re low cal, too,” Connie said as she finished pouring a cup of coffee, then handed her daughter the mug.

  “Oh, caffeine goodness,” Yvette mumbled before taking a sip. “I needed this! Thanks, Mama!”

  In response, Connie smiled and ran her hand over the back of Yvette’s green head, a tender gesture that reminded Janelle of her own mother.

  I guess they aren’t that bad, Janelle thought as she watched the duo.

  But Connie’s maternal caress abruptly switched to swatting Yvette’s thigh—making both Janelle and Yvette jump.

  “Oww!” Yvette yelled, then winced. “What the hell did you do that for?”

  “Get your feet off the table,” Connie ordered.

  Yvette grumbled and lowered her boot back to the floor. She then turned her withering gaze onto Janelle. “So why were you hanging all over Sam yesterday?”

  Janelle almost spit out her spongy French bread pizza. “Excuse me? I wasn’t hanging all over him,” she clarified, not liking Yvette’s use of words or tone.

  “I saw you leaning against him on the street. Looked like you were hanging onto him to me.”

  Connie raised her brows with interest as she slammed shut the microwave door and took out a tray of linguine.

  “I almost slipped on the sidewalk, and he was keeping me from falling down. That’s all! The only reason why I was with him at all was because he was trying to help me find my grandfather.”

  Yvette snorted. “Oh, yeah, because mom lied and said Little Bill was missing.”

  They had already told Yvette about Pops’s plan to pretend he had disappeared to get Janelle to come to Mammoth Falls and how it looked like he was following that plan to its fullest. Instead of being shocked by the news, Yvette had found it hilarious.

  “Oh, Bill! You crazy ol’ bastard,” Yvette had hiccupped before clapping her hands gleefully.

  “I only lied because he asked me to!” Connie now argued as she turned to Janelle. She took the remaining chair at the table. “I didn’t want to do it, but Bill talked me into it. Now I wish I would have stuck to my guns and said no.”

  Janelle gazed at Connie, whose dark head was bowed. Connie looked grim—daresay guilty.

  But what do you feel guilty about? Janelle wondered as she watched Connie swish her fork
around her tray of microwave linguine. Did Connie feel remorse for lying about Pops’s disappearance, or was there something else, something more that she wasn’t telling Janelle?

  Since finding the wedding license in Pops’s drawer this morning, Janelle was starting to have her doubts about Connie. Those doubts had started off small but, like an annoying mosquito bite, they were growing larger and harder to ignore each time she scratched at them.

  Do you know where he is, Connie?

  Scratch.

  Do you know what really happened to Pops?

  Scratch. Scratch.

  Did you just tell everyone that he pretended to disappear but something truly horrible has happened to him?

  Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch!

  But she tried to keep her meandering thoughts and doubts in perspective. Connie obviously hadn’t told her everything about her relationship with Pops, but a few omissions didn’t make her a criminal mastermind, and Pops could very well show up back in town at any minute.

  I’m just being paranoid, she told herself. I need to get back home. I’m going crazy out here!

  “When I saw you with Sam, I thought Police Chief Stud Muffin had gotten back with his wife,” Yvette said as she bit into her sandwich. “You look a lot like her.”

  Janelle tore her gaze away from Connie’s bowed head and stared at Yvette, reorienting herself to the conversation in progress. “I’m sorry. What?”

  “I said you kind of look like his ex-wife.” Yvette lowered her sandwich from her mouth, sucked melted cheese off of her fingers, and scanned her eyes over Janelle. She nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, with that dusky skin, curly hair, and big eyes . . . you’re almost her twin. She was some Mexican waitress or Puerto Rican model or some shit like that. He met her back east. They got divorced a couple of years ago.”