She looked over at him. “Feel like coming back here tonight and helping me search?”
Just the tip of his tail wagged. Anything his mistress wanted, he wanted. Labs were willing to follow.
She dug her phone out, which was still on silent from lunch. She’d missed several calls from Rob throughout the day and he’d left her two voice mails.
In one way it comforted her. On the other hand it annoyed her for some reason. She wasn’t sure why.
Then she felt guilty. And that definitely annoyed her.
Was Rob controlling? Did he used to keep tabs on her every move?
Then again, he had good reason to be worried about her without Bill to keep an eye on her. Except she had the comforting weight of the 9mm in the holster against her back.
She couldn’t spend her life waiting for people to babysit her.
And if that’s what she needed to use to rebuild her life from the ground up, carrying a concealed weapon so she didn’t spend every spare moment focused on what might happen, she’d do it.
But first, she wanted to find that list before she did anything else. Back at the condo, she found it in the red folder in her desk. Also her will, business papers, insurance policies, and other important documents. She changed into jeans and an old T-shirt and called Rob.
“Hi. I was afraid you’d forgot me.”
She felt another twinge of guilt over lunch with Don Kern, and then anger and resentment for feeling guilty, and right on top of that guilt for feeling angry and resentful.
She suppressed a nervous laugh. “No, just had a busy day, that’s all.”
He sounded hesitant. “Did you want to have dinner or something tonight? Maybe go see a movie?”
“I’m sorry, but not tonight. I’ve got some boxes of stuff I want to sort through from the warehouse. I want to find the old journals.”
“Do you want any help?”
She gripped the phone tightly. He sounded hopeful, but she wanted to be alone. She didn’t know what she’d find in the journals, and if it wasn’t something good, she didn’t want Rob around.
“I’m not trying to blow you off, but I really want to do it by myself. I need to do it by myself.”
“Are you sure it’s okay to go over there alone?”
“I’m taking Doogie. And the gun. Steve already ran me over there earlier. It’s fine.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I understand.” He sounded like he didn’t understand, but was doing his best to give her the space she asked for.
She didn’t want to leave him sounding hurt. “Listen, tomorrow night, here, I cook dinner for you. It’s time to see if I can make something edible. Okay?”
His voice lightened. “That sounds good. What time?”
They agreed on a time and she hung up. Locating a flashlight, she leashed Doogie and grabbed her list.
The storage yard was open twenty-four hours and the manager lived in an apartment on the second floor of the office. Laura used another key to open the lock on the gate, and she locked it behind her, feeling a little more secure knowing a random stranger couldn’t get in.
Her ribs didn’t protest too much when she opened the door to the third storage unit, where her list indicated the boxes were located. She found a light switch and two sets of fluorescent four-bangers flickered to life. It wasn’t as bright as she would’ve liked, but it was light enough to see. The list indicated boxes seventy-six through seventy-eight were her journals.
She searched through the stacks and realized the boxes she needed were buried in a back corner. It took her nearly an hour to unbury them, and she ripped them open.
Even the journals were numbered. Starting in her junior high years and going all the way until the computer journals started. From the number and the short date range each one contained, she wondered where the newer ones were. Based on everything she’d seen, she journaled nearly every day, even if it was only a couple of sentences about the weather or what she ate. It had been an ingrained habit for years.
It didn’t make sense she would stop.
But where did I put the damn things? She didn’t have time to think about it. It was almost dark and she wanted to get home. The three large boxes fit in the backseat of the truck. She locked the unit and loaded Doogie. A quick shower to rinse off the sweat and grime, then she spread out on the living room floor in an oversized T-shirt with a cup of hot tea and Doogie by her side.
Surreal did not begin to describe it. Laura decided the best way was to start at the beginning since she was missing the last few years anyway. The early journals were filled with handwriting that looked vaguely familiar, a narrow script that eventually morphed into the penmanship she now used.
Well, used before. Even her handwriting was different now when compared to notes and signatures on paperwork at the shop from the days before the attack.
She had normal teenage experiences, hated math, loved English. A crush on a boy a year older than herself. Then a month later, he was the anti-Christ. Two months after that, she accepted his invitation to a fall dance.
I don’t understand why boys are soooo childish. They just drive me absolutely nuts. They are immature and absolutely not worth wasting time on. Why are they so cute?
Laura couldn’t help but smile at the words. They brought back ghostly images—memories or fantasies, she wasn’t sure. There was an easy feel, a flow to the rhythm of the narrative that entranced her and gripped her. Steve was right—she was a good writer. Even in junior high.
There was no school today, teacher work day (hurray!). I took the flats boat out by myself. I didn’t go far, just out to Bull Bay. Didn’t even take a fishing pole with me. I had my notebook and a pen. I wanted to write, work on my poetry and get a few ideas for my stories. I was the only one there, no one looking for snook, no one trolling for tarpon.
The air was heavy, sweet with the fecund smell of the mangrove roots and mud and salt. I watched a school of baitfish come in, followed soon after by a school of snook. Wished for a pole then! I watched them dancing on the surface, turning and spinning and ripping across the water. The only sounds the lapping of the water on the fiberglass hull, the fish splashing, the cry of a gull hitting the leftovers on the surface. Far away, the drone of an outboard had no more effect than a mosquito near my ear.
Wait, that was a mosquito near my ear. Remember the deet next time…
Laura made it all the way to her freshman year at Lemon Bay High when she yawned and looked at the clock. It was nearly two in the morning, and she realized she was about to fall asleep where she sat. It didn’t make any sense to force herself through them all in one night.
She went to bed with Doogie on her heels.
Chapter Twenty-Six
There wasn’t a girls’ day that week because Leah, Tilly, and Loren had a meeting for a charity project they were involved with. When Laura awoke shortly before dawn, she returned to the journals.
At seven she called Steve and told him she wouldn’t make it in and why. By eight o’clock, she’d worked her way to her junior year of college and had progressed from simple daily events to interspersing poetry and snippets of fiction. The writing improved as well.
Sunlight on the water,
gulls over the beach,
magical, a moment forever suspended in time