Hello Love

by McQuestion, Karen

  “Is there someone else here we could ask, sir?” Lindsay asked, polite and deferential but also frowning.

  Kevin glanced over his shoulder and called out, “Lisa, you have a minute?”

  A gangly woman in scrubs came through the doorway holding a clipboard. “Yep?”

  “Hoping you could identify a suspect,” Kevin said, thrusting a finger at Lindsay’s phone.

  “Have you seen my dog?” Lindsay asked. “She’s lost. Well, actually, someone took her.” Dan watched as her eyes clouded with tears. “Nadine Bruder said she’s seen her here.”

  Lisa took the phone from Lindsay’s shaking hand and gave it a long look. “What a beautiful dog. You must be heartbroken.”

  Lindsay nodded.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Anni.”

  “I’m so sorry, honey. I haven’t seen Anni. You might want to ask down at the front desk. People with dogs have to check in.”

  Lindsay dabbed her eyes. “Okay, thanks. It’s just that Nadine said she saw Anni on the elevator.”

  “The dog was by herself?” Lisa’s eyebrows furrowed.

  “I-I don’t know,” Lindsay said, stammering. “Nadine just said she comes here sometimes and that she was on the elevator.”

  Kevin and Lisa’s eyes met, and Dan knew they were thinking that Nadine was not the most reliable of sources. Lisa held the phone out, which Lindsay took back without a word. “Maybe someone downstairs can help you.” As they walked away, Lisa softly said, “Good luck.”

  In the elevator, Lindsay kept her eyes toward the floor, tucked her hair behind her ear, and sniffed. She silently accepted the tissue Dan pulled out of his pocket. “It’ll be okay, Linds,” he said. Just words, really, because none of it was okay. He put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her and she leaned against him.

  They didn’t get good news at the front desk either. The grandmotherly woman on duty looked at Lindsay’s phone and shook her head. She said, “But just because I haven’t seen her doesn’t mean she wasn’t here. I’m a volunteer and so is everyone else who works the front desk. I myself only come in twice a month. So you see, it’s possible she was here, but unless you caught the right person at the right time, there’s no way anyone could tell you for sure.”

  Lindsay wasn’t giving up. “Upstairs they said everyone who brings an animal has to check in? Do they sign something?”

  “Yes, but they only sign their name, not the name of the animal, so it wouldn’t help you. I’m sorry.”

  “Can I see the sign-in sheet anyway?” Lindsay asked. Dan recognized the desperation in her voice.

  The woman hesitated and Dan expected her to say it was against their policy or there were privacy issues, but after a moment she shrugged and said, “I don’t know why not.”

  She shuffled through some papers in front of her until she uncovered a notebook. Flipping the cover over, she handed it to Lindsay.

  Dan looked at it over his daughter’s shoulder. There were dozens of names on the top sheet alone. A few had written in the date after their name; most had not. Some of the handwriting was illegible. The header at the top said, “I certify that I am bringing this animal into the Phoenix Health Care Center at my own risk. I understand that I am 100 percent responsible for the actions of my animal, and that PHCC assumes no responsibility to actions done to, or by, said animal.” Clearly, this was a makeshift attempt to cover their legal liability.

  Lindsay ran her finger down the list, flipped to the next page, and did the same. She turned to him and said, “None of the names seem familiar, do they?”

  “No,” he said, not pointing out that they probably wouldn’t seem familiar, since they didn’t know who had Anni. If she were even still alive.

  “I’m sorry, hon,” the woman said. “I lost a dog myself once, so I do understand. It’s a pain like none other. When it happened to me, it was like my heart was ripped open. So I am truly sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you.” Lindsay stood there like she was waiting for more to happen. It wasn’t until Dan made a show of returning the notebook that she turned away from the desk. The walk out to the truck was more of a trudge. Out in the parking lot she kicked up the snow in her path. “I really thought we were on to something. I really thought we might find her,” she said, her voice small.

  “We still might,” Dan said, trying to ease her pain. “You never know.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The day after visiting Gram, Andrea came home to find a box from a florist propped against the door. She carried it in to the kitchen table and opened it to find a dozen red roses wrapped in plastic. The accompanying card had a traditional valentine heart split in two with zigzagged edges. Inside he’d written: My apologies for everything. Love, Marco. When they were married, this kind of thing would have healed a lot of hurts. Today, not so much. She ripped the card into a dozen pieces and then took the resulting handful of confetti and flushed it down the toilet. Anni stuck her head over the toilet bowl and watched with rapt interest, not really sure what was going on, but knowing this wasn’t the usual routine.

  After arranging the roses in a vase, Andrea told Anni to stay, threw on her jacket, and carried them over to her neighbor Cliff’s house. She rang the doorbell with her elbow and watched her breath turn to fog in the cold air. When he opened the door, she didn’t wait for a greeting. “A present for you,” she said, thrusting the vase his way.

  His face lit up with delight. “What have I done to deserve this?” he asked, opening the screen door and taking the flowers out of her hands.

  “Just a thank-you for being your wonderful self,” she said. “I appreciate the times you’ve watched Anni and she loves you too.”

  Cliff stuck his nose in the bouquet. “I’d invite you in, but I have company,” he said, grinning devilishly.

  “That’s okay. I just wanted to drop off the flowers,” Andrea said.

  “Cliff, who is it?” A petite gray-haired woman appeared at his side. “Oh, what beautiful flowers.” She cast a sideways glance at Andrea and then at Cliff.

  Andrea, who had a knack for sizing up a situation, took in the scene. The woman was older but attractive, her hair cut in a shoulder-length bob, a nautical scarf tied around her neck, dangling gold earrings on each side. Cliff, still holding the flowers, regarded this woman with pride and she looked at him the same way. Andrea saw something at the edge of that look, something that said this woman was protective of Cliff and wondered who this woman bearing flowers could be. In that second she saw what should have been obvious—red roses meant romantic love. Probably not the best choice for thanking a neighbor for dog sitting. “I’m Andrea,” she said, filling the silence. “A neighbor. Just dropping off some flowers.” To clarify, she said, “A gift from my ex-husband. I didn’t want them around, but was thinking it would be a shame to throw them out. I thought Cliff might enjoy them.” That, she realized, was probably not the right thing to say. Now she’d admitted to regifting, and to having an ex-husband who sent her roses, which was fairly unconventional, if not completely weird.

  But if all of this put her in a bad light, the woman didn’t acknowledge it. “What a lovely thing to do,” she said with an enthusiastic shake of her head. “I’m Doreen, by the way.”

  “It’s nice to meet you.” Andrea couldn’t help herself. She had to ask. “How do you two know each other?” Her finger went back and forth between the two.

  “Book club,” Cliff said, smiling again, his long teeth in full view. “Over at the library.”

  The library? Wasn’t she the one who suggested the library as a place to meet people? Andrea suppressed the urge to take credit for this turn of events. Andrea flapped her hand in the direction of her place. “I should probably head for home. It was nice meeting you, Doreen.”

  As the screen door closed, she heard Cliff explain, “I sometimes watch Andrea’s litt
le dog when she goes out. Little Muffin. A real cutie.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  In the time since Anni went missing, Lindsay had seemed to adjust to life without her, but since Nadine had spoken her name, it opened up the wound and the pain was fresh again.

  She and Brandon came back to their house for dinner, and afterward Dan overheard her tell Brandon the story of their visit at the nursing home. While Dan pored over graphs for work at the kitchen table, they sat on the couch in the living room watching Donnie Darko for the eight hundredth time. Although the space between the two teenagers and Dan was fairly open, with only a half wall dividing them, if he was quiet they tended to forget about him, similar to when he used to drive Lindsay and her friends to soccer practice when she was in middle school. As long as he didn’t speak, they talked without reservation about the kinds of things they’d never normally say in front of him.

  Today she turned the sound down on the movie to tell Brandon the dream in far more detail than she’d told Dan. “When my mom came into my room in this last dream, it was so real, I could smell her, you know? She smelled the same as she always did, like this soap she used to use. I was listening to music and I took the earbuds out because I could tell she had something to tell me and she had a look on her face that said it was important. Then she told me to listen up, that she didn’t have much time, and I had to give my dad a message. I knew Dad was somewhere else in the house and I asked her why she didn’t just tell him herself, and she said she tried, but he wasn’t listening.” Dan straightened. She tried but he wasn’t listening? No way. This had to be Lindsay’s subconscious tapping into her need to communicate with her mother. To feel special, like she was the only one who could. He craned his neck to see into the other room, but could only spot the top of Lindsay’s head resting against Brandon’s shoulder.

  She kept going, telling Brandon about how Nadine had said she saw Anni on the elevator. “She kept saying it that way—on the elevator.”

  “Whoa,” Brandon said. “Like she’s trying to give you some kind of message.”

  “That’s what I thought!”

  “Like, maybe,” he said, his voice rising in excitement, “you’re supposed to watch the elevator. Do they have security cameras there? Maybe they’d let you watch the footage.”

  Lindsay said, “I didn’t see any, but you’d think so, wouldn’t you? I could call and ask.”

  Dan heard the hope in her voice and couldn’t help himself. He called out, “Remember, we’re talking about a woman who is suffering from a cognitive impairment. Nadine can’t remember her sons visiting from one time to the next. She’s probably just thinking of when your mom used to bring Anni to visit.”

  Dead silence from the couch. He was the hope killer, the squasher of possibilities, the one who dared suggest that something was really nothing. He saw their heads turn to exchange a look and knew he’d blundered. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up, honey.”

  “I know, Dad.” The air between them turned icy.

  Right after that Brandon and Lindsay decided to go to a movie in an actual theater where Dan couldn’t disturb them. They didn’t put it that way, of course, but he got the message. “Enjoy the movie,” he said as they left the house. “But come straight home afterward. It’s a school night.” From the set of Lindsay’s shoulders, he could see her disdain, making it clear that of course she knew it was a school night. Did he think she was a complete idiot?

  Brandon said, “We will. Good night, sir.” Brandon was always polite, even when Lindsay was moody and difficult. Especially when Lindsay was moody and difficult, maybe to compensate. The door slammed behind them and Dan listened as he heard Brandon starting the engine. He went to the window and watched as he backed down the driveway, aware that his silhouette in the window probably annoyed Lindsay, but unable to look away.

  Her mother did a good job handling Lindsay when she was moody like this, but he was all thumbs and missteps. Should he ignore her or take her to task? It didn’t seem to matter. It wasn’t really a battle per se, so there was no winning either way. After the movie, she’d be back and there would be breakfast tomorrow and other days ahead. Soon enough, though, she’d be gone for good, living an independent life, the way kids eventually do. When Dan was a child, he’d hear the adults exclaim: Where did the time go? The question had seemed foolish to him then. They’d acted as if time were a race car, speeding past, when he himself knew that time took forever to go by. Each birthday came about five years after the last one. Christmas was like the horizon, always off in the distance. A kid could grow two inches waiting for Christmas. He never understood then what he knew now. Time was as fluid as a river. Waiting for something exciting made time crawl on its knees, and working on deadline made time sprint. The good times were fleeting, the bad times excruciatingly slow.

  Yes, he watched as Lindsay drove away with Brandon and knew it was only a matter of time before she’d be gone for good. What would be left for him then? He was afraid that when Lindsay left, time would be measured in between her phone calls and visits and getting through each day would be a gargantuan task.

  Morose, that’s what he’d become. He’d gone from full-blown grief to numb to borrowing trouble. There was no point in anticipating a depressing future. It would come, ready or not, and there was no need to feel the pain ahead of time.

  He went back to his laptop and his graphs. Once engrossed, he thought he heard Anni scrabbling by the door, and almost got up to let her out when he realized what he was doing. “I am absolutely losing my mind,” he said, and realized that saying it out loud didn’t do much to discount the notion.

  When the phone rang, the landline they almost never used, he jumped, startled, but didn’t get up to answer it. Lindsay would be in the movie by now and she’d have called his cell if there were a problem. The only calls that generally came over that number were solicitors or political calls. He wasn’t in the mood to politely turn down telemarketers or volunteers. He always felt guilty cutting them off in the middle of their script, and even as he politely said good-bye, he’d hear their faint, last desperate attempts to turn things around as he was putting the phone in the cradle. No, let it ring. If it was important, they’d leave a message. If not, even better.

  He crooked his neck as he heard the recording begin. Someone was leaving a message. “Hi, Dan? This is Doreen. I wanted to thank you again for brunch. That was so nice of you and I didn’t invite you to brunch so you would pay, but I appreciated it. It was very gentlemanly of you.” Dan got up and went over to the phone as she spoke, his hand hovering over the receiver. “I’m calling for another reason, though. I wanted to invite you over for dinner a week from Sunday at my house. I’m having a few friends over, well, two friends really, and I think you’d make a good addition to the group.” This last sentence was said hurriedly, as if she were nervous. Dan kept his hand over the phone, but didn’t pick up. “When you call me back, I’ll tell you more. I’m thinking we won’t include Lindsay this time, because she would just be bored by all our grown-up talk. So it would be the four of us. If you can make it, of course.” She cleared her throat. “Okay, bye-bye. Call me when you can.” Click.

  He groaned. He and Christine had been to many dinners at Doreen’s and he and Lindsay had been guests a few times over the last year and a half, but she’d never invited just him before. And she’d sounded so nervous too. Something was definitely wrong with this scenario. If it were closer to his birthday, he’d think it was a surprise party. But since that wasn’t the case, it was probably another attempt to set him up with a woman. He’d call her back, but not today.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Eating lunch at the Café Mocha later that week, Andrea couldn’t help but notice all the lovebird couples. Two college kids splitting an order of fries were one table over from an older couple who sat leisurely by the fireplace, sipping cappuccinos, lost in each other’s eyes. On the opposite
side of the room, Philip sat with a gorgeous woman Andrea presumed to be his wife, Vanessa. Vanessa had an elegant high ponytail that emphasized her fabulous cheekbones and long, swanlike neck. She and her husband were splitting a large frosted cookie and comparing notes on the flavor. Like they couldn’t each have their own. Andrea sighed. First it was Cliff and Doreen, and now this. Love was definitely in the air. How nice for all of them. She reached down to drop a piece of meat to Anni, who waited underneath the table. When Anni was done eating, Andrea gave her a quick rub behind the ears. “That’s my girl,” she said.

  When it was time to go, Andrea wrapped her scarf around her neck, and thought about putting on her knit beret, but stuffed it in her purse instead. For her, the scourge of winter had always been the cold, the slush, and the horror of hat hair. Knit hats, the kind that really kept your head warm, created static electricity and flyaway hair. Either that or dents on either side of her head. Luckily, it wasn’t snowing or cold enough to require a hat, or maybe it was that she’d just gotten used to it. As they left, Joan called out good-bye, and through the door they went, Anni bounding onto the sidewalk, happy to be on the move.

  They were a few blocks away from the coffee shop when Andrea heard a loud shout. “Hey!” a man yelled, sounding irate. “Hey there, you with the dog!” Alarmed, she looked up to see a dark-colored junker pausing at the stoplight on the opposite side of the street. The car looked like it had been painted with a brush, and multiple bumper stickers covered the door. The driver, a guy in his twenties, had the window down and his arm all the way out, his hand fashioned like a gun pointing straight at her. The hand shaped like a gun and a black knit hat pulled over his forehead overshadowed the rest of his appearance.

  “Me?” she said, looking around, but there was no one else in the vicinity, and not very many cars either.

  “Yeah, you.” Now his voice was furious. “Where’d you get that dog? That’s not your dog.” Each word came out like machine gun fire, madder and louder. The yelling of a madman. Unpredictable and crazed.