Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [72]
“Hill, this is Rocky. I know we don’t have another lesson until next week, but would you like to meet me in Portland, um, for coffee? Oh, you probably don’t go out for coffee. Could you agree to meet me on a street corner? What I mean is, that the dog that I told you about, well he’s gone…” Beep.
Hill had his message machine on a timer to keep messages short. Why didn’t he say so upfront, as in, “Leave a message and make it short. You have thirty seconds starting now.” Rocky called back.
“It’s Rocky again and I think you should warn people about the time limit. Aren’t people in Maine the slowest talkers in the country? Most people will just get to hello when they are beeped out. But here’s the thing, everyone on the island is gone, or everyone I know, and I’m going to resign my job and I wanted to talk it out with someone…” Beep.
If he put those two messages together, he would get something, but she wasn’t sure what. He already had her phone number; he had it on the checks that she had written to him, so he must have written it down. Or did he? She admitted that she was a bit flustered when she was around him, and she couldn’t for the life of her remember if she had given Hill her phone number. No, wait, he had called her last week and left her a message so he had to have it. She did not want to sound one bit needier than she already did on the other two messages.
“Hi, it’s me again. I hope this message comes before the other two that I’ve left you. If so, don’t listen to the next two messages from me. It’s not that it was hard being Christmas and all and this was the first Christmas since my husband died, which I hadn’t told you up until this moment, but it’s that I had to give the dog to people who won’t understand him. Some people shouldn’t have dogs; they shouldn’t have gerbils. And I thought I could stop this one bad thing from happening…” Beep.
She would not leave him another message.
Chapter 26
Rocky heard the solid sound of a truck door closing. Everyone was gone until the end of the week. Only the girl, Melissa, was still on the island with her mother. That’s what Eileen had told her when Rocky called to tell her that Cooper was gone. Melissa had already informed Rocky that she had ruined a perfectly good existence by coming to the island. The girl had started to be a regular visitor, but Rocky was sure that if not for the black dog, Melissa would have ignored her with precise adolescent stonewalling. But even in her dark spiral of grief, Rocky could see that the girl was shattered when she learned that the dog was gone.
Rocky was not expecting anyone, which meant that this could be a drop-in call about a missing pet, or raccoons on the prowl. She looked out the small kitchen window and saw Hill hefting his bow and arrows, running his fingers through his hair, squaring off his shoulders, and looking at the little house as if he had already decided something.
She had on the same dank jeans that she had worn for three days. Her hair was unwashed, and there was an empty, unrinsed can of tuna in the sink. She wished she had on clean underwear, which she did not, and that she had brushed her teeth, which she had not done either. She heard his boots on the deck and without hesitation, the knock.
When she opened the door, he was framed in cold air. His eyes blinked in their odd blue and green, and she thought they were startled, registering an alarming sight. She worried that what he saw was stale, rumpled clothing, a tinge of grease in her hair separating it into limp sections. Could he see that she was coming undone? Was it alarm that she saw on his face?
She ran her fingers through her hair and said, “This is my new camouflage outfit. How do you like it? It’s what all the hunters are wearing this year.”
“When did you become a hunter?” he said, softening his face, the right side of his mouth lifting before the other side caught up.
She took in a larger breath. “I haven’t yet. Just checking out the clothing options. I was wondering what it was like to be a hunter,