Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [100]
“What in the world were you doing on the island?” asked Rocky. She sat next to the wheeled stretcher.
“You had a very bad guy out there. I was hunting the bad guy.” He smiled his crooked smile. “But the bad guy didn’t know who he was up against. I’m not sure you needed me.”
Rocky lifted his hand to her mouth and pressed her lips to his palm. “Not true, not true at all,” she whispered.
Tess did not return to the island until March, after spending weeks recuperating at her daughter’s home.
“Len hovered relentlessly. He also got more peeks at my poor belly than he’d had in decades. He said his interest was purely clinical, but I don’t believe him,” said Tess.
Rocky was thrilled to have Tess back again, as if everyone was finally back in the right place. It was an unseasonably warm day and Rocky followed Tess’s instructions about uncovering her crocus from the winter debris so they could emerge unfettered. Tess watched her from a chair placed next to the garden. Cooper assisted by digging his own spot in the garden, until Rocky made him stop by throwing a stick for him.
“Len will be here again tomorrow. He said this is my penance for not telling him I was sick. He brought a dartboard and darts. He’s beating me terribly while I’m compromised. Not fair.”
Rocky knew that Len also came to walk with Tess. She had seen the two of them on the beach, the tall, white-haired Len, with Tess resting her hand lightly on his arm.
“Come inside. I’m done with your garden work. I’ve got some of Melissa’s photos to show you,” said Rocky.
Melissa had joined the photography club and Cooper was her number-one subject. Whenever Rocky noticed Melissa these days, a girl named Chris was with her. The two girls carried their cameras everywhere.
Rocky spread the photos of Cooper on the coffee table for Tess to see, but no sooner had Tess curled in her overstuffed chair, than she dozed off, napping in the full tonic of sunshine like a cat. Cooper also decided to nap. Rocky picked up one of the photos of Cooper.
In this one he was looking noble, his great chest expanded without effort, offering the camera his best senatorial profile. And here, in this one, Cooper and Tess were sitting on the deck and he had one mighty paw on her foot. And in this one, Melissa caught him in midflight, back legs extended, head driving forward, all for the glory of catching a tennis ball. There was not a hint of sadness in any of the photos. When did he leave behind all the grief of losing his true love? Where had it gone?
Rocky had gone over the scene again and again, knowing only snippets from the police report, filling in the rest with conjectures: Liz’s sleep-deprived psychosis, her full-out non-medicated mania, fleeing an obsessive boyfriend. Liz must have bought the old Hamilton place as a refuge, and for a brief moment in time it was, until the unexpected appearance of Peter.
Shouldn’t Liz have known Cooper would try to protect her? That the fur on this back would rise, a deep rumble would erupt from this throat, that he would issue a last warning to Peter to stay away? Liz would have faltered for a second, as she stood with her weapon, her resolve crumbling just enough, doubting her own perceptions, doubting the danger. The dog leapt, following Peter’s scent, leapt as high as he dared, to pull him down, and Liz, at that very moment, pulled back on her bow and took her shot. Liz had plucked her own dog from the air.
Peter would not tell the police exactly how he dragged Liz from the island. He did say that he told her over and over again that she had killed her dog. And Cooper had been left behind. Rocky pictured the last days in Liz’s life in Orono: the fragile structure of her mind unraveling, chewing away at itself as Peter drove her back to Orono and left her at her house, trying to teach her a lesson by tossing her bottles of stored medication at her, abandoning her. It would not take Liz long to saw her arrows and bows into tiny bits, stacking them on her table. It would not have taken her long to die by her own hand.
Rocky