Lost & Found Read Online Free Page A

year. Budgets must be looking up.”
    Rocky folded the paper in half and asked the waitress what she knew about it. She had on a shirt that said University of Southern Maine .
    “You need to talk to Isaiah Wilson, everybody knows him. Tell him you heard about it from me. He and my father are old friends.” Her name was Jill and she looked like the shirt belonged to one of her kids.
    Isaiah was the director of public works on the island, aformer Methodist minister, and currently a substitute shop teacher over in Portland, when they were desperate. Jill had supplied the essential background on him. Rocky went directly to his office and filled out an application. She wasn’t sure what she was doing, but she felt like she was peeling off her old self and stepping out of her skin.
    To apply for the municipality on the island, Rocky had to give a reference and a job history. She paused after writing in her name, Roxanne Pelligrino, and held the pen still in the air, and finally wrote the truth…psychologist, and gave Ray as a reference. Isaiah looked at the application and his forehead wrinkled.
    Rocky explained. “Before you say anything, I want you to know that my husband was a veterinarian. When he was starting his practice, I helped him in the evenings with the animals that had to stay overnight in the clinic. I learned how to handle sick animals and I can tell which ones will bite and which ones won’t. But if you hire me, I want my personal life to be private. I don’t want to be a psychologist here. I need to start over.”
    Isaiah had a full head of gray hair and his eyebrows had the wild look of men his age. Long strands of hair stuck straight up from his brows and a few flipped up and pointed to the top of his head. His reading glasses sat low on his nose. His skin was dark, and from the slight cadence in his voice, Rocky thought he might be from Haiti.
    “Divorce?” he asked looking up at her over his glasses.
    “Dead. My husband is dead. Heart attack. He was young and we didn’t know anything was wrong.” Rocky had practiced these facts and this was her trial run.
    Isaiah took off his glasses. “I’m sorry.” Rocky saw the minister settle in and the public works director receded. “When did he pass away?”
    “This spring, the end of the spring.” She suddenly felt like she was in the chaplain’s office and she shifted in the chair.
    “‘After the first death there is no other.’ Do you know who wrote that? Elizabeth Barrett Browning? I’m not sure. I remember the first time I heard it and I knew it was true. The first death changes everything, and all deaths afterward bring us back to the first death. I’m sorry; I lost both my parents last year and even at my ripe age, I feel like an orphan. Death changes everything doesn’t it?”
    Rocky brushed an escaping tear from one eye. “If you hire me, I’ll do a good job. If I don’t know how to do something, I’ll ask. Just keep all this private, okay? I’m not ready to be a widow yet. I don’t want people to treat me like a psychologist. I need time to work hard and do physical work. I have a year’s leave of absence from my job. I can give you one year, right through next year’s tourist season.”
    “I’m a professional secret-keeper. I was a minister for fifteen years and that’s part of what I did. I held secrets. The same as you. Prying secrets out of us takes an act of Congress.”
    He stood up and held out his large paw of a hand to Rocky. “Let me show you about your new job and all the fancy extras that go along with it.” She let him take her hand. She knew he wanted to make physical contact with her; that’s what ministers do, they take your hand. “Don’t be overwhelmed by our advanced technology here on the island. You get a truck that can’t pass emission control standards on the mainland and the key to the storage shed. When can you start?”
    “Now. I can start right now,” she said.
    He nodded. “Are you settled