Between Lost and Found

by Shelly Stratton

  “No, no! Not any drama at all.” Janelle forced a smile. “She’s a family friend. She’s at the house all the time. I just . . . I just didn’t know she had stopped by.”

  “Well, anyway, Mark explained everything . . . like I said.”

  Janelle nodded blankly.

  “We’ll just reschedule when you get back. Crystal’s baby isn’t due until late July, so we have some time.”

  Janelle continued to nod, her mind now a thousand miles away.

  Don’t worry. Mark is on a plane. He’s coming to you. You’re the one that he loves, she told herself.

  “Sure,” she muttered.

  * * *

  Janelle arrived back at her grandfather’s cabin with four grocery bags in hand. She opened the fridge and realized that it would require some extreme maneuvering to fit what she had just purchased. She decided instead to leave them on the kitchen counter and sort them later.

  “Marinade,” she muttered, pulling out the garlic cloves from one of the bags and opening cabinets. She found the bottles of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. She dug through another cabinet and found the pepper. In yet another, she found a saucepan that was slightly rusted at the bottom but it would have to do. She began to cook, feeling the old self-assured and orderly Janelle begin to reassert herself. She pushed her worries aside like clamoring children begging for her attention.

  Not today, kids. Mama’s busy.

  Just as she sat the saucepan on the open flame, her cell phone began to chime with that incessant singsong ringtone that she wished she had changed. The jingle-jangle bouncy tune had seemed funny a month ago when she selected it, but in her current mood it almost ridiculed her with its perkiness.

  The phone now sat precariously on the kitchen counter, hovering over the edge of the newly scrubbed sink. She grabbed it and stared at the screen. When she saw that Mark was calling her, her hand started to shake.

  “Please don’t tell me your flight was canceled!” she cried in one exhalation before he even had the chance to say hello.

  “Uh, no.”

  “Oh, thank God!” She dropped her hand to her chest and grinned. “You scared me for a second there.”

  Janelle paused and glanced at the clock on the fireplace mantle. Her smile disappeared. She let the phone rest between her chin and the crook of her shoulder as she reached for the garlic she had finished chopping seconds earlier. She swept it from the chopping board, into her palm, and tossed it into the pan. It sizzled and popped, and she jumped back to keep from getting scalded by the oil.

  “So was your flight delayed? Are you stuck at the airport then?” she asked as she turned down the flame a bit and grabbed a spatula. “I saw on the news yesterday that there’s a bad storm front coming through—”

  “I’m not at the airport or on the plane, baby. Look, I won’t be able to make it out there. Not today, anyway.”

  She blinked furiously, trying desperately to comprehend what he was saying. She had to be misunderstanding him. “What? What do you mean you aren’t coming?”

  “I can’t fly to South Dakota. I want to be out there with you. I really do. But it’s . . . it’s a bad time. There’s a lot going on back here, and I can’t get away right now. I’m really sorry.”

  “B-but I told my mom she didn’t have to come because you were on your way. She was going to take the first flight—”

  “I know. I know. Like I said, I’m really sorry, baby.” His voice sounded muffled. “Yes, tell them I’ll be there in about five minutes. I’m on a call right now. Yes . . . yes, thanks, Jocelyn.”

  Jocelyn was the quirky intern at PCA Financial Services, where Mark worked. She had become his de facto personal assistant. She wore Buddy Holly glasses, liked to cosplay, and kept a Wolverine bobble-head doll on her desk that she had gotten from the comic book store.

  “Will do, Mr. Sullivan,” Janelle heard Jocelyn say in the background.

  Janelle angrily tossed the spatula into the sink. “You’re at the office?”

  “Huh?” he answered distractedly. She could hear the shuffling of papers.

  “You’re at work! You’re still at the office! Did you even pack? Did you even plan on coming here?” she shouted.

  “Of course I did! Of course, I packed. What kind of question is that? That’s all I did last night! But then Bob called this morning to remind me that we have an important meeting with one of our big clients. I’m in charge of the account. Baby, this could make or break my promotion. They’ve got a huge portfolio and—”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “What?”

  Janelle’s jaw tightened. “No, packing wasn’t all you did last night. Allison told me she stopped by yesterday. She said a woman was with you. The woman wasn’t your mother.”

  The phone went silent.

  “Was it Shana?”

  He laughed uncomfortably.

  “It was her, wasn’t it?”

  “What does this have to do with anything? Where are you going with this, baby?”

  “Just answer the question!” she barked, feeling the tendons stand up along her neck. The garlic, oil, and vinegar continued to sizzle and crackle behind her.

  “Yes, it was Shana,” he answered evenly. “She was dropping something off for Mom. I asked her if she was hungry, and she stayed for dinner.”

  Janelle raised her hand to her forehead. The cloves started to blacken and curl in the sizzling heat behind her.

  “I didn’t think it was a big deal. She’s been over plenty of times before. All we did was order Chinese takeout and watch cable.”

  “Oh, did you? Did you order the shrimp tempura?” She began to laugh shrilly like a hyena. She sounded crazy to her own ears. “Or did you get the crab rangoon?”

  “Jay, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine! Just fine! I’m only curious as to what you’ve been up to. I bet you’re just living it up back there now that your allergy-riddled girlfriend isn’t in town! Seafood morning, noon, and night! I bet you’re just . . .”

  Janelle couldn’t finish. Instead, she closed her eyes, feeling the lashes dampen with tears. Thin tendrils of smoke began to rise from the saucepan.

  “Jay, I know you’re under a lot of stress with your grandfather,” he began slowly, “so I’ll chalk this outburst up to that.”

  “Is it because I didn’t say yes?” she blurted out. “Is it because I didn’t say yes when you asked me to marry you at the party? Ever . . . ever since then, you’ve been acting strange like. . . like I’ve been choosing sides, like I chose Pops over you. But that’s not what happened. That’s not what happened at all! I just can’t—”

  “That has nothing to do with this, Jay. You’re mixing apples with oranges.” There were more muttering voices. He made a sharp impatient sound. “Look, I’ve really got to go, baby.”

  How could he be so calm? She felt like their relationship was hanging in the balance and he was acting as if this was a minor disagreement, one that was so trivial that it wasn’t even worth staying on the phone to finish.

  “The meeting with the client has already started, and Bob is stalling for me. I’ll reschedule my flight. Okay? I’ll get there . . . just not today.”

  “Then when?” she asked, wiping away an errant tear that slid down her cheek. “When will you get here?”

  “Soon,” Mark answered.

  No, don’t say that. Please don’t say that!

  “Daddy will see you soon, sweetheart,” her father would promise over the phone, and she would wind up sitting on the window ledge, staring at the roadway, waiting for the white Cadillac with the rusted doors to appear, and knowing in her heart that the car would never come.

  “I’ll be there soon,” Mark assured again.

  Janelle hung up after that, not bothering to say good-bye to Mark. She numbly sat the phone back on the counter. She stared at her phone until it was nothing but a black blur on off-white linoleum. Suddenly, a sharp beep filled the kitchen. It pierced the silence tha
t had fallen in the wake of Mark’s phone call. Janelle looked up and saw the smoke alarm overhead, flashing. She turned back around to find the saucepan in flames. She screamed, hastily groped for the handle, and tossed the pan into the sink before turning on the water. A black haze of smoke billowed toward the ceiling and spread like a heavy fog. She dashed across the room and flung open the living room window, then the door. She then ran into the open air hacking and coughing, searching for relief.

  CHAPTER 15

  “Connie,” a voice shouted from the other side of the polka-dot-print dressing room curtain. The sound of rustling crinoline and clanging hangers soon followed. “Coooonniiiie!”

  Connie paused from assembling jewelry in the display case, a task that she had hoped would keep her busy and help her block out the reverberation of helicopters flying nearby. But she couldn’t keep from hearing the distant whomp, whomp, whomp—even when she turned up the volume of her iPod dock and the song, “Somethin’ Bad,” filled the shop.

  No one else seemed to hear the noise, not over the sound of the country music and the festival shouts two blocks down.

  “I think it’s all in your head, honey,” one of her frequent customers had said yesterday, gazing at her with an uneasiness that made Connie briefly question if she was, indeed, slowly going crazy.

  But it’s not in my head, she thought hours later. She could hear the helicopters, and she couldn’t ignore them. Nor could she help wondering and worrying no matter how hard she tried.

  Are they looking for Bill? Is that what I’m hearing? Have they found him yet?

  She sat aside the turquoise bracelet she was holding and glanced over her shoulder. “What is it, Peg?”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong. Maybe it’s the cut or the fabric, but this gown won’t fit me!”

  “We can try another one,” Connie called back as she walked across the store toward the clothing racks several feet away. She rifled through a series of hangers filled with dresses she planned to show at the festival fashion show, pausing to examine the tags.

  Is he still alive? Dear God, is he wandering around all alone out there?

  “Maybe this one will work,” she muttered, removing one dress from the rack—a purple lace number with an elastic waist. She walked back toward the dressing room and eased the curtain aside. She held the dress aloft for Peg to examine.

  “All right, I’ll try it,” Peg muttered with a resigned sigh. “I just wanna look nice, you know? If I’m going to be up there on that stage modeling in front of the whole town, I don’t want to look silly.”

  “Uh-huh.” Connie walked back to the jewelry counter.

  Bill’s not senile and lost. I don’t care what the cops say, Connie thought as she adjusted a gold pendant on a faux-velvet neck stand. Just because he talks to a dead woman doesn’t mean he’s crazy. Something bad happened to him out there. I can feel it!

  “Did I tell you that I did pageants when I was a little girl?” Peg piped from the other side of the curtain. “I even won a few crowns. I was Little Miss Sparkle 1984. It’s been years since I’ve done anything like this, though.”

  “Uh-huh,” Connie murmured again, barely paying attention as Peg rambled.

  Whomp, whomp, whomp, whomp.

  The sound was getting louder now. Connie gazed out of the shop window. Were the helicopters closer, or was it her imagination? Connie swore she could felt the shockwave of the helicopter blades vibrate in the shop’s hardwood floor and in every bone in her body.

  Damn, I miss you, Bill, she thought.

  She missed his smell—a mix of leather, Old Spice, and his favorite dark roast coffee. She missed his hoarse laugh and the way he would thump the heel of his cowboy boot on the floor and slap his knee for a good joke. She missed the feel of his arms wrapped around her. She clung to her memories of Bill like they were a lone life raft in a vast ocean. She feared that it was all she would have left of him. And it was easier to cling to those memories than to consider what might have been.

  I could’ve been more than his “special friend,” Connie thought as she ran her hands along the glass display case. Her gaze settled on a series of cubic zirconium rings. She picked up one—a modest solitaire with a fake gold band—and fingered it. If it were up to Bill, she would be wearing a ring similar to this one.

  * * *

  Dakota. The weather had been scorching all day. T-shirts stuck to skin, dragonflies seemed to drop out of midair from heat exhaustion, and even the ducks on Pasque Lake were fanning themselves. Connie had hated it and wanted to stay indoors with the AC cranked to the highest setting, but Bill, a long-time southerner who had dealt with worse summers, had called her a wimp and talked her into going on a stroll with him on one of the mountain trails.

  “If my old ass can take it, you sure as heck can,” he chided.

  As he admired the fireflies and the forest and she swatted at mosquitoes and whined they were both too old to be gazing at nature while they sweated like whores in church, he fell to one knee on the packed dirt. She reached out to him and grabbed his shoulders, terrified that despite all his bravado, the heat had finally gotten to him and he was about to faint.

  “Jesus! You okay, Bill?” she gasped.

  But in the twilight, she saw him shove his hand into his jeans pocket. He pushed back the bill of his trucker hat and pulled out a diamond ring.

  “I’m fine, honey. I was just gonna ask you to marry me.”

  She was struck speechless.

  “Well?” He inclined his head. “You gonna leave me down here or say yes?”

  “Yes! Hell, yes!” she said before leaning down to kiss him.

  She wished she could have held on to that feeling: the delight of the unexpected. A man—a good man—had fallen in love with her and wanted to marry her, despite her faults, despite her dark past. No more sorry sons-of-bitches who would cheat on her, beat her up, and leave her with a black eye and a broken heart. Those days were over. She was fifty-one and she was finally going to get the life she always wanted. It had certainly taken her long enough, but better late than never, right?

  Of course, that feeling didn’t stay. The uncertainty crept in like a bad smell that makes you wrinkle your nose.

  You make bad decisions, Connie Black Bear, the little annoying voice said in her head that night as she and Bill slept in bed together. Why should this be any different?

  She wondered whether it was smart to marry a man who was almost thirty years older than she was. Bill had always seemed younger than his age, but he was in his seventies. How many years could they realistically have together?

  She questioned whether his family would accept her. She and Bill had kept their relationship a secret from his daughter and his granddaughter for so long. And why had he kept it a secret, anyway? Maybe Bill was really ashamed of her but had never admitted it.

  She wondered if she should marry a man who was still so in love with his deceased wife. Bill didn’t know she could hear him talking to Mabel late at night when he thought Connie was asleep. Some of those earnest words of love and longing he had whispered to Mabel in the dark had made Connie’s heart ache.

  How could she take such a chance? Why should I, she had wondered as she lay awake in bed staring at the ceiling.

  Now she had her answer: because you may never get the chance again.

  * * *

  “Darn it! This dress doesn’t fit either, Connie!” Peg shouted. “You got anything else? Maybe something in red. I saw this ruby red gown that Jennifer Lawrence wore in InStyle magazine and I thought ‘Hot damn, I’d look good in that!’”

  “Umm.” Connie sniffed and wiped at the lone tear that had fallen onto her cheek. She sat the ring back in the display case and shut the glass door. “Let me see,” she said, sniffing again as she headed back across the shop and dug through the rack.

  She searched for another dress, trying her best to ignore the maudlin thoughts that kept making their way past the wall she had erected inside her head�
�the wall she hoped would keep her sane.

  “How about this one? I’ve got a red satin A-line in a size fourteen. It’ll give you a—”

  “A size fourteen?” Peg yelped.

  The dressing room curtain flew open. Peg gaped. The dress dangled around her arm and her neck like a purple lace toga. The three-way mirror behind her gave Connie a full view of Peg’s mismatched bra and daisy granny panties as well as her dimpled thighs and doughy middle.

  “Are you serious? I can’t wear a size fourteen! I’ve been a size twelve since I was eighteen years old. If I had to wear a size fourteen, I would just . . . just die!”

  Connie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Yes, because there was no worse fate than wearing a dress size that the average woman in America wore. Connie couldn’t think of anything in the world that would be more torturous or horrendous—except maybe being a man stranded alone on the side of a mountain or knowing that you had tossed away the one chance to marry someone you loved dearly and may never see again.

  Connie could still hear the helicopters. She could still feel the agony building within her even though she tried her best to keep it at bay, and here she was listening to a tirade about a dress size.

  “You won’t die, Peg,” Connie argued, walking toward the dressing room stall and holding the dress out to her. “No one in the crowd will know the difference. They won’t know what size you’re wearing. I promise.”

  “But I will!” Peg exclaimed, angrily shoving the dress away. “I’m the one that’ll feel like a hog in that . . . that thing!”

  Connie dropped a hand to her hip, her patience with Peg—one of her best but most demanding customers—now wilted. “Do you wanna feel like a hog or look like a hog? It’s up to you!”

  Peg’s eyes went wide. They started to glisten with tears, and her chin began to tremble. “How . . . how dare you tell me I look like a hog! That was a hateful, mean thing to say, and it wasn’t Christian of you . . . not Christian at all!”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not feeling very Christian-like today, Peg,” Connie muttered as she tossed the dress onto a nearby hook that was already covered with several ensembles that Peg had rejected.