Between Lost and Found

by Shelly Stratton

  “Then you’re going to have to ride that wave without me,” he had told her before packing his things and moving out. He filed for divorce soon after and accepted his dad’s invitation to rejoin the police force back in Mammoth Falls.

  “She doesn’t blame you, man,” Kevin continued quietly. “She . . . she understands.”

  Sam kept shaking his head, refusing to hear Kevin’s words. He wouldn’t accept any absolution for what he had done or the decisions he had made. Though he knew he had his reasons, he still felt guilt for walking out, for leaving her.

  “Gabby knows how hard it was. She tells Ingrid that all the time. She won’t even let Ingrid talk shit about you, and believe me . . . Ingrid wants to kick your ass. But Gabby sticks up for you. She knows you tried.”

  Sam finally stopped shaking his head and lowered his gaze. He stared at a Bic pen that sat on the edge of his desk, his eyes tracing the plastic cylinder like it was the most important object in the world.

  Gabby knew how hard he had tried to make it work. She understood. Of course she did. That was the reason why he had fallen in love with her, wasn’t it? That woman couldn’t stay mad at anyone for long. She had a seemingly endless capacity for compassion and forgiveness. She might even be willing to forgive him—the man who had deserted her—but could he ever forgive himself?

  “Just call her, Sam,” Kevin repeated. “I mean it.”

  “It was good talking to you, Kev,” he said casually, like he hadn’t heard his friend. “I’ve got to go, all right?”

  “Oh, uh, yeah,” Kevin stuttered. “S-sure, man. Look, I’ll tell Ingrid you called.”

  “Thanks. Talk to you later. I’ll give you a call back later this week,” Sam said dazedly before lowering his phone back into its cradle. He sat silently for several minutes thereafter until he heard a knock at the door.

  “You busy, Chief?” someone asked.

  He shook his head. “No. Not anymore. You can come in.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Lydia Roach

  April 24 at 3:34 p.m.

  To: Janelle Marshall

  Subject: Just following up!

  Hello Janelle,

  I think we got cut off during our phone conversation earlier today. It sounded like there was a lot going on in the background, though. I realize you’re dealing with a lot with your grandfather and everything, but I just wanted to double check with you to see if there is an ETA on those documents I mentioned to you. I hope you’re sending them tomorrow! You are sending them tomorrow, right???

  Sincerely,

  Lydia Roach

  Assistant Human Resources Director

  Bryant Consulting Group Inc.

  From Allison Bradbury

  Text sent Thursday 6:32 pm

  Hey Jay! I’m at the restaurant. Can’t believe I beat U here! I’m at one of the tables in the back. I ordered sangria.

  From Allison Bradbury

  Text sent Thursday 6:51 pm

  Where R U? We were supposed to meet at 6:30 for the baby shower stuff, right? Having trouble finding parking?

  From Allison Bradbury

  Text sent Thursday 7:23 pm

  OK this isn’t like you at all. REALLY starting to worry. Seriously WHERE R U???? Why haven’t U texted me back?

  From Allison Bradbury

  Text sent Thursday 7:47 pm

  Finished sangria, guac, and nachos and now more than a lil pissed U stood me up and didn’t call. Please don’t tell me U had an accident!

  From Allison Bradbury

  Text sent Thursday 8:19 pm

  Leaving restaurant and heading to your place to see if U R still alive!!! :P

  Regina Marshall

  April 25 at 5:51 a.m.

  To: Janelle Marshall

  Subject: Any updates?

  Hey, sweetheart!

  Haven’t heard from you in a couple of days. I know you said that I didn’t have to book that flight back home, that you had it all covered, but now I’m feeling like I should’ve!

  Malta was nice—lots of history and pretty beaches. The tour guide took us to this big rock temple with a name I still can’t pronounce and we went to St. Paul’s Cathedral. (I took a few pictures. I’ll send them to you when I get the chance.) But I’ll be honest with you, honey, I found it hard to concentrate because I kept worrying about Daddy. I’m still worried about him. But I told myself, “Reggie, it’s no point in worrying. You’re stuck on this ship for the next two days.” (We’re sitting off the coast of one of the Greek islands.) So even if I wanted to take a flight back home, I’d have to wait.

  Happy to hear that Mark is on his way. At least you won’t be alone up there anymore though your mama wishes she was there with you, honey! I know this can’t be easy.

  I meant to ask you, are those hillbilly cops working with the FBI? A man I met on the ship (He’s nice. He’s a widow and he’s my age but doesn’t look it. He doesn’t have a bit of gray and still has a full head of hair) used to be an ATF agent, which is kind of like the FBI. He said they handle missing person cases all the time. So are they talking to the FBI??? Or maybe we can hire a private detective. I’ve been researching it on the Internet. There’s a PI in Montana who will give you a discount if you sign a contract with him before the month of June. (I guess a lot of people go missing in June with the summer weather and all.)

  Anyway—I plan to be on a flight to the U.S. in a few days. Stay strong and hold tight, baby. Mama’s on her way!

  Luv you!

  XXXX

  Janelle had lain awake in bed for hours, listening to the buzz of her cell phone on Pops’s night table with each new text message and email. She lay unmoving, yet unable to sleep or quiet her chaotic thoughts. She watched the sky through a crack in the bedroom blinds as the horizon turned from pitch black to dark blue then purple. By the time it was a pale blue with brushstrokes of marigold, yellow, and orange at its fringes, she managed to drag herself out of bed. She tiredly climbed into the shower, feeling the hot blast of water on her back and shoulders. When she stepped onto the bath mat ten minutes later and gazed at the bathroom mirror, she could feel the bleak mood descending over her again. She told herself to shake it off. She didn’t have time to be depressed. She had to prepare for Mark’s arrival in Mammoth Falls later that day.

  Keep going. Keep moving.

  She dressed and began to tidy up the cabin, though it was already spotless from the endless hours she had scrubbed, dusted, and swept. She used a scouring pad on the kitchen sink, a magic eraser on phantom spots and streaks on the cabin walls, and she swept the hardwood floors with a determined ferocity that scared even her. She did it to keep occupied. She didn’t want to think about . . .

  Keep moving, she told herself when her thoughts drifted to visions of Pops wandering alone in the woods or him facedown in a pile of melting snow, his skin darkening with gangrene and covered with a fine layer of frost that made him look like a macabre Snow Miser.

  She dropped her dustpan and broom, letting them clatter to the floor. She strode across the cabin’s living room, grabbed her car keys, donned her parka that had finally lost its musky smell, and headed back out the door to run some errands, to keep busy.

  Keep going.

  She drove past the Victorian and Craftsman-style houses that took her through the major artery leading to the heart of Mammoth Falls. She was finally headed to Kinko’s to print out those documents she still owed Lydia but got stuck behind the world’s oldest traffic jam: a series of stagecoaches and horses headed to the festival. One had broken its wagon wheel and was holding up all the cars and trailers behind it. After waiting for nearly twenty minutes, Janelle decided make a U-turn and head down a side street. She couldn’t go back home, not back to the silence of Pops’s cabin, so she parked her car instead.

  “I’ll buy more food,” she murmured flatly, sounding almost robotic as she opened the door
to her Jetta, conveniently forgetting that every shelf in the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets was already packed with goods, thanks to her trip to Mason’s Grocery yesterday morning.

  “Gotta pick up dinner for Mark,” she muttered.

  Keep going. Keep moving.

  Yesterday had been a mistake. She should have never hung all her hopes on one letter. It seemed so ridiculous now, believing that she could find out where her grandfather had disappeared by deciphering some secret message in the mail. Who did she think she was? Sherlock Holmes? Inspector Clouseau? This wasn’t a game of Clue. She couldn’t shout that the butler did it in the library with the candlestick.

  See, Sam! Solving cases isn’t that hard, she now thought flippantly, ridiculing her own naïveté.

  If you needed an HR form, she’d have it ready for you with a pen attached and a Post-It labeling where it had to be signed. If you needed to schedule a meeting, she’d plug it into her Outlook calendar, send an email to all the necessary parties, and have a basket of muffins and complimentary orange juice waiting for everyone in the conference room by the time the meeting started. But crime solving was obviously not her area of expertise. This was a problem she could not solve, and that realization for someone like her was almost crippling. She would have to leave the detective work to the professionals; let the cops and trackers do their jobs.

  Meanwhile, she would keep moving.

  As Janelle climbed out of her car, she tugged her hood over her head only to lower it when she didn’t feel the customary blistering blast of wind that usually greeted her as soon as she stepped out of the cabin’s front door or her car. She looked around her in bewilderment. The air had lost its chill entirely. Why hadn’t she noticed this before? Colorful puddles mixed with mud, brine, and car exhaust were starting to fill the town streets. She raised her eyes. Along with the silhouette of two search helicopters, she saw birds perched on awnings and the old-fashioned street lamps dotting Main Street.

  She realized that several festival goers a few blocks down weren’t even wearing coats. They had increased in number also from a trickle to a steady stream of people. They created a wall of sound—screams, laughs, shouts, ringing, popping, and clapping—rivaling the country music that seemed to be playing on the stage speakers night and day, regardless of whether an actual band was performing.

  Janelle quickly dug into her tote bag and pulled out her phone, calling up her weather app.

  “High of forty-five degrees with current temperature thirty-nine degrees,” she read aloud.

  It was practically balmy compared to the frigid cold she had endured for most of the week. It looked like spring had finally arrived in Mammoth Falls.

  She dropped her cell back into her bag, lowered the zipper of her parka, and continued down the sidewalk toward Mason’s Grocery. A Pepsi machine sat near the entrance, and the shop’s display window was decorated in honor of the Wild West festival with cowboy hats, tomahawks, lassos, and a few fake tumbleweeds. Several leaflets of every neon color imaginable were taped to the glass advertising a new knitting circle, a party at the American Legion next month, and a Girl Scout fund-raiser. Her eyes intentionally skipped over the smiling image of her grandfather in his Silver Alert notice that was also taped to the window.

  Keep going. Keep moving.

  Janelle pushed open the shop door, and a bell jingled overhead, signaling her arrival.

  The store was larger on the inside than it looked from the sidewalk. It was filled wall-to-wall with metal shelves and a flank of freezers at the back. It didn’t have the grocery store or warehouse fluorescent lights Janelle was used to back home or the Muzak playing in the background. Instead metal track lights hung over each aisle and an ancient Casio boom box sat on the counter, playing old country tunes. The shopkeeper looked up when she entered.

  “Miss Marshall?” the old woman said, lowering the copy of the Mammoth Falls Gazette she had been reading. Janelle’s eyes shifted again when she caught sight of the headline on the cover of the newspaper, above the fold: “Area Resident Missing, Police Search Continues.”

  The old woman stared at Janelle quizzically. “Back already?”

  Janelle nodded and grabbed one of the plastic baskets near the doormat. “Yeah,” she said quickly, not wanting to get dragged into a conversation, “just wanted to pick up a few more things.”

  Keep going. Keep moving.

  “And here I was thinking you bought everything but the kitchen sink yesterday,” the shopkeeper said with a chuckle that sounded more like a cough. “Let me know if you need any help.”

  Janelle made her way toward the back of the store. As she did, she calmed a little. There was something delightfully mind-numbing about grocery shopping. The worries of the world seemed far away when you considered whether to get string beans or broccoli or whether to purchase two jars of mayonnaise because if you bought one the other was half price. She zipped down the dairy aisle and pinged past the dry goods.

  Keep going. Keep moving.

  She breezed past a display of marked-down oranges and finally reached the meat section. Janelle gazed at the selection, considering the tenderloin versus hamburger meat. She had planned to serve Mark a rosemary-and-lemon-flavored chicken breast with mashed potatoes as his welcome dinner but perhaps she could make a marinated beef instead.

  Or maybe I can . . .

  Suddenly, her phone began to ring. She withdrew it from her tote bag again and winced when she saw the name on the screen.

  “Ally!” she shouted after clicking the button to answer and slapping her forehead. “I’m so . . . so sorry! I meant to call you back. I know we were supposed to have dinner yesterday!”

  “Uh, yeah,” Allison answered sullenly. “We were supposed to meet at six thirty and you were a no-show.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “I called you and texted you like four times, Jay!”

  She had seen the texts and deleted them and all the voice mails without listening or reading either. But after the certified letter fiasco, she had been in no state to talk to anyone.

  “See the thing is, Ally,” she began as she reached for the beef tenderloin, “I’m not even in town. I flew out to South Dakota to—”

  “Yeah, I know. Mark told me everything.”

  Janelle lowered the cellophane-wrapped tenderloin into her basket. She paused. “He did?”

  “When you didn’t answer my calls, I went to your house to see what the hell happened. I mean it’s not like you to just not show up or return phone messages. You’re usually so punctual. I thought you had been murdered or kidnapped or something.”

  “I know. I know. Again, I’m sorry, Ally!”

  “Well, anyway, I went to your house and that snobby woman opened the door.”

  Janelle rolled her eyes as she made her way back to the vegetable aisle to grab a few cloves of garlic for the marinade. Brenda, Janelle thought with exasperation.

  “She said you weren’t there,” Allison continued, “and was about to close the door in my face. I thought something was seriously wrong, and then Mark walked up and explained everything. He told me you went to go see your grandfather . . . a family emergency or something. He said you left days ago.”

  “Well, I’m glad Mark explained what happened and I am truly, deeply sorry if Mark’s mom was rude to you. I guess she didn’t—”

  “His mother wasn’t there. Or at least, I didn’t see her.”

  “Huh? But I thought you said a snobby woman answered.”

  “Uh, yuh-ah!” Allison answered in her usual way that could be both amusing and infuriating. “But she wasn’t his mother. She was way too young. I think I ran into her at your housewarming party. Her name was Shana or something or other.”

  Janelle halted in the center of the produce aisle.

  Keep going. Keep moving. Keep going. Keep moving, the mantra kept repeating in her head like a record that was skipping in the same place. But she couldn’t move. Her feet seemed affixed to th
e store’s linoleum floors.

  “Shana answered the door? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I think that’s who it was.”

  Janelle sat the basket on the floor, urging her mind not to race to any irrational conclusions, which it often did nowadays. But she couldn’t stop the wheels from spinning. Why was Shana there? Why was she answering the door? And why was she alone with Mark?

  Then Janelle remembered watching from the opposite side of her living room during her housewarming as Shana stood at Mark’s side during a conversation he was having with a few of his colleagues. Shana had stood so close that they were almost touching. She had been laughing as she gazed up at Mark, and Janelle could have sworn she saw adoration in the young woman’s eyes. Any casual onlooker could have easily mistaken Mark and Shana for the couple holding their housewarming. They could have sauntered up to Shana to tell her that the chaise longue in the sunroom was gorgeous only to have Shana bashfully admit that it wasn’t her chaise longue. It wasn’t even her home or her boyfriend.

  “I didn’t start anything, did I?” Allison asked anxiously, seeming to be unnerved by Janelle’s protracted silence. “I wasn’t trying to cause any drama by telling you this. It seemed perfectly innocent, Jay. It’s not like I caught them in bed together. I mean—”