Free Greetings from Nowhere by Barbara O'Connor Page A

said.
    Loretta put the watch back in the box. She looked at the hummingbird picture. She rubbed the soft leather cover of the Bible.
    Suddenly she jumped up and dumped everything out of the box onto the bed. Frantically, she searched through the things.
    â€œMama!” she hollered. “Something’s missing!”
    Her mother set her crossword puzzle aside. “What’s missing?” she said.
    â€œI don’t know,” Loretta said. “Something …”
    Loretta tapped each thing on the bed. The fan. The scissors. The heart-shaped box.
    â€œThe dog!” she said. “The poodle dog pin.”
    Loretta dropped to her knees and searched the floor, patting the thick green carpet. Under the bed. Under the dresser. Beside the desk.
    Her mother looked in drawers. She emptied their suitcases. She searched the bathroom, all the while saying, “We’ll find it, Lulu … Don’t cry, Lulu.”

    But Loretta did cry. She ran around the little motel room, searching for the poodle dog pin and sobbing.
    And then she remembered she had taken the box of stuff outside.
    She dashed out of the room and looked everywhere for the sparkly pin. In the parking lot. Up and down the sidewalk. Under the picnic table. Out by the diving board.
    Finally, she sat on the wet grass by the flagpole and put her head on her knees.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Loretta?”
    Loretta looked up. Aggie was bending over her. She was wearing a clear plastic rain hat tied under her chin with a red ribbon.
    â€œI lost my other mother’s poodle dog pin,” Loretta said in a trembly voice.
    â€œOh, dear,” Aggie said.
    Loretta had never felt so miserable. Those things had been all of her other mother’s earthly possessions and now one of them was gone.
    And it was all her fault.
    Why, why, why had she brought that box outside?
    Loretta felt Aggie’s warm hand on her shoulder.
    â€œI hate losing things, too,” Aggie said. “But you know what?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI have a real knack for finding lost things.”

    â€œYou do?”
    Aggie nodded. “If I had a nickel for every time Harold lost his glasses, well, shoot, I’d be richer than the Queen of England. And don’t you know it was me that found ’em every time.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œThat’s right.” Aggie stroked Loretta’s hair. “And one time some folks from way up in New York lost their car keys and like to gone crazy till I found ’em. And guess where they were.”
    â€œWhere?
    â€œIn one of my flowerpots.” Aggie chuckled. “Right down in there with the begonias.”
    Loretta stood up and brushed the wet grass from the backs of her legs.
    â€œAren’t you smart wearing your bathing suit in this wet weather?” Aggie said.
    Loretta looked down at her mud-splattered bathing suit and shrugged. She didn’t tell Aggie that she had put on her bathing suit so she could pose in front of the mirror, pretending like she was on a rock in the middle of a creek, holding a towel—just like her other mother in that photo in the box.
    â€œI’ll help you look for that pin, okay?” Aggie said.
    Loretta nodded, brushing strands of wet hair out of her eyes.

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    Loretta and Aggie looked for the poodle dog pin all afternoon. Under Clyde Dover’s pickup truck. All around the sign out by the road. Even in Aggie’s begonias.
    Loretta’s mother joined them, telling Loretta over and over not to worry. They would find it.
    When Loretta’s father finished helping Clyde Dover fix the clogged drain in Room 4, he joined them, too. Even Ugly ambled along beside them as they searched, stopping every now and then to lick the rain off his scruffy black coat.
    But no one found the sparkly poodle dog pin.
    Not even Aggie, who had always been so good at finding things.

Aggie

    Aggie hung her wet jacket on the hook behind the door and took off