Lost in Seattle (The Miss Apple Pants series, #2)

by Charlotte Roth

  “I guess that’s kind of great news. Well, at least the part with the refund. Now we just have to wait until someone finds out that they are one piano short.” He nodded in the direction of the shed and tossed me an amused smile.

  Mom took in a deep breath. “And what do you suggest we do until then? We can’t live like this forever.” She clicked her fingernails on one of the boxes. “We can’t keep wearing the same clothes for days, eating dinner off of paper plates, on a table made out of moving boxes in a kitchen with little to no light. I say we give it until Thursday.”

  “Thursday?” Dad narrowed his eyes.

  Mom nodded and tapped her fingers on the box again. “We need beds, chairs, tables, lamps, plates, a coffeemaker. You name it. We sure need a lot more than what five hundred dollars can accommodate.”

  “But still, it’s really nice of them to do that, right? I mean, they didn’t have to. I think it was Melanie who fixed that. She’s a champ, you know.” He nodded his head, agreeing with himself.

  “I know, but still, we can’t live like this.” Mom raised her hands above her head and pointed to the empty space around us.

  “But what do you suggest we do, rob a bank?” He turned his head and winked at me.

  “Open a box or two and grab whatever we need right now—in between five hundred dollars and your first paycheck—and when our stuff returns, and, oh God, I hope it does, we’ll put it all back where it belongs. Nice and clean.” She ran her fingers through her curls and looked at Dad.

  “You mean go through someone else’s very private stuff? Someone else’s house?” He dropped the bread on the plate, butter facing down. He looked at Mom and shook his head, sighing.

  “It’s not like we stole it or anything. It pretty much fell into our laps, right?” She looked at me for help. “Right?”

  I nodded and looked at Dad. “She’s right, you know.”

  In a firm voice, he stated, “Either way, it’s not ours. And I say we leave it as it is.”

  “Well, I say if nothing happens by Thursday, I’m going straight to the shed and sort through all the U-Haul stuff, ours or not. I might even learn how to play the piano, Frank.”

  DAD WAS ON THE PHONE with Melanie about ten times a day for the next couple of days, while Mom and I spent hours drinking lattes at all the local Starbucks (ten in total within a ten-mile range. Welcome to Abby heaven! I had nothing better to do. Well, not quite true. On my laptop, (thank God, I’d had it with me the entire time) I had downloaded like five gigabytes of college education information, and I had promised myself, and Mom and Dad, to read at least one hour every day. Into day two and a half, I had probably read about half a megabyte. I guess catching up on math was an option too, but I had given myself at least a few weeks off—timing the kickoff of my online algebra course with the season finales of all of my favorite TV shows. So, technically, this was my summer break, and even though I always remembered summers being way too short, I had a feeling that this summer—being far away from Maddie, the girls, and Grandma—would feel like a lifetime.

  On day five—as in five days living in a house with the most beautiful view in the world but only three sleeping bags, three miniature beach towels, a box of Hanes underwear, and twelve pairs of Gold Toes (to share)—Mom and I went on a more-than-the-bare-necessities trip to Target in Issaquah—a small town only a few miles south of our even smaller town of Sammamish.

  Here we were welcomed to the Northwest by white men in white socks and sandals. It was not a myth. It was for real.

  Mom and I tried to blend in and received some very practical and outdoorsy kind of fleece clothes, three pairs of Crocs, a couple of flashlights, a handyman tool kit, a miniature television set, a radio, and a handful of granola bars in return.

  When we got back to the house, Mom went straight for the shed—flashlight in one hand, double-shot venti in the other.

  Since Mom and Dad’s little talk on two-inches-of-butter night, Mom had spent more and more time in the old wooden shed, where we had stored all the boxes and furniture of The Strangers, as we named them. Since we had to return an empty U-Haul truck at the Seattle office at some point, we simply unloaded all the stuff and squeezed in an entire house-worth of furniture—and a piano—in a twenty-five square foot old wooden shed. In other words, we were pretty much stuck with some unknown family’s whole life wrapped in paper and boxes. And our own stuff, formerly known as our entire life, was somewhere out there, just waiting to find a home—our home, hopefully.

  If it hadn’t been for my laptop, my i-Phone and my all-time favorite lip gloss, I probably would have been on my knees begging Dad to come up with a miracle to somehow make all of my stuff come back. All of my clothes, my shoes, my hairdryer, my makeup, the collection of old Coca Cola bottles, my old yearbooks, old pictures, and my Post-it notes had all gone MIA. I was not only friendless—again—I was thing-less. That image of Tom Hanks, feeling all miserable and lonely in the rain, was slowly making its way to the surface again. I could totally relate.

  A big glowing condom

  Mom’s head appeared in the little broken window in the back of the shed—her hair nicely decorated with little pieces of leaves and spider’s webs. Gently she pushed the window open.

  “It definitely belongs to old people. I mean, this type of furniture is the same kind my grandparents had. Man, you should see some of the lamps I have unwrapped. I was thinking, maybe we should open up just one tiny box?” She offered a nervous smile. “I know,” she added and nodded toward the house, “but Ella, there have to be some kind of papers with names, an address, something on it. I mean, it’s Thursday. We’ve been here for five days. God knows where our stuff is by now, and who all this belongs to.” She wiped her face off and looked up in the direction of the house again.

  “You were saying, hon?” Out of nowhere, Dad appeared with Johnny Boy from behind the shed. He had a firm grip on the old fart. He wasn’t exactly smiling.

  Mom got so startled that she bumped her head on the edge of the window. “Oh hi, honey,” she said, smiling nervously at me. “Mowing the lawn already? You just did that.”

  With a slight growl in his voice, Dad repeated, “You were saying, hon?”

  Mom and Dad had been discussing it again last night, and Dad made it very clear that he would never go through someone else’s private stuff, even if we did have a good reason to do so. “It would be like breaking into somebody’s house. I’m not doing it,” he said—this time a little louder.

  On paper, he was right, of course. These were the contents of someone else’s house, and even though opening up a few boxes wasn’t exactly a federal offense, it sure had some emotional crime attached to it. I would hate it if someone went through my skivvies or all of my Post-its. Wait, someone could actually be doing that right now! That thought made my stomach turn.

  “What if we’re dealing with some criminal drug-dealing Soprano family and the boxes contain some crucial evidence and we become accomplices? Or maybe the boxes belong to a couple of old German Nazis hiding artifacts from World War II or something?” he had said, the solemnity of his voice matching his expression. (Dad sometimes has a quite vivid imagination, probably from watching too many bad British detective dramas on BBC). “Come on,” Mom had said, not even commenting on the Soprano slash Nazi theme, “we would not be nosing around. It’s just to help us solve the big mysterious U-Haul crime, Mr. Detective.” I guess she was trying to speak to the Hercules Poi rot in Dad. But Dad didn’t take the bite, and he had made it very clear that we shouldn’t touch a single thing until all hope was out the window. “And we haven’t reached that point yet,” he assured us the night before. Mom wiped her face again and looked at Dad. “It’s been five days, Frank. It’s getting to the point where you either give up or get moving. Shit or get off the potty, Mr. Jensen!”

  I looked at Mom and nodded. Even though we had spent all morning at Target, joking about white men in white socks, while stuffing ourselves with an elaborate var
iety of granola bars, it was right there with us—the feeling of being lost. Not lost as in an unfamiliar town with a funny-sounding name, but really lost. We hadn’t really talked about it, but when we walked down the art and frame aisle, which displayed pictures of families and people at birthday parties and baseball games, we both stopped and stared at this picture-perfect family, and I think that’s when we both realized that we might never get our stuff and our old life back. A picture of an unknown family in matching reindeer outfits said it louder than a thousand words. Dad looked at Mom, then at me, then at Johnny Boy. He took a deep breath. “One box, that’s it. One. And I get to pick it.”

  Mom ducked and the next thing we heard was a loud noise from inside the shed, and a few “ouches” later, Mom appeared in the door. “Take your pick then.” Mom and I left him behind as we walked back inside the house.

  “THIS ONE!” DAD WAS standing in the door with something black under his right arm. “This one,” he said again with an important nod. He walked across the kitchen floor and placed the box on the kitchen counter. Mom and I both looked at the box on the counter. Of all boxes, Dad had picked this big old black Victorian-style mailbox. The word “LETTERS” was engraved on it. “There’s something in there,” he said, patting it gently. “I figured, if we are looking for people and addresses it would make a lot of sense to look in here.” He looked at us proudly.

  Mom and I exchanged glances and smiles. This was so typical Dad, so matter of fact, so Hercules Poi rot.

  We placed the box in the middle of the kitchen floor and sat around it like it was some kind of bonfire. No one said a word. I looked at Mom and Dad and couldn’t help laughing.

  “What?” Dad threw up his hands up and looked at me.

  “Are we, like, having some kind of hippy Seattle-ish spiritual ceremony or what?” I looked at Mom all cuddled up in her sleeping bag. Next to her, she had arranged her new little Chinese tray with her favorite lavender candles and herb tea remedies. “What?” Mom said, blowing her tea. She looked at Dad and shook her head. “Just open the damn thing, Frank,” she demanded.

  Carefully, Dad removed the little “attic” sticker on the side of the mailbox and opened it up. He reached for whatever was inside of it and placed it on the floor. It was three big stacks of letters held together by some kind of Christmas tape with little reindeers on it. Each had a Post-it note on top with the numbers one, two, and three. Very carefully he pulled out the top letter from stack one and started reading. “It’s dated back in 1981, blah blah blah, to a Frederick, blah blah blah, from a Martha, blah blah blah, in Seattle.” He scanned the letter thoroughly on both sides like it was some secret CIA document, maybe half of it written with some kind of code or secret ink. “But, nope, not a single last name, no zip code, no nothing.” He looked up. His big ears looked humungous up against the candle light beaming down on him from the kitchen counter.

  “I know it’s not much, but at least we have two names: Frederick and Martha. And it’s from right here in Seattle. What a coincidence,” Mom said, trying to sound all optimistic.

  Dad nodded. “Yeah ... sure ... a very eye-opening clue. Frederick and Martha and Seattle. Wow.” He made big eyes at me.

  “I saw that.” Mom looked up and blew a bubble in her cup of tea. “Go on, read it out loud. Maybe you missed some important detail.” Dad hesitated for a few seconds before he started reading.

  Seattle 1981

  Dear Frederick,

  February is cold and gray. It’s raining a lot. Maybe I’m just mirroring my mood in the weather. Ever since you left everything looks and feels gray. I’m feeling a little sad right now, sitting here and listening to Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” and looking at my pecan pie. The thing is: I can’t eat. Since you left, I can’t seem to do anything besides miss you. I know it’s not like me at all, and I hate myself for being like this.

  Mom says I have a terrible case of the Fredericks. I guess she is right. I have never felt my heart this heavy. Oh, Frederick, right now three and a half years seem like a lifetime. I miss you. I know we promised to write each other almost every day, but I’m afraid you’ll see a lot of this heartfelt and sad writing. Missing someone somehow seems and looks stronger on paper. Thank God we have the phone calls too. But that said, I do think writing is good therapy for all the lonely people. I love you.

  Yours forever,

  Martha.

  “Well, we still only have a Frederick and a Martha in Seattle. And it’s raining.”

  “Go figure," I added, making eyes at Mom.

  “Not much to go on. Besides, it’s been thirty years.” Carefully, Dad folded the letter and put it back on top of the stack. He grabbed another one and scanned it, then another one, and another. Mom and I watched him in suspense.

  “Nope.” He shook his head. “Not a simple address or anything. Still only a Martha and a Frederick.” He collected all the letters and dropped them into the mailbox. He grabbed the heavy mailbox and stood up. “I’m going to bed.”

  “To bed? Now?” Mom looked up at Dad. “C’mon, sit down. It’s so much fun. Please read us some more. I want to know; where is this Frederick person? And why has he left his loved one all alone in Seattle?” She looked at me and winked. “Poor little thing,” she added with a soothing voice.

  Dad set the mailbox down on the floor and sat down on top of it and crossed his arms. “What exactly are you suggesting? That we’re going to sit here and read someone else’s very private and intimate letters because it’s so much fun? Fat chance!” He looked at Mom and shook his head, clearly agitated. “Come on, Frank. Don’t be such a little school boy. I mean, they could be dead for all we know. Maybe we’ll never even find The Strangers...” Dad’s voice adopted a firm, almost reprimanding tone. “You of all people should know better!” and he got up again.

  He was right. Mom is always the last one to hear any of the gossip going around. She’s not one of those women who get together with their so-called friends with the sole purpose of talking about whoever isn’t present. She’s a private person and, always to be trusted to keep a secret—even from Dad. And here she was, sitting in her big yellow sleeping bag, suggesting that we plunge into a box of someone else’s private love letters, which I, of course, loved and was totally in favor of. I mean, Mom was so right-on on both points; they could be dead for all we knew, and even if they were alive, we might never find them. Besides, Dad had brought it on himself. What better cliffhanger than a man leaving his loved one all alone and Sleepless in Seattle for three and a half stinking years? How could he? I just had to find out—one way or another.

  “Dad?” I begged with my best puppy eyes.

  “No way, Ella! I repeat, we are not going to sit here and read about someone else’s private life. It’s indecent, and I won’t have anything to do with it. We just have to wait until Melanie calls us to tell us The Strangers have phoned the office. And they will call,” Dad assured us again.

  Mom stood up in her yellow sleeping bag. In the candle-lit kitchen light, she almost looked like a giant glowing condom, and I couldn’t help laughing.

  “Hey, Mom, do you know what you look like?”

  Dad snickered and said, “A giant condom,” almost choking on his words.

  Mom looked down at herself and smiled. “I guess I do,” she said, looking at Dad. “And I guess Dad is right too. It was crazy even to suggest. Sorry, hon.” She jumped over to Dad in her giant contraceptive device and sat down on the mailbox with him. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “But aren’t there some other kind of papers in there? Like more official-looking documents or something?” She knocked on the side of the mailbox.

  Dad shook his head. “Nope. Didn’t look like it. I only saw those three stacks of letters. Not a single envelope. Maybe we should try another less-private box. Tomorrow.”

  WE HAD NO LUCK. NOT one container (Dad had reluctantly opened and searched through every single box himself) had any trace of names, telephone numbers, addr
esses, bank account numbers, gas bills, tax refund papers. Nada. Zero. Zip. No mention of Frederick’s or Martha’s last names either. Mom had a theory that The Strangers had made precautions in case something like this would happen: “Maybe one of them got a head start in their own van—carrying all the private stuff and valuables?” she said more than a few times. Maybe she was right. It was kind of weird that there was not a single paper with names, surnames, anything. But then again, this truckload was very carefully packed. It looked like The Strangers had thrown some serious garage sale before moving; there was not a single piece of junk. No pink Cinderella coffee mug from Disneyland, no ugly ashtrays from some weird old uncle with bad taste, no old shoeboxes filled with useless crap. Every box was as organized and clean as a Japanese garden. Even Dad was impressed, and so he agreed with Mom and echoed that it made perfect sense that these kinds of organized people would move all the important stuff separately. They had been prepared for something like this to happen. We hadn’t. “We couldn’t even save the survival box,” Mom sulked as we went through all the neatly organized boxes. Mom had been beaten by a meticulous woman (she presumed this was the work of a woman). And we couldn’t do a single thing about it. All we could do was wait for The Strangers to call U-Haul and Melanie to call us (again).

  Mozart for dummies

  No one, besides Melanie, ever called. By week two, no one had reported a weird-looking load—our missing load. Melanie and U-Haul had no clue how this could have happened. It had never happened before, and they assured us that it was impossible. But there we were: Mission: Impossible meets Sleepless in Seattle.