Between Lost and Found

by Shelly Stratton

  Janelle sat back in her chair. For some reason, she could never envision the police chief married to a Mexican waitress or Puerto Rican model. He was still a sheriff from the Old Wild West in her mind. This didn’t fit that image at all.

  “Sam took their breakup pretty hard,” Connie elaborated, sadly shaking her head. “He’s never gotten over that divorce from that gal. I think that’s why he hasn’t stepped up and started anything serious with anyone.” Connie raised her eyes and finally started to eat her linguine. “Though it’s not like any of the women around town haven’t tried. He’s a hot ticket around these parts.”

  “That’s for damn sure!” Yvette finished the last of her sandwich and pointed at Janelle. “You probably stand a better chance than anybody else with him, looking so much like her and all.”

  “I don’t know what your type is, Janelle, but you wouldn’t do bad hooking up with Sam,” Connie insisted. “Like I told you before, he’s a good man.”

  Janelle cleared her throat, feeling very uncomfortable with the course of this conversation. “Look, the police chief didn’t seem remotely interested in me.”

  She thought back on how he flinched when he saw her for the first time and how he barely seemed willing to look at her after that. Whatever he thought about his ex-wife, Janelle’s presence didn’t seem to bring back any good memories for him.

  “Besides, I’m in a serious relationship. I live with someone. We’re practically engaged!” she gushed.

  Yvette and Connie stared at her, not looking at all dissuaded or impressed.

  “Oh, honey,” Yvette said before gulping down coffee, “that doesn’t mean a damn thing! I’ve seen men who were married for twenty years dump their wives and kids for girls covered in baby oil who shake their tits for a living.”

  “Well, that’s not me,” Janelle said primly, raising her chin. “I would never cheat on Mark. He and I are . . . happy.”

  She regretted pausing before the word “happy” as soon as she did it. It was like a poker tell, and Yvette immediately pounced on it.

  “Uh-huh,” Yvette uttered—sounding and looking doubtful. She leaned back in her chair again and snorted. “The people who say they would never do something are the ones I know for sure will do it.”

  “Evie, leave her be,” Connie warned. “She already has a man. Let it go.”

  “Well, why don’t you go after Sam,” Janelle said indignantly, now more than slightly annoyed. What was it about these people that made her forget all her conflict resolution and roleplaying training? “If he’s such a hot ticket, then why haven’t you dated him?”

  “Believe me, I’d jump on him like he was a pogo stick, but he won’t have a girl like me. He likes them cleaner, and I like my men dirtier,” Yvette said, giving a little saucy wiggle in her chair.

  “By dirty, you mean that no good Tyler Macy?” Connie asked, not looking up from her linguine.

  Yvette’s smile disappeared. “There is nothing wrong with Ty.”

  “There’s nothing right with him, either.”

  “Don’t start, Mama,” Yvette said through gritted teeth.

  “That guy is just like your father, Evie. You’re just setting yourself up for—”

  “I said don’t start, damn it!” Yvette shouted, leaping to her feet and sending her chair careening to the floor. Janelle jumped in alarm. “Why do you do that? Why can’t you just . . . just keep your mouth shut for once?”

  “Do you want me to lie? Is that what you want me to do? To tell you I think Tyler Macy is a great guy and I’m happy for you?” Connie shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  “Oh, and you’re fuckin’ perfect? You’ve dated guys a lot worse than Ty! How many piece of shit truckers and bikers did you bring home in the last forty years? Huh?”

  Janelle’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. Truckers and bikers? Does Pops know this?

  “And I learned from my mistakes. I’d hoped that you finally would, too.”

  Yvette took a slow, deep breath that made her shoulders tremble and her chest shudder. Janelle winced, preparing herself for the verbal onslaught that Yvette was about to unleash, but the younger woman instead coolly licked her lips and turned on her heel.

  “I’m not taking this shit,” Yvette mumbled before marching across the room and throwing open the stockroom door. “I’m outta here.”

  “You said you were going to help me today, Evie!” Connie shouted after her.

  “Not if you’re going to be the world’s biggest bitch!”

  Janelle leaned forward and watched through the doorway as Yvette grabbed her leather jacket off the sales counter and, in her haste, knocked the bust with the ruby red cowboy hat to the floor.

  “Typical,” Connie muttered under her breath, shaking her head.

  “To hell with you, you old hypocrite!” Yvette shouted over her shoulder. “Nice meeting you, Janelle!”

  “Umm, n-nice meeting y-you, too,” Janelle stuttered just as Yvette swung open the store door and slammed it shut behind her. The bell jingled again. The mannequins near the window shook and shimmied like they were partygoers at a disco.

  Janelle watched as Connie slowly rose from the table and walked back into the store. She stared out the shop window, seeming to look at nothing in particular.

  Janelle set her now half-eaten pizza back onto its grease-covered paper plate and followed Connie. She bent down and picked the bust off the floor, carefully set it back on the jewelry counter, and placed the fallen cowboy hat on its plastic head.

  “Sorry about Evie,” Connie said absently, still looking out the shop window.

  “It’s . . . all right,” Janelle said, unsure of how else to respond to what she had just witnessed.

  “I gave her my temper—and my mouth,” Connie continued, as if not hearing her. “Looking at that girl sometimes is like looking at my own reflection—at the worst angle. But Evie’s right about one thing: her mama’s a hypocrite. Before Bill, I didn’t make . . . well, good choices when it came to men . . . when it came to life, either.” She turned back to Janelle and shrugged. “I didn’t know any better, though.”

  Janelle didn’t say anything, having exhausted all polite responses. Instead she stood awkwardly in the center of the shop.

  “I grew up on Pine Ridge Reservation with a drunk for a daddy and a mama who wanted to do right, but didn’t know how to,” Connie said, her gaze still unfocused. Janelle finally realized that Connie was staring at the silhouette of mountains. “Mama was just a baby herself. She got pregnant with me when she was fifteen and dropped out of school. She was stuck with a drunken husband and four rowdy kids. He was stuck with a marriage and a family he didn’t want. So they both made us all miserable. I only ended up leaving when Social Services came and farmed us out to foster care. They thought we’d do better living with the white families, but some of them were worse . . . a helluva lot worse.” She dropped her hand to her hip. “It’s not a good way for a young girl to grow up, you know? You make lots of bad decisions and look for love in all the wrong places.” She gave a sad smile. “You’re lucky you didn’t grow up like that.”

  Janelle recalled her own alcoholic father and his philandering ways. Before her mom divorced him, Janelle could remember the women her father would sneak inside the house while her mother was at work and dad was supposed to be watching her after school: the chubby girl in the horizontal-striped halter dress, the buxom cashier from the Quickie-Mart down the street who wore velour tracksuits with white piping, and the skinny chick with the blond wig and high-pitched laugh who drank martinis like they were water.

  Janelle also could remember hearing her mother weeping alone in her bedroom at night after kicking her father out for the umpteenth time, only to open the door and let him back in the next morning when he returned home shamefaced and contrite.

  But that last night—the night her mother would never let him back in again—stood out in Janelle’s memory like a gleaming diamond on a bed of coa
l. Her father had gotten so drunk that he could barely stand. Her mother—tired of all the empty liquor bottles littering their house, the phantom scent of women’s perfume on his clothes, his extended and unexplained absences, and the laundry list of disappointments—finally couldn’t take it anymore. She had hit him over and over again. She had screamed and kicked.

  “How much can I take, Carl? How much do you want from me? Haven’t I given you enough? What more can I give?”

  Her father had lunged for her mother, and Janelle had watched, petrified, as he had wrapped his hands around the woman’s throat and squeezed until her mother had clawed at his fingers, until her eyes went pink and began to water.

  Janelle had yelled for him to stop, punching her small fists into his shoulders, and he finally had released her mother, who gasped and wept on their living room floor.

  When the police arrived an hour later, her mother had looked more embarrassed than anything else.

  “I shouldn’t have let this go on for so long,” she had kept muttering as she rubbed dazedly at her throat, which was already darkening with hand-sized purple bruises. “I shouldn’t have let it get this bad,” she had mumbled as Janelle’s father was placed in handcuffs and escorted past the broken coffee table and tipped-over dining room chairs to their opened front door.

  “You’re a classy woman with a college degree,” Connie said, now gazing at Janelle. “Bill told me you live in a big pretty house in a nice neighborhood back there in Virginia. I bet you always make good decisions, don’t you?”

  “I try to,” she answered honestly.

  Pragmatism and order were the compass points by which she navigated her life. Janelle had seen the bedlam that could come with flying by the seat of your pants, following your impulses, and getting swept up in passion and emotions. Her parents had been perfect examples. Watching Connie and Yvette was yet another reminder of how messy her life could be if she had followed that path and let those ghosts from the past take over.

  She jumped, startled by a sharp knock at the window. She and Connie whipped around.

  The police chief stood in front the shop window with his hands cupped around his eyes. He peered through the glass and between the line of mannequins. When Connie waved, he lowered one of his hands and waved back.

  “Well, speak of the devil,” Connie said, beaming. The heavy exchange they had had seconds earlier seemed to be forgotten. “Hey, Sam! Come on in!”

  Please don’t, Janelle thought desperately, though she wasn’t quite sure why. She watched with dismay as the chief wiped his feet on the welcome mat outside the shop door and stepped inside the boutique.

  He wasn’t wearing a Stetson and costume today, but a police uniform and black nylon bomber jacket with the police department emblem on the breast and sleeve. He smiled openly at Connie, then glanced at Janelle, flinching only ever so slightly this time.

  “Good afternoon, ladies,” he said with his cowboy bravado, taking off his cap and gloves and running his fingers through his hair to comb his matted locks back into place. His cheeks and ears were pink from the cold again, along with the tip of his nose. He sniffed. “What have you been up to?”

  Janelle bit down hard on her bottom lip. Her cheeks burned, and her throat went dry. She glanced down at her palms. They were actually sweating.

  “Not much,” Connie answered while Janelle remained conspicuously silent. “We were just finishing up lunch, and I was showing Janelle here my shop.”

  “Hear from Little Bill yet?” he asked, stepping farther into the boutique.

  Connie shook her head. “No, not yet . . . and between you and me, it’s starting to piss me off. He’s taken this thing way too far!”

  The chief nodded. “So you mind telling me what ‘this thing’ is?”

  Connie blew air out of her puffed cheeks then unloaded, telling the chief the story of how Bill came up with his plan to get Janelle to Mammoth Falls while they were on a date at the Midnight Star in Deadwood. She also told him about the phone call she made.

  “But why would he do all that?” The chief glanced at Janelle again. “Did he tell you why he wanted her to come here? Was something wrong? Is that why he’s gone?”

  Connie shook her head. “There wasn’t anything wrong. He just didn’t want her to—”

  “Miss out on the chance to see Mammoth Falls!” Janelle loudly interrupted for the first time, making Connie frown at her.

  Janelle didn’t want the chief to know about how her grandfather was trying to thwart her engagement. If Connie told the chief that, it would require an explanation, and Janelle didn’t want to have to explore Pops’s low opinion of her relationship with Mark in front of the small-town cop. He was practically a stranger. Connie and Yvette had already prodded into her personal life past the point of comfort. She wasn’t about to let someone else wedge his way in, too.

  Janelle finally stepped forward. “He’s been trying to get me out here for years. I guess he was getting desperate,” she said, hitching an awkward laugh.

  The chief’s gaze shifted between the two women. “Is that right?”

  He could sense something was amiss, that they weren’t telling him everything. Janelle could see it on his face and in the way he eyed them both suspiciously. His keenness to know the truth made her even more desperate to get out of there.

  “Well, Connie, thank you for the lovely lunch,” she said, sounding a lot more proper than she intended, like she was thanking Connie for inviting her to high tea instead of giving her microwaved French bread pizza. “But I really should be getting back to the cabin. Maybe Pops is back already.”

  Connie blinked. “Oh, well, uh . . . let me grab my coat and keys and—”

  “I could take you back,” the chief volunteered.

  The instant he did, two female heads pivoted in his direction. Connie grinned, and Janelle’s face morphed into a look of sheer horror before she caught herself and toned it down to a smile that seemed more like a grimace.

  “Why that’d be mighty nice of you, Sam,” Connie said just as Janelle rushed out, “No, you don’t have to do that!”

  Sam looked between the two women again with brows raised. “It’s no trouble. It’ll save Connie from having to leave the shop to take you back.”

  “Yes, but you’ve probably got work to do, being police chief and . . . and all,” Janelle stammered.

  “I’ve got a meeting at City Hall, but I’ll be back long before then. This’ll only take fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. I could spare that.”

  A fifteen- to twenty-minute car ride alone with the police chief. Oh, joy, Janelle thought, swallowing loudly.

  She stared at Connie, hoping that the older woman could sense her desperation and insist that she take her back instead. But Connie didn’t utter a word. She was either completely oblivious or intentionally ignoring Janelle’s silent plea for help.

  “Thank you, Chief,” Janelle said almost grudgingly, accepting defeat. “I would appreciate the ride. It’s . . . It’s very kind of you.”

  He tugged his cap back onto his head and nodded. “No problem. And call me Sam.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Janelle sat in the passenger seat beside the chief—or Sam, as she was supposed to call him now—wedged between a laptop and so many electronics that she was terrified of touching anything. So she sat ramrod straight with her arms at her sides at ninety-degree angles and her hands firmly on her lap. Her shoulders and back were starting to hurt. She stole anxious glances at Sam, trying her best to do it inconspicuously but not quite succeeding.

  She missed his Stetson no matter how cheesy that admission made her feel, but even without it, he didn’t look any less rugged. His hard jaw was already starting to show the first signs of a five o’clock shadow. She wondered if he was one of those guys who had to shave twice a day to keep the beard stubble at bay. She wondered if she reached out and ran her finger along his cheek if it would feel like sandpaper, or would his whiskers be silky smooth.

&nbs
p; Janelle cringed at the thought. Where did that come from?

  Why was she wondering about running her fingers along any man whose name wasn’t Mark, let alone the man sitting beside her?

  “So you’re from back east?” Sam asked as he drove, finally breaking the silence that had settled between them.

  “Um, yes, I’m from Washington.... Washington, D.C., I mean.”

  She stared at his right hand. It was clutched around the steering wheel. It seemed much safer than staring at his face. Her eyes traced the line of his hand from the blue veins along his wrist to the tufts of pale blond hair on his knuckles to the white crescents under his nail beds.

  “Actually I live in the burbs of D.C. My boyfriend and I just bought a house in Chantilly. You’ve probably never heard of the place, but it’s—”

  “I’ve heard of it.” He still hadn’t torn his gaze from the windshield. “You mean Chantilly, Virginia. Right?”

  Her eyes jumped from his hand back to his face. She slowly nodded, totally surprised. “Right,” she answered softly. “How did you—”

  “I’ve been there a few times. I had a friend who lived there when I was back east. I used to live not too far away from him, out in Vienna.”

  Her mouth fell open. When she realized she was gaping, she snapped it shut.

  “We had a condo there. We’d eat at this Thai place down the street at least twice a week,” he continued, seemingly oblivious to her shock that he not only knew the city where she lived but had once lived less than twenty miles away, in a setting very similar to her own.

  But he was a cop from a small town in the Black Hills of South Dakota. She tried to imagine Sam instead at one of the dinner parties she and Mark always attended back home. She tried to envision Sam standing in a brownstone with a view of the Potomac, sharing polite conversation over a glass of red wine, talking about the latest appointee within the Obama administration or the merits of using ginkgo biloba versus fish oil as a supplement. She couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see it at all.