Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [60]
Every Thursday they met for dinner and a game of darts in Portland. If they had stayed married, it would have been forty-six years in February, but they had not. His drunkenness culminated in a desperate divorce decades ago, so long ago that Tess realized that they had been friends through nearly four lifetimes. The first lifetime was college and romance, marriage and babies. The next was the terrifying part, watching Len slip further and faster into catastrophic binges followed by a steady diet of more alcohol than she thought one human could ingest. The next lifetime was the divorce, Tess and the two kids without Len, going back to school and loving it, and then the kids grew up. Somewhere in there Len got sober after two bouts at a treatment center. He couldn’t practice medicine anymore, and hadn’t for thirty years, but he worked three days a week at the Chamber of Commerce in Portland, telling tourists what time the ferries left and where to park their cars. The fourth part was sober darts once a week.
She felt the pain again in her lower abdomen, saw the hard edges. She was driving to Orono with Rocky and she could smell the panic coming off the younger woman’s skin, a scent like cider vinegar and mangoes that had gone too far past ripe. Tess shifted in the driver’s seat and put her left hand on the wheel and placed her right hand on the crease between torso and thigh. With her thumb, she pressed with curiosity to see if the dark angular shape could be felt from the outside. Rocky was absorbed in her own cold fear and wouldn’t notice a little tummy prodding. Tess felt sure of this. No, of course she couldn’t feel the outline of anything, but somewhere deep inside responded with a honeycomb of orange pain.
Tess put her right hand back on the steering wheel but part of her brain fell through her body, tumbled down into her lungs, slid past a kidney and liver, made its way around a maze of intestines large and small, and settled in the neighborhood of the unwelcome intruder.
No you don’t, not now, I’m not ready.
Then she left the intruder as she listened to Rocky tell her who she was and how death had robbed her. The irritation she felt at Rocky for not trusting her felt good, felt like life compared to the destruction going on in her body. She reveled in the chance to spar with this new friend and she gave her a suitable lashing.
“I feel tricked and I don’t deserve it,” said Tess. Was this for Rocky or her own body?
They drove to the edge of Orono, to the town where Liz Townsend had lived. Tess pulled up to the clinic and Rocky leashed the dog. Once they were inside, a receptionist called him by name. The young woman behind the desk looked stunned. Tess could see a healthy skeptic, a scientist ensconced as an office manager. She moved away from the counter, walked slowly to the dog. She looked like part of her still had the brakes on. She slid a hand into her pocket. “Cooper, I have a biscuit for you.” As soon as she said this, the dog walked up to her, sat down, and then lay down. This must have been her test and with the success of her experiment, she crumbled.
“Oh, Cooper. I was so worried that we wouldn’t see you again.”
Chapter 20
Dr. Harris clinched the dog’s identity.
“I had forgotten this when you called yesterday. Liz’s dog had a dewclaw missing on his right front leg. He had snagged it badly when they were hiking through some pretty tough underbrush.