Free Lost & Found by Jacqueline Sheehan Page A

Isaiah as he leafed through a three-page document.
    “You’re the one who suggested it. I’m just trying to systematize things, to help the next person on the job. I’ve put some beach markers along the shore, and measured the distance to water at high tide and low tide. Nothing fancy,” she said as she leaned back in one of his straight-back chairs.
    On her own accord, she added other duties to her job. Walkon the cliffs, look official. Clean up litter that she couldn’t stand to look at any longer. Here the work had a beginning and an end, like house painting or carpentry, and if she didn’t want to talk to anyone, she didn’t have to. She filed weekly reports for Isaiah and left them in his mailbox if he wasn’t around.
    She had been slow to get to know people other than her boss and Tess. But she had a neighbor, Elaine, a teacher at the island grade school. They had passed each other on the dirt road for months, their cars kicking up spirals of dust. When she saw Elaine at the grocery store, her arms filled with white plastic bags, struggling to get out the door, Rocky had an impulse to turn her head and pretend she didn’t recognize the woman, but it was too late.
    “Hello, neighbor. Can you get the door for me? I feel like a pack mule with all this stuff,” Elaine said with a broad smile.
    Rocky accepted the invitation to dinner because she was out of practice at declining. How had she and Bob said no before? “Let me get back to you after I check at home.” That’s right, that’s what it had been like. Having a partner was a buffer, an excuse to contemplate, and a reason to say no. Without him, she didn’t know what to say. Later she realized she could have used the dog as an excuse; he was perfect.
    Elaine had one of the houses on the island that was not quaint or dripping with gingerbread bric a brac. It was a 1950’s ranch-style house and someone had attached a second story to it. Rocky arrived with a bottle of wine and seltzer water, even after Elaine had said, “No, this is my welcome to you. I’m already guilty of bad manners for letting you be here for months before I invited you in. Maybe I’m that waybecause of all the summer people; there’s too many of them to get to know.”
    Fresh tomato sauce filled the house with an abundant smell that drenched Rocky with sharp images of Bob eating more pasta than humanly possible and suffering with burps that smelled like compost. Rocky suddenly remembered that she liked pasta and bread and butter, but she couldn’t remember the last time that she prepared it. She handed over her offerings to Elaine.
    Elaine turned her head to the door leading into the living room and Rocky remembered what her college roommate said about the fundamental difference in facial features. Some faces were destined to be finely chiseled in marble; others were best described in soft clay. Elaine was in the clay category, soft round cheeks, the start of a furrow between her eyebrows.
    “Honey, it’s dinner,” said Elaine to the open doorway. Rocky had not seen anyone else with Elaine when they passed each other on the dirt road. She waited to see who honey was.
    A young girl appeared, with her hair pulled back tight, her ears sticking out like a mouse. She wore bulky sweatpants, running shoes, and a T-shirt with a partially zipped-up sweatshirt.
    “Melissa, this is our neighbor, Rocky. This is my daughter.”
    Rocky felt the hit first in her solar plexus, where she always felt it. She put her hand out to Melissa and got back not a solid athlete’s grasp but a cold, dry reluctant hand. Even as the two hands touched, Melissa offered a profound determination to pull away. The skin on Melissa’s face was tight, but because she was young, no one was yet alarmed. BeforeRocky could stop herself, she said, “Track or cross-country? Let me guess, you do both.”
    Elaine, who was taking the cork out of the wine bottle, stopped in mid pull. “How did you know?”
    Rocky