Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [90]
Melissa and Cooper burst through the door. Melissa said, “He knew you were home. He can tell. How do they do that? How do dogs know when you’re driving home even if it’s a different time each day?”
A spigot had opened in Melissa, a faucet for her thoughts and ponderings that had previously been frozen. She didn’t wait for Rocky to answer.
“Their noses are like one hundred times better than ours and their eyes reflect more light than ours do so they can see better at night, and they hear stuff at frequencies that we don’t notice,” she said.
Rocky gave Cooper several hearty thumps on his haunches that sent him into curls of delight. “You’ve been reading up on dogs.”
Melissa stuck her hands in the front pouch of her sweatshirt.
“I’ve been reading about animal behavior on the Internet.”
Rocky made a mental note to pick up a book about dogs for Melissa.
“It’s like they have a different language, like dolphins or whales and we only want them to know our language but we never try to speak theirs.”
The phone rang. Rocky had been mesmerized by the girl who was emerging out of the tight skin. Not that her musings were so extraordinary, but that she was sharing them, she was thinking about something aside from caloric intake and five hundred sit-ups. Rocky picked up the phone. It was the post office.
“You’ve got a box here, thought you might want it. It’s from a sporting goods place.”
Rocky paused and tilted her head to one side. “I didn’t order anything from them. Must be a mistake.”
“Well, you need to come and get it. Got your name on it.”
She hung up and frowned. The call from the post office rattled her. Who would send her something from a sporting goods store?
Melissa headed for the door. “I have calculus to do,” she said. Rocky walked the girl to the deck. The girl leapt off, spread her arms wide and yelled, “I do calculus, therefore I am.”
It was the first completely frivolous thing she had seen Melissa do. The leap was crooked and she landed awkwardly, yet she had a lightness that was untouched by the forces of gravity. The moment ended when Melissa caught herself and she resumed her exact and steel-clad posture. Rocky marveled at how swiftly she could go from spontaneous to rigid.
Rocky said, “See you later. Hey, my mother used to say the same thing except her version was ‘I bitch, therefore I am.’”
Melissa gave Rocky a co-conspirator’s glance for two seconds, three seconds, then she turned and sprang off on her young stick legs.
Rocky took the dog and walked the mile to the post office. The package was not from the sporting goods store in Portland, but from an archery company in Nebraska. Rocky checked the name, and yes it was addressed to her. The return address was unfamiliar. Hansen Bow Company, Traditional and Primitive Archery, Allen, Nebraska.
Rocky gave the package back to the postal clerk. “What should I do? I didn’t order anything from them,” she said.
“Could be a gift; maybe you have a secret admirer,” said the postal clerk. The nametag said Marie. “You can always send it back as long as you don’t open it.”
Rocky kept the package. She carried it under one arm and walked slowly back to the house. Cooper left complicated urine messages on trees, fences, bushes, lampposts, telephone poles, and on one particularly alluring rock that had pushed its way up from the asphalt sidewalk. Cooper rationed out just enough urine for a round-trip from home to the downtown and back.
The package was light for its size, about three feet long. She pulled a tab that said “pull here” and a string eviscerated the package, cutting it in half. She pulled the cardboard apart and