Free The Department of Lost & Found by Allison Winn Scotch Page A

as if people thought that by stressing the “are” and casting their eyes downward and shaking their head, they were asking enough about my health without actually having to broach the subject. I know, I know, both Janice and Sal y have told me that cancer makes people uncomfortable. So does death. But would it actual y kill people (pardon the term) to address the overriding theme in my life now? For the first time, in like, ever, it’s surprisingly not work—the senator has ignored my cal s and I haven’t heard from Kyle in two days—it’s cancer, and no one seems to want to acknowledge, other than with the use of overexaggerated “ares,”
    that anything’s changed.
    But I’ve digressed. Colin knew, but we didn’t speak of it. Instead, when I asked him why we didn’t stay together forever, as you think you might be able to do back in high school, back when you dry-humped in the back of your forest-green Volvo station wagon and believed that your SAT scores defined the rest of your life, he just said, “Natalie, we never planned to. I mean, I thought that we both understood that you were going off to Dartmouth, to the big time, and I was staying behind, doing my best to get decent grades at Penn State and then come back to join my dad’s business.”
    “But weren’t we in love?” I pressed. “I remember loving you.
    Feeling like you would have done anything for me.”
    “We were,” he answered. “But you were bigger than me, bigger than what I wanted. And I was smaller than what you dreamed. And besides, high school relationships never last. They’re all about idealism: no screaming babies, no bil s to pay, no jobs to get in the way. So we just enjoyed ourselves and let it run its 74
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    course.” He paused. “Natalie, really, there’s no dark secret here.
    Sometimes, the relationship is just supposed to be a stop along the way, not the one you end up with.”
    This was true, I thought. And then I remembered that he left out some of the details: that our last summer together, he tried to preserve our bond, stoke our love, as if to reassure himself that I wouldn’t forget him as soon as I hit Hanover. Truth is, the more he pushed, the more I pul ed. We danced like magnets around each other. By August, when we snuck into my parents’ swimming pool wel past midnight to burn off the oppressive humidity and make out under the iridescent glow of the patio lights, I was already thinking, I don’t feel a thing.
    I didn’t have to go to Hanover to stop loving Colin. I was already gone. Bigger than him, he said now. Maybe I thought that I was.
    So when his two-year-old started crying, and I heard his wife cal ing for him, I thanked him for his honesty, and he told me to take care of myself, and that was all of Colin that I got.
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    From: Miller, Natalie
    To: Richardson,
    Kyle
    Re:
    What’s going on?
    K—
    I haven’t heard back from you. Left you four messages in the past two days. I’ve been watching the polls—Taylor is only 8 points back. Why haven’t you done any damage control? This is fixable, but you’re letting it sink us.
    —Nat
    The Department of Lost & Found
    75
    From: Miller, Natalie
    To: Richardson,
    Kyle
    Re:
    Please call me
    K—

Still no word from you. Please don’t make me come down there again—I don’t think anyone wants that. We’re ten days out—why the hell aren’t you guys being more pro-active? I’ll tell you what needs to be done: You need to promote Dupris’s generous donations to cancer charities.
    She made some, right? If not, pretend that she did. On this short notice, the press won’t be able to dig up any records anyway. Compared to Susanna Taylor, she’s coming off like Satan.
    —Nat
    From: Miller, Natalie
    To: Richardson,
    Kyle
    Re:
    I’m coming into the office
    K—
    At the risk of sounding condescending, you still work for me. Why the hell am I being ignored? We have just over a week left, and something has to