Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [22]
“Not on the island, but it happens. That’s why I got on the Web when I took a good look at this thing. I found several places that specialize in this type of arrow; one in Minnesota and one in Nebraska.” He shrugged his shoulders. “The good news is that this is a strong animal, and he will heal without too much damage to the quality of his life. The surgery was messy. Had to remove some necrotic tissue, which was unfortunately muscle. I’d say he walked around with that arrow sticking out of him for maybe three days. No matter how bad he’s feeling now, he’s feeling better than he was.”
“Can I keep this?” she asked, holding up the remains of the arrow.
“It’s yours.”
Sam had already called the Portland police to let them know about the dog. He said they sounded unimpressed. They sent over an officer a few hours after Sam made the call and asked a few questions. They said it was probably the last of the tourists who thought the island was a good place to shoot, and the dog was in the wrong place. One of the Portland cops came over every morning, drove his car around the island and left on the next ferry.
Sam rode in the back with the dog while Rocky drove. The ferry was not crowded; late afternoon in November resulted in only a third of the ferry passengers. As they approached Rocky’s rental house, she suddenly saw it as Sam might see it. He and Michelle had just remodeled their house on the south side of the island. She wondered how she looked in Sam’s eyes, a woman in her thirties, living on the part-time salary of animal control warden, single, and living in one of the cottages that will only marginally make it through the winter. Sam’s khaki pants picked up dirt from the back of her truck as he slid out.
She hesitated to have Sam enter the little rental. She was suddenly jealous of his life, the completeness of it, of his wife and kids. He and Michelle had two young children and the addition on their house, although delayed, was due to be done by December. Rocky had turned down several invitations for dinner with them.
“Let’s lift him down and see if he can make it in the house,” said Sam.
Sam wrapped his arms around the dog’s rib cage and Rocky lent support to the rear end. When they set him on the ground, he limped five feet away and squatted slightly as he let loose with a stream of urine.
“He’s not ready to stand on three legs yet,” Sam said.
The three of them made it up the wooden steps that led to her deck. She unlocked the door and urged the dog in. Sam looked around with the quick eye of a medical assessment. “I used to live in a place like this in college, except there were four of us and one guy never washed his own dishes and finally the rest of us wouldn’t wash his dishes either, so we all used paper plates. It looks like you’re a lot neater.”
No one else had been in the house, not even Tess. Just the cat, and she only stayed part of the time. Rocky had started to call her Peterson, after the guidebook.
Rocky listened to Sam’s voice, and although she didn’t hear his words as such, she was measuring the level of her rapid breathing, and noted that since her breathing was not increasing in pace, a panic attack was less likely and she would not have to face the consequences of gasping for air in front of Sam. She was a four on a ten-point scale of anxiety and she could ride this out. She hadn’t had another panic attack after the first one, two months after Bob died. And although the sound of another person breathing in her house was now reaching tolerable levels, the thought of Sam and Michelle seeing inside her house made her want to throw up. Her blood noticed the threat and picked up the pace and her heart rate quickened. There was always flight; she could run away into the tangle of vines and rhododendrons that formed a thick boundary between her and the beach road. There was fight; she could rage, make a scene, wait for the