Chapter 8
“I found the what?” I blink my confusion.
“This,” he says, motioning around him and looking surprisingly exasperated, “is the Lost and Found lost and found.” He shakes his head.
“I wondered what the hell happened to it all. One day about a year and a half ago, we realized the whole damn thing had just disappeared from the post office. Nobody knew when because it had been in a back room, just gatherin’ dust. And nobody looked for it because havin’ it gone was kind of a blessing in a way.
” Another headshake. “I shoulda known Mabel had somethin’ to do with it. She had a soft spot for it.”
“Um, I need more to go on here, Chief Cordray,” I inform him. Since so far, I’ve got nothing.
He unleashes a sigh and looks tired out by the whole thing. “Well, when you live in a town named Lost and Found, every now and then, somebody sends ya somethin’ they think somebody else lost, hopin’ for some crazy reason that you know who it belongs to.”
I squint. “Huh?”
“The reason you look confused by this,” he tells me, “is because it makes no damn sense whatsoever. But it would seem there are people out there who, after findin’ somethin’ that seems lost, and then discoverin’ there’s a town called Lost and Found, Kentucky, just randomly mail that item here .
Guess it makes ’em feel better than throwin’ it away.
“Mabel worked at the post office up until she retired, and she took to puttin’ it all in a storage area—since nobody here knew what to do with any of it, either. And it mostly stopped once social media came along. Reckon people started tryin’ to find homes for lost things that way. Thank God.”
“Ah,” I say, thinking this is the end of the weird story—but alas, no.
“The post office was still storin’ all this old stuff, though, and sometimes the town council talked about gettin’ rid of it, just puttin’ it out for the trash collector.
And when Junior Barnett became postmaster and wanted himself an office, the storage room was the prime location, so he lobbied for emptyin’ it out.
But other folks didn’t think that seemed right, and at some point it just fell off people’s radar screens.
“Until one day Jeannie at the post office went into the storage room and it was all gone. Every bit of it. MIA. Of course, folks blamed Junior. But he seemed as shocked as anybody and said he’d long since given up his dreams of privacy.
Even so, people were sure Junior had destroyed all this stuff.
Only looks like instead, Mabel saved it by hidin’ it away. ”
“Wow.” That’s all I can summon after such a tale. I don’t know what I was expecting to find by following the treasure map, but it wasn’t this.
“I can’t believe it,” he murmurs, taking in the pile of stuff.
Then he chuckles softly. “Mabel never cared for Junior much. Probably laughin’ down from heaven about him takin’ the blame.
Maybe once he hears it’s all been found, he’ll finally get brave enough to claim that office—he didn’t dare once folks accused him of throwin’ away the lost and found. ”
I blow out a breath, thinking through all this new information. “Well, at least now it’s not taking up space someone else needs. I guess it can sit here and rot for eternity.”
At this, however, Police Chief Cordray casts a pointed sideways glance in my direction. “Well, now, Miss Jessica Fox, it seems to me that by openin’ that door, you agreed to do somethin’ about all this stuff.”
I let my eyes go wide in disbelief. “I most certainly did not. And besides, what could I possibly do?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. But you read the note.
You shouldn’t have gone on the hunt if you weren’t gonna honor Mabel’s wishes.
She took such things seriously, seriously enough to squirrel this stuff away—apparently by the dead of night, since no one ever saw her take it.
She’d long since retired, so she must’ve kept her keys and gone sneakin’ around after hours.
Think how hard it musta been for a lady her age to lug all this crap back here. ”
“I guess she also took Sneaking 101,” I say, mainly to divert his attention from pressuring me to somehow “do something” with all this stuff.
He grins in reply. “Guess she did. Know what other class I did pretty good in?”
“What’s that?”
“Advanced Changin’ the Subject.”
I tilt my head to inform him, “I’m sorry, but this stuff is not my problem.”
“Guess the actual problem,” he says in a pondering way, “is that it’s nobody’s problem. But Mabel would be heartbroken to know somebody followed her little map to all this stuff and then did nothin’.”
“Well, maybe Kevin or his sisters or parents or nieces and nephews can do something with it all.”
The cowboy next door just casts me a knowing look. “Jessie. They didn’t even find the note. How much you think they’re gonna care about a bunch of stuff that didn’t belong to her when they don’t care much about the stuff that did?”
After slanting him an annoyed look the whole time he was speaking, I now begin, “It’s—”
“Jessica, I know,” he cuts me off. “Sorry. Jessie just rolls off the tongue easy.”
“You know, it’s not that I don’t want to be helpful. It’s—”
“You’ve made out,” he cuts me off a second time to say, “like you got nothin’ to fill your time here without your precious internet.”
“Well, if you’d stop interrupting me, I was going to say that even if I did want to do something with this stuff, I have no idea what it would be. For the same reason no one else has ever known what to do with it, either.”
He stays quiet a minute, but then uncrumples Mabel’s instructions, the paper now torn from having removed the key.
He smooths out what’s left, pressing it up against the pegboard in between a hammer and a saw, then stabs his index finger at the first part.
Where it says: Do not use the key unless you intend to care for these things.
After which he then stabs the same finger at a slightly lower part of the note:
Things represent people’s lives, people’s loves, people’s dreams. I am a reluctant keeper of these precious things, caring for each of them for at least a moment, an hour, a day.
If you take up this key, my hope and prayer is that you will do the same—for at least a moment, love these things as they were once loved by another.
“You’re suggesting what?” I ask, needing clarification about all this pointing.
“That even if you can’t find where they belong, you could honor Mabel’s wishes by .
.. just lookin’ through the boxes, seein’ what’s there.
Who knows? Maybe you’ll come across somethin’ that .
.. I don’t know, gives some clue as to where it came from.
I mean, if even one thing found its way home, that’d be pretty great, don’t ya think?
And worst-case scenario, you see some things that once mattered to somebody and grant a dead woman’s final wish. ”
“We don’t know that it was her final wish,” I can’t help but point out.
“Well, we don’t know that it wasn’t, either,” he quickly retorts. And with that, he presses the piece of paper back into my hand. “Give it some thought. And if you decide ya wanna look through it all, or even some of it, I’ll gladly move it into the house, into the spare bedroom.”
“I can move it myself,” I tell him. Because old habits die hard and I’m a capable woman and all that.
“Suit yourself,” he says.
“Thank you, I will,” I reply smartly, then approach the cardboard box he already opened, gripping it on each side, ready to pick it up.
“But there are probably snakes in here.”
Returning my hands to my sides, I say, “Well then, thank you in advance for moving the stuff,” after which I exit the garage. I guess I’m starting to accept that, like it or not, even a strong woman can have certain limitations.
The spare bedroom in Mabel’s cottage, done in shabby-not-quite-chic country blue—shabby mostly because it still sports the hearts-and-geese trend of the nineties—is packed to the gills with boxes and bins.
Now, whereas yesterday I was dying for something to do, today I’m avoiding my something-to-do with all the nothing I can possibly think of.
I take another morning walk to the winery, which brings another visit with Jo, and today I meet Conrad, too. With tidy gray hair and glasses, he looks more like a college professor than a winemaker, but I can already see that he balances Jo and is the yin to her yang.
I water my flowers very thoroughly, even though it looks like it might rain.
I read some of Mabel’s cookbooks. I don’t know that I’ll actually cook, but you never know.
And I read some more of my John Grisham novel on the back porch—but then it does begin to rain, driving me back indoors, where there’s no light good enough for reading, even during the day.
Fortunately, it’s almost lunchtime, so I whip up a grilled cheese and heat a can of soup—the perfect rainy-day lunch—and sit at Mabel’s old kitchen table watching trails of rain trickle down the windowpane, blurring the yard and lake beyond.
But after that, I’m fresh out of time killers, especially since it looks like the kind of rain that might last all afternoon.
Glancing from the kitchen in the general direction of the spare bedroom, I guess I know what I’m about to do.
I don’t know why I’m so averse to the idea, but I’m falling prey to some sort of obligation wrapped in utter boredom.
Arming myself with a can of soda to keep me awake during this dreary task, I gird myself and venture into the room, opening the first cardboard box I come to.