Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [82]
Chapter 29
Checkout time was noon, but Rocky had been awake since seven. She drank a glass of heavily chlorinated water from the tap and thought that New Hampshire didn’t go for things like chlorine. Maybe this part of the state was too close to Boston. Then she sat back on the bed with the spread wrapped around her and planned her departure from the Island. She’d wait until Isaiah returned. He was, after all, her boss. Or she could just leave the truck and the keys to everything at his house. No, she had promised to feed their cat. That was the last attachment that she had left and she was not going to fuck that up.
She heard a voice say, “Feck. Feck that up. No need to be vulgar.”
She threw off the blanket and stood up. “Bob? Oh my God, I’m going crazy in a Motel 6.” She knew that it was not uncommon to hear the voice of a loved one who had died. Sometimes the effect was soothing, but more often it was startling, and clearly she was startled. She had been searching for him in her dreams for months, and she had been comforted by the one dream of him that she eventually had, but the clear tone of his voice in his mock Irish accent shocked her.
When Bob said that something was fecked, there was the barest chance of hope; and one could say it in front of one’s mother. He clearly had not said fook, which was a more serious condemnation. Was there hope?
She said to the empty room, “You’ve got to give me more than that. I’m looking everywhere, and hope isn’t in the picture.”
She waited until noon in exactly the same spot, on the bed, in the same position with the bed cover wrapped around her shoulders in case she heard the voice again. The only sound Rocky heard was the coming and going of other travelers, cars starting up, doors slamming, and finally silence. She drove to Maine, picked up the yellow truck in Portland, and headed for the ferry. She had not eaten in over twenty-four hours so she bought a bag of barbecue chips on the ferry and after eating them, wished that she hadn’t. The grease and salt met in an unfriendly tangle in her stomach. She’d pack up quickly before the day was done.
The sky was thick with high clouds, the kind that foretold snow. It was a shadowless day. Rocky wasn’t ready to stop at Melissa’s house yet to tell her that Cooper was now beyond their reach. He’d never be coming back. She would have to work up enough courage to tell Melissa.
It was midafternoon as she pulled up to her cottage. A light was on inside. Oh yeah, she thought, I told Melissa to look after the place. She prayed that Melissa wasn’t there waiting; she wanted a few more moments before she had to tell her. Dread grew in Rocky’s throat and wrapped around her heart. Fook, she thought, Melissa is inside, I can hear something.
As she approached the steps, she turned her head slightly to one side as she tried to discern a familiar sound. After the startling voice of her dead husband earlier in the day, she was cautious. Rocky turned the knob and pushed open the door. She saw the great black shape of Cooper wagging and twisting toward her with his lips pulled into the biggest retriever smile. Tess and Melissa stood on the far side of the island counter with jubilant faces, eyebrows high, eyes glowing, their cheeks spread wide and high from smiling. Cooper took one huge lunge and put his front paws on her chest and flattened her against the wall. He made a high sound like singing.
“Oh, Cooper! Oh my God, Cooper-Lloyd.” Rocky slid to the floor and dug her fingers into his thick winter fur around his neck. “What are you doing here?” she asked him. Getting no answer, she looked at her two guests. “How did he get here? What’s going on?”
Rocky had never seen Melissa excited before. The girl spoke rapidly.
“I was here bringing in the mail, leaving some cat food out, and this car pulled up. It was those people who took Cooper.