Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [80]
“Melissa, I just wanted you to know that I’m going after Cooper. I’m not coming back without him. You keep an eye on my place and feed Peterson, OK?”
Melissa’s eyes softened slightly, going from rage to hope and settling in at caution. Rocky saw that Melissa’s skin was pulled even tighter around her face than the last time she had seen her.
Rocky turned and ran back to the truck and drove to the ferry, waiting impatiently for the 6:30. She prayed that she wouldn’t see Peter standing at the dock in Portland. She stayed in the truck for the crossing, kept the doors locked and was prepared to drive over him if he stood glaring at her on the dock. But he wasn’t there.
She changed vehicles in Portland. The yellow dog warden’s truck hadn’t passed an inspection in five years, so she picked up Tess’s car in Portland.
She figured the trip would take two and a half hours. She flew onto the highway out of Maine and watched the digital clock glow the time at her, watched the odometer tick off the miles. She had to stop in the notch of New Hampshire before Massachusetts to get fluid for the windshield wipers to keep her windshield clear. When she hit Massachusetts, she started imagining what she would say to Jan and Ed, wondered if she’d have to wrestle them to the ground, if they’d call the police, and what she could say so they would just give Cooper back to her. She slipped into the eastern edge of Connecticut and had to pull over once to turn on the overhead light and chart the fastest path into Rhode Island.
When Rocky hit the city limits of Providence, she stopped at a gas station and asked where Clementine Drive was. The two high school boys running the place didn’t know, so she bought a city map and found it on the northern edge of the city. When she pulled up to 63 Clementine Drive, the house was dark except for a bluish glow coming from what Rocky imagined to be a kitchen fluorescent light.
The neighborhood was filled with sixties’ ranch-style houses. Rocky turned her car around and parked across the street several houses away. She remembered what Jan had said about a new fence and a dog run in the backyard. She stepped out of her car, closed the door, and looked at a new fence that started at the edge of the garage and connected with the property fence, butting up against a neighbor’s hedge. The lumber was still fresh, a barricade type of fence, the sort that Rocky connected with prison yards minus the razor wire.
First she gave a firm knock on the glass storm door. Then she pressed a doorbell and heard the muffled echo in the house. Knocked again. It was nine o’clock at night, where were these people? Wherever they were, they wouldn’t have taken Cooper with them. She couldn’t picture them taking Cooper for a ride in the car.
Rocky looked at the houses on either side and across the street. The nearby houses had their curtains drawn. She went to the darker side of the house, away from the entrance and the garage and slid around to the outside of the barricade fence and hoped that the Townsends had done the unfriendly thing and presented the neighbor with the side of the fence with horizontal 2x4s. They did not disappoint her. Cooper would have heard her by now. She pictured him with his ears turned toward her and his eyes reflecting green light. She chanced calling to him to let him know it was her so that he wouldn’t bark. She spoke softly.
“Cooper, Cooper. I’m coming in, Big Guy.”
As she got a foothold on the lower 2x4, her nose filled with the smell of fresh lumber. For a moment she was filled with images of her brother Caleb and wished he were with her, giving her a strong boost up with his fingers intertwined into a stirrup. She grabbed on to the top of the fence and hoisted one leg over, felt the top edges of the roughly cut wood grab the inside of her pants. Then she lifted her other leg over and hung ungainly with her legs dangling as