Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [8]
She had only been to the island once, long before she met Bob, and the memory stayed with her like a beacon. Her family had driven to Nova Scotia for a vacation. While Rocky remembered little of Nova Scotia at age ten, she vividly recalled an afternoon stop in Portland and an impulsive side trip on the ferry to Peak’s Island. They stayed long enough for Rocky and Caleb to climb on the rocks along the shore and eat hot dogs before heading back, but long enough for Rocky to hear her mother say, “Do you think people on an island ever worry?”
Her father answered. “They fish a lot. How much can you worry if you fish?”
The family never returned, and Rocky didn’t know if anyone else even remembered the day the way she did, the way it stood bathed in sunlight, full of hope. It was not much to hang on to, but Rocky drove straight off the ferry and into the flicker of memory.
The few weeks in the motel overlooking the ferry dock disappeared into mist. Rocky walked the beaches and the inner trails and noticed as the days went by that the crowds of tourists thinned, one by one until after Columbus Day, and a quiet settled on the island. The air, as if on command, turned cool and the mornings required a jacket. She read the local paper at Stan’s Seafood Diner. She noticed the job announcement after she heard a waitress point it out. “Animal Control Warden,” said the waitress. “We haven’t had one of those all year. Budgets must be looking up.”
Rocky folded the paper in half and asked the waitress what she knew about it. She had on a shirt that said University of Southern Maine.
“You need to talk to Isaiah Wilson, everybody knows him. Tell him you heard about it from me. He and my father are old friends.” Her name was Jill and she looked like the shirt belonged to one of her kids.
Isaiah was the director of public works on the island, a former Methodist minister, and currently a substitute shop teacher over in Portland, when they were desperate. Jill had supplied the essential background on him. Rocky went directly to his office and filled out an application. She wasn’t sure what she was doing, but she felt like she was peeling off her old self and stepping out of her skin.
To apply for the municipality on the island, Rocky had to give a reference and a job history. She paused after writing in her name, Roxanne Pelligrino, and held the pen still in the air, and finally wrote the truth…psychologist, and gave Ray as a reference. Isaiah looked at the application and his forehead wrinkled.
Rocky explained. “Before you say anything, I want you to know that my husband was a veterinarian. When he was starting his practice, I helped him in the evenings with the animals that had to stay overnight in the clinic. I learned how to handle sick animals and I can tell which ones will bite and which ones won’t. But if you hire me, I want my personal life to be private. I don’t want to be a psychologist here. I need to start over.”
Isaiah had a full head of gray hair and his eyebrows had the wild look of men his age. Long strands of hair stuck straight up from his brows and a few flipped up and pointed to the top of his head. His reading glasses sat low on his nose. His skin was dark, and from the slight cadence in his voice, Rocky thought he might be from Haiti.
“Divorce?” he asked looking up at her over his glasses.
“Dead. My husband is dead. Heart attack. He was young and we didn’t know anything was wrong.” Rocky had practiced these facts and this was her trial run.
Isaiah took off his glasses. “I’m sorry.” Rocky saw the minister settle in and the public works director receded. “When did he pass away?”
“This spring, the end of the spring.” She suddenly felt like she was in the chaplain’s office and she shifted in the chair.
“‘After the first death there is no other.’ Do you know who wrote that? Elizabeth Barrett Browning? I’m not sure. I remember the first time I heard it and I knew it was true. The first death changes everything, and all deaths afterward