Between Lost and Found

by Shelly Stratton

  Sam chuckled, oblivious to the mental earthquake he had just given her. “It got to the point that he knew us by name.”

  “He?” she uttered vaguely.

  “The kid who used to answer the phone at the Thai restaurant,” Sam elaborated. “He even knew my order—drunken noodles and spring rolls. We’d get there and I swear they had those plastic containers waiting for us in the back.”

  “By ‘we’ you mean you and your ex-wife?”

  Sam whipped around, finally turning away from the windshield. He stared at her as if she had just shouted a string of obscenities at him.

  She immediately regretted asking him that question. Why had she mentioned his wife? She guessed she had caught a case of verbal vomitus from plain-spoken Yvette.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . I mean, Yvette and Connie mentioned that you were . . . that you had once been . . . well, married before. I didn’t know that—”

  “It’s fine,” he said, raising one of his hands off the steering wheel and silencing her. “It’s not like it’s a secret or anything. Everyone around Mammoth knows I’m divorced. I have been for a couple of years now.” He sighed. “And yes, I lived out there with my ex-wife, Gabriela. I guess she still lives there, too.”

  “You guess?”

  “Well,”—he paused and inclined his head—“Gabby and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms. I wouldn’t expect to get any Christmas or birthday cards from her any time soon.”

  “Oh,” she said quietly.

  The conversation petered out after that. They finished the rest of the ride to her grandfather’s cabin in mutual silence, listening to the police radio chatter while Sam drove and she gazed out the passenger-side window, taking in the monotonous scenery of trees, rock, and blue skies once they made it out of downtown Mammoth Falls.

  The awkwardness between them felt even more elevated now, and it was all her fault. She could tell that she had crossed some unseen line with Sam that she should not have. Sam claimed that he didn’t mind talking about his marriage or about his ex-wife, but she could sense that was untrue. He still cringed at the sight of a woman who vaguely resembled his ex-wife, for God’s sake! If that wasn’t an example of “not getting over the past,” she didn’t know what was.

  Janelle suspected that there was some intriguing story there with Sam, his ex-wife Gabriela, and their days back east. It might even be a heartbreaking one. But she wouldn’t pry. She may have had verbal vomitus earlier, but she wouldn’t have it again. Her lips were bolted shut. The lock was in place. She wasn’t asking any more questions. The chief could keep whatever secrets he wanted.

  A sense of relief washed over her when he pulled into the clearing leading to her grandfather’s driveway. Janelle fought the urge to immediately reach for her seat belt and the door handle when the cabin’s metal roof came into view. She didn’t want to look too impatient to get away from Sam, though she wanted nothing more than to escape his truck and get back to the solitude of the cabin’s interior.

  “Thank you for the ride,” she said as he drew to a stop.

  “No problem.” He glanced around the yard. “Looks like Little Bill still isn’t back yet.”

  Her hands paused midway in removing her seat belt and grabbing her purse. During the car ride, she had somehow forgotten completely about her grandfather’s absence. She followed Sam’s gaze. He was right. Her grandfather’s truck wasn’t there. He still had not returned. Unease crept into her again.

  “You mind if I look around?” he asked, turning to her.

  “Why would you look around?”

  “Maybe I can spot something. Maybe he left a note or some sign that he’s been here already, but you might not have noticed.”

  That wasn’t likely. Connie had already looked throughout the cabin last night, and Janelle had examined it from top to bottom only hours ago. What would Sam find that they hadn’t? Besides, she didn’t want him in the cabin with her.

  “Why?” a little voice in her head asked. “Connie said he’s a good guy. It’s not like he’s going to try anything.”

  That’s not what I’m worried about.

  She didn’t want to be alone with Sam any longer than she had to be. She didn’t like the way he made her feel—awkward and feverish, silly and feminine. She was not that woman back home—not at work as she walked from office to office, introducing new hires, and not at dinner parties while she stood at Mark’s side—and she refused to be that woman here in Mammoth Falls.

  “I just wanna help,” he said, leaning toward her slightly.

  She removed her seat belt and set her purse on her lap. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

  “Look, if you’ve got some big crime syndicate going on in there, you don’t have to worry.” He smiled. “I’ll look the other way.” He held up his hand mockingly. “Scout’s honor. I’m just trying to find out what’s happened to Bill.”

  It was the smile that did it. She didn’t think he had smiled at her since they had met. It was her unfortunate luck that the smile took him from rugged to charming. Knowing that she would probably regret it later, Janelle threw open the truck door.

  “Okay, have a look. Maybe you can find something.”

  A minute later she stepped over the threshold and lowered the zipper of her parka while Sam stood with his hands on his hips in the center of the doorway. Inside the cabin, he seemed even taller, maybe twice as large. It was almost like having a giant standing beside her. She took a step to her left. She could still feel the heat radiating off of him.

  “So Connie said that Little Bill made up a story to get you out here to Mammoth,” Sam began as he walked across the living room. He glanced around him at the furniture and then at the cowboy hats that hung along the wall. “Is that right?”

  Janelle nodded as she shut the door behind him and took off her coat. She hung it on a hook near the door and tugged at the collar of her cashmere turtleneck. Was it just her, or had it gotten markedly hotter in here?

  “Yes, that’s what she told me, too,” Janelle said as she walked toward the thermostat. She pressed the button to lower the temperature setting by about three degrees. She flapped her hands in front of her face, banishing the tiny beads of perspiration that were sprouting on her forehead.

  “Why was he so fired up to get you out here?” Sam asked as he stepped into the kitchen. She watched in bewilderment as he started opening and closing drawers and cabinets. He ran a hand over the Formica countertop. He shifted back one of the bar stools.

  “Pops thought he could . . . he thought that he could . . .”

  Her words drifted off. It mortified her to admit something like this, particularly to Sam.

  Sam turned back to face her. “Bill thought he could what?”

  She stifled a sigh. So he wasn’t going to let her off the hook.

  “He thought he could keep me from getting engaged.”

  Sam’s blue eyes widened.

  “It’s crazy, I know . . . and misguided.” She shrugged. “He was coming from a good place, though,” she hastily added.

  Sam slowly walked out of the kitchen. “Why wouldn’t he want you to get engaged?”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know,” she lied.

  Sam was accessing her openly now—no sideways glances. She guessed he had gotten over her looking like his ex-wife. Either that, or this information was too intriguing to turn away.

  “You don’t know?”

  He knew she was lying. She had always been a horrible liar.

  “Well, I guess Pops . . . he doesn’t like my boyfriend very much.”

  There. I said it.

  Sam abruptly turned and headed down the hall. He pushed open the first door, revealing her grandfather’s only bathroom. She rushed forward, hoping that she hadn’t left anything embarrassing lying around—a bra on the tiled floor or her birth control pills sitting on the edge of the porcelain sink. She squeezed past him just as he swung open the medicine cabinet. She released a pent-u
p breath when she saw that the bathroom was relatively clean. No lacy bras or pills to be found.

  Thank God.

  “Why doesn’t he like him?”

  “Huh?” She tore her eyes away from the bathroom floor and looked up. They were almost chest-to-chest in the cramped bathroom.

  “I asked why Bill doesn’t like your boyfriend.”

  The warmth of his breath brushed her cheek. His gaze locked onto hers, and she felt restless again. She instantly wanted out of that room. She wouldn’t have felt a more urgent desire to leave if she had seen flames and smelled smoke.

  Janelle hopped back into the hall. “Are these questions supposed to help you find my grandfather, Chief?”

  He smiled again. “I told you to call me Sam.”

  A second smile. He’s on a roll today.

  “Are these questions supposed to help you find my grandfather, Sam?”

  “Maybe yes. Maybe no.” He followed her back into the hall, his heavy footfalls echoing off the hardwood floor. “I figure it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”

  “Well, if you can’t say for sure whether they’re relevant to your search, you won’t mind me not answering them then,” she said firmly then pushed the last door open in the hallway. “There’s the bedroom if you want to check that next.”

  He cocked an eyebrow, looking taken aback.

  Good, she thought. She had been stuttering and stumbling around him way too long. It was finally time to assert herself. She wasn’t a woman who got easily flustered, and there was no reason to start now.

  He walked into the bedroom and looked around, staring at the bed that she had already remade—the ancient comforter was back in place along with the two pillows whose cases she longed to wash if she knew where to find a washer and dryer around here. Sam dropped to his knees and checked the floor underneath the bed. She crossed her arms over her chest. All he would find under there was a pair of old work boots and dust bunnies.

  “The boyfriend’s a touchy topic with you, I’m guessin’,” his muffled voice said from beneath the bed frame.

  “He’s not a touchy subject. I just don’t understand how Mark is pertinent to—”

  “Mark?” Sam raised his head and turned to look at her. The bright light coming through the bedroom window caught in his blonde locks, setting them aflame. He climbed back to his feet. “Mark is his name?”

  “Yes, his name is . . . it’s Mark Sullivan.”

  “Well,” he said as he opened the night table drawer and peered inside of it, “Bill certainly didn’t think this Mark Sullivan guy was up to snuff if he . . .” His words tapered off.

  That’s when Janelle noticed the open box of condoms in the night table drawer—the one she had found earlier. Sam had obviously noticed the box, too. The tips of her ears started to burn as a flush washed over her face.

  “Those aren’t mine!” she rushed out. “Th-they’re Pops’s! I-I found them.”

  Sam didn’t comment. He simply pushed the box aside and looked at the address book underneath before shutting the drawer closed a few seconds later.

  He probably doesn’t believe me.

  What nearly eighty-year-old man kept a box of Trojans in his night table drawer? Sam probably thought she had brought the box with her to South Dakota. Maybe she wanted to have some wild fling with a local guy because her relationship with her boyfriend wasn’t stable, because Pops was right that she shouldn’t get engaged.

  “Look, there is nothing wrong with Mark. There is nothing wrong with us. We make sense! We’re perfect for each other!” she argued to the back of Sam’s head as Sam turned to walk across the bedroom. She remembered the previous times she had uttered those very words to Pops. And she remembered Pops’s rebuttals.

  He’s a mama’s boy.

  He’s all about flash and money.

  He loves himself more than he loves you, baby girl.

  That last one had particularly hurt.

  “Pops is just . . . overly protective. He’s never liked any of my boyfriends,” she embellished, feeling guilty even as she said it. “He’ll never be happy with any man I choose!”

  Sam nodded. “I know what that’s like,” he said, making her pause.

  “You do?”

  “Yep.” She watched as he walked around the bed and strolled toward the wooden dresser in the corner near Pops’s tiny closet. He opened and closed drawers in succession after a quick scan. “Before he died, my father had nothing good to say about my wife, Gabby. ‘She’ll give you nothing but grief, boy. That woman ain’t meant for marriage, and she certainly ain’t meant for you. You’re a fool if you can’t see that.’ It burned me up to hear him talk about her like that. I couldn’t understand why he said it. What the heck did he see that I didn’t . . . that I couldn’t? He told me he was just ‘bein’ honest.’ I told him he was being one negative SOB, as usual. I told him if he couldn’t accept Gabby, there wasn’t any point of us being around him anymore. I didn’t see or speak to my father for four years.” Sam slammed shut the last drawer—making her flinch. He turned to face her again. “Sad part is . . . Dad was right.”

  She fell silent.

  “Well,” he said as he peered into the closet. He exhaled a long breath. “I can’t find a damn thing and nothing looks out of the ordinary.” He shut the closet door. “The cabin looks pretty much the way you found it, right?”

  She nodded numbly, almost feeling whiplash from the rapid subject change.

  “I’ll head back into town, then.”

  Sam turned away from the closet and headed to the bedroom door. She followed him down the hall and into the living room. He was still talking—saying something about lunch and his meeting at City Hall—but she didn’t catch the details. She barely paid attention. Her thoughts orbited in another solar system.

  “‘That woman ain’t meant for marriage and she certainly ain’t meant for you.’ . . . Sad part is . . . Dad was right.”

  Was he insinuating that Pops might be right about Mark, too? Had that been the point of his story?

  “You go on and take my number,” Sam said, holding out a business card to her.

  Janelle stared down at the card he extended to her as if he had just performed a magic trick and manifested it out of thin air. She took his card and shoved it into her jeans pocket. She was growing a small collection of these business cards.

  “As soon as you hear from Bill, let me know. He’s even starting to make me wonder where the heck he’s gotten off to.”

  She dumbly nodded again, causing Sam to narrow his eyes at her.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Uh, yeah . . . yeah, I’m fine.”

  But she wasn’t fine. She was lost. Mentally, she was back in her rental car driving in the dark forest, bumping along with no idea where she was going. She had come to Mammoth to find answers and find Pops, but nothing had been resolved, and now she had even more questions than before. She hadn’t come here for this.

  Sam placed a hand on her shoulder. The gesture caught her so off guard that she almost swatted his hand away. But she caught herself before she did.

  “I’m sure Bill is fine. He’ll come back, and he’ll get used to the idea of you guys getting married. Heck, he’ll have to, right?” He squeezed her shoulder. “You’re already engaged.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not engaged. I-I didn’t say yes. I would have said yes but I . . .” Her voice drifted off.

  His hand lingered a bit longer. Her throat tightened as Sam opened his mouth as if to say something more, but then he clamped his mouth shut, dropped his hand, and turned back to the door.

  “I’ll head out, then.”

  A few seconds later, Janelle shut the door behind Sam. She surveyed the cabin and listened to the steady drip of the kitchen faucet and the tick of the clock over the fireplace. She pulled back the gingham curtains and gazed out the window. Neither a house nor an office building was visible from here. The storm clouds had long since disappeared. The sky was a clear b
lue, and the mountains stretched far into the distance. Many of the trees were still coated with a fine layer of ice, and the breeze created a light tinkling sound in the branches that reached her ears even in the confines of the cabin. The trees undulated like an ocean wave with each gust of wind.

  It was strange to feel so much angst in such an awe-inspiring place.

  I can’t take this, Janelle thought indignantly. She couldn’t take this doubt. Out here, the voices that she had managed to keep quiet for so many years were amplified. The foundation that she stood on seemed to quake and shudder. It was like she was hurled back in time to that little girl who needed reassurance, for someone to tell her that everything was going to be okay. She was back to being the deluded nine-year-old peering out her grandparents’ living room window, searching for an approaching Lincoln Continental. She was back to listening at the door as her mother sobbed in her bedroom. She was back to watching in almost paralyzing horror as her father wrapped his hands around her mother’s neck and wouldn’t let go.

  There was something about this place—the remoteness, the solitude, and the silence. She needed to escape it. She had to get back home, where things moved so quickly that you didn’t have time to reflect or have doubts. She needed her Microsoft Outlook calendar that was full of meetings and to-do lists, the blaring horns from cabs, the steady stream of pedestrians, cars racing through traffic lights, and subway trains crowded with people. She needed her Pilates class and meeting up with the girls for drinks and tapas. She needed Mark by her side telling her “don’t sweat the small stuff, baby,” because unfortunately in Mammoth Falls, the “small stuff” didn’t seem quite so diminutive.

  Had that been the reason why Pops had wanted her to come here? Had he wanted to shake her up, to give her doubts?

  “Thanks a lot, Pops,” she muttered as she walked across the room and grabbed her iPad from the coffee table.

  She’d follow up with Connie when she got back home. She’d try other ways to reach her grandfather. But she couldn’t stay here any longer. She wouldn’t be manipulated like this. She watched as the tablet’s screen brightened with the press of a button. A few minutes later, she was searching frantically for the next flight to take her back to Virginia, back to safety.