Lost and Found (10 page)

I put Delaney in the cab and watched it drive down the street, and I wondered what I was still doing there without her.

I was coming off of three twelve-hour shifts when Delaney flung open her apartment door, her face blotchy and tear-stained as she took quick, shallow breaths.

“God, what happened?” I asked.

“It’s Jenny. I can’t find Jenny,” she said. “I went down to get the mail, and I guess I didn’t close the door entirely, because she fo
llowed me down, and when someone opened the front door, she darted out. She’s gone.” She started to cry big, heaving sobs, and then she reached for me.

I patted her back and smoothed out her hair, talking in the same soothing tone I used for mothers who brought in toddlers with f
evers or rashes or bruises. “It’s going to be okay.”

“It’s
not
!”

“It is. First we’re going to walk around the neighbo
rhood with a bunch of dog treats and call for her.”

“I tried that!”

“Then we’re going to post flyers. We’re going to knock on all the doors in the neighborhood. We’re going to call the animal shelters and make sure she wasn’t picked up by one of them.”

“But she could be lying dead in a gutter! And it’s my fault!” She started sobbing again and clutched at me, hard, and I tried not to f
ocus on how good it felt to have her in my arms.

“It’s not your fault. I promise we’ll find her.”

“How can you keep a promise like that?” she said, pulling away to look into my face for the first time. Her swollen eyes and lips made me swallow and step away from her, feeling wrung out.

“Because you want her to, so she’ll come back. She’s going to come back to you. Okay?”

“I don’t think it works that way, Oliver,” she said with a hoarse voice, but she followed me into my apartment as I put down my bag, and we sat down at my laptop to make a flyer together.

Oliver walked around the neighborhood, calling for Jenny as I posted the flyers I’d made with the only photo I had of her, from my phone, on the day I adopted her. In the picture, she was scruffy, one ear flopping up, the other down, her head tilted, her eyes confused.

I
teared up just looking at it, as I stapled it to a telephone pole. I even got the sniffles thinking about the accidents she’d had and the corners of my coffee table she was damaging with teeth marks. Everything about her was filled with vignette edges and nostalgia, like my own personal Instagram of sorrow.

“No luck,” Oliver said, his shoulders sagging.

“I know,” I said. “I didn’t expect much.”

“You never expect much.”

“So?” I said too sharply. “There’s nothing wrong with low expectations!”

“There’s nothing wrong with
hope.
There’s a whole lot wrong with low expectations,” he said, and then he yanked on my ponytail like
he
was the one who was frustrated with an idiot, not vice versa. Idiot. “Let’s go knock on some doors,” he said, and I shook my head.

“I don’t want to.”

“But someone could have her in their house! She could be sitting there, waiting for you.”

“I just—” I swallowed, thinking of approaching all of those strangers, and them snubbing me before I even got to ask about Jenny. They’d ne
ver talk to me. I shook my head. I hadn’t even had the chance to put on real clothes, and my legs were showing their full glory. “I don’t like talking to strangers.”

Oliver tugged on my arm. “I’ll do the talking. You’ll just come with me. Come on.
For Jenny.”

“Okay,” I said in a quiet voice, and went with him, my eyes focusing on the sidewalk instead of straight ahead.

Jenny was at the second house we knocked at, sitting in the backyard, suspiciously watching squirrels in the trees with a bowl of water by her. I snuggled her under my chin on our walk back, thanking Oliver profusely for his help. Oliver shrugged and stayed silent until I was opening my door.

“Thank you.
Again. Thank you so much, Oliver. I can never repay you. You’re so nice. Thank you,” I said to him. I put down Jenny then and hugged him tight. He didn’t move an inch, and I dropped my arms and stepped away, embarrassed by the closeness I felt and he apparently didn’t. “Anyway,” I said, walking backward, “Thank you. You’re the best.”

His eyes fell to my legs and lingered there. I sensed an impending insult and decided to beat him to the punch.
“My ex-boyfriend says I look like a Holstein cow. Isn’t that spot on? Ha! Spot!”

“What a keeper.” His voice shook as he said, “And no. Not fu
nny.”

I put Jenny into the apart
ment and slammed the door shut.

Every time I thought about Delaney, I had to close my eyes, swallow, and take a deep breath, and think horrible, untrue things about her, just to keep my balance.

A few days later, Oliver knocked on my door, and I opened it to find him looking lively, if a little unkempt. His face was covered in dark stubble, which was already graying a bit near his sideburns, and he was wearing wrinkled khaki pants and a flannel shirt with his ugly shoes. “Laney,” he said as he strode past me into the kitchen. I watched him walk past with his long, rangy legs, in his awful clothes. He looked fantastic.

“Hello, Oliver. Come in. My home is your home. Go ahead and grab a cookie.”

He returned a minute later with an overflowing plate and a large glass of cold milk, and settled in on the sofa. He started eating and patted the spot next to him as I stared. “Come. Sit.”

“What?” I eyed him.

After he swallowed two cookies, he said, “I’m not working night float anymore.”

“Good for you.”

“So I can’t run with you any longer.”

“Ah, that’s where you were yesterday.
Sleeping like a normal person.”

He stopped with a cookie halfway to his mouth. “You went ru
nning without me?”

“Of course.”
I leaned back onto the couch cushions, tucking my legs underneath me as I picked up the remote control. “Want to watch something? I saved a documentary on the evolution of dogs for you.”

He turned his body toward me. “Laney, I thought you weren’t g
oing to go running in the dark.”

“Why do you care?” I grumbled.

“I was going to ask you to switch to evening runs.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I like the mornings.”

“Laney.” He sounded like he was trying to keep exasperation out of his tone. “I’m trying here.”

“Yes, but trying to do what?”

“Be nice. For you. You’re a nice person, and so I’m trying to be nice, too.” He shook his head again and dipped a cookie into his milk as he leaned over the coffee table.

I softened at his words. “Okay, we can run in the ev
enings.”

“Thank you.”

“So, documentary?”

“Sure.” He put his feet on the table, and I immediately moved toward my laptop so he’d avoid kic
king it. “Were you working?”

My cheeks heated as I remembered what I was doing online. “No. Emily was over earlier and she was just showing me stuff.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Showing you stuff?” His feet kicked off the edge of the coffee table and he leaned forward. “What kind of stuff?”

“Nothing.”

“Does it involve naked people?”

“
God.
No! Ew, no no no,” I said, covering my face with my hands. “Ew.”

He sat back again. “Your face got all red and you were vague. It seemed like the obvious co
nclusion.”

“Maybe for you.”

“Then what were you doing?” Oliver said.

“I was….” I trailed off. “I can’t tell you.” He stared and smiled. “Tell me. Please,” he said.

“Promise you won’t make fun of me? It wasn’t my idea.”

“I will make no such promise.”

“Fine.” I took a deep breath. “Emily wanted me to sign up for this online dating site. I was making a profile.”

Oliver stared at me for a second and then burst into a big guffaw, choking on the cookie he was ea
ting. After a round of coughing, he started laughing again. “You online date?”

“No. No, I definitely do not. But I made the profile to shut Em
ily up.”

“Is that where you met
Cliff
?”

“No.
I don’t date. Anyone. Ever again.”

“Sure,” he said, but his smile told me he was dropping it. “So, where’d you meet Cliff?”

I wrapped my arms across me and pulled my knees up onto the sofa. “Here. At the U. He lived in the same dorm as me.”

“Romantic.”

“We were just friends.”

“Until you weren’t.”

“Basically.”

“And then you fell in love and followed him to LA, and you both got jobs until you realized you were an independent woman and didn’t want a man like Cliff clouding your vision of the future,” Ol
iver said. “Did I get it right?” He looked smug, like he’d guessed everything correctly.

“Sure. You want to watch that documentary or what?” I said too quickly, reminded of my last night with Cliff before I left LA.

“Yup,” he said, and picked up the remote control I’d dropped. “Thanks for recording it for me.”

“Uh huh,” I said, nervously twisting a lock of my hair as the show came on and Oliver leaned closer to me. We watched, but I couldn’t concent
rate on anything except Oliver.

Delaney fell asleep on me, and I told myself that it was annoying having her asleep on me. Then I abandoned that line of thinking and rested my hand on her back gently. Her phone rang on the table. It was Cliff calling.

I shouldn’t have picked up. “Hello?” I said.

“Uh, I think I have the wrong—” a deep, startled voice spoke.

“You don’t. You were calling Delaney, weren’t you?” I said, not trying to deny my soaring happ
iness at speaking to this jerk.

“Who’s this?”

“Not you, that’s who,” I said, and I hung up on him.

“Cliff, calm down. That was just Oliver,” I said. I rubbed my eyes and laid back on my pillows. It was three in the morning, and Cliff was calling me, drunk and stupid.

“Who the hell is Oliver?”

“He’s my neighbor.”

“And?” he hissed.

“And what, Cliff? Do you realize how late it is?”

“Is he there right now?”

“Could we talk in the morning, Cliff? Honestly, this is a little dramatic, even for you,” I said. Then I added, “Kelsey wouldn’t like it.”

“Delaney, listen, about Kelsey—”

“Forget I brought her up. I’m not discussing her,” I said hurriedly.

“You don’t understand,” he said with a slur.

“I’ll talk to you in the morning,” I said, and then I hung up. I found a sweatshirt and wool socks, and then went across the hall to bang on the door until I woke up Jackass.

I was playing Solitaire on my phone when someone started pounding on the door. I opened it and saw Delaney’s eyes widen. “You were awake?”

“I think my body’s just used to night shift,” I said, standing aside to let her in. Her long dark hair was
tangled and sticking in every direction but down, she was wearing a gray hoodie and leggings, with sweat socks pulled over them, and there were pillow creases across her cheeks. She was hugging Jenny to her chest. She looked like a giant gray lump. “What are you doing? You look angry.”

“I
am
angry. Cliff just called me.”

My eyes fell. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” she said, putting a small hand on my chest and shoving. I didn’t budge. She wasn’t very tough. “What did you say to him?”

“Nothing.
Just picked up your phone. That was all.”

“I have voicemail. You don’t need to pick up strangers’ phones for them.”

My lip curled. “Oh, you’re a stranger?”

She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “It’s late, and I’m tired and now I can’t get back to sleep.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“I was hoping to spread the misery,” Delaney said, gently placing her dog on the floor and then flopping down on my couch and cur
ling up on her side into the fetal position. She yawned and then said, “But I forgot that you were already full of misery.”

“That’s me,” I said, sitting next to her and pulling her legs in my lap, reached for the blanket on the back of the sofa, and co
vered us both. I patted her leg and said, “Go to sleep.”

She yawned again and said, “Fine,” and closed her eyes. I watched her eyelids flutter for a few min
utes before I fell asleep too.