The Dog That Whispered by Jim Kraus

Author:Jim Kraus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: FaithWords
Published: 2016-06-07T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

HAZEL TRAVELED west until she reached the ocean.

She loved the ocean, even in Oregon, where the seawater was only a step above frigid and the skies blustery most of the time and no one went swimming unless they were from Canada or wore a wetsuit.

She had vacationed there several times, in little hotels along the coast. The towns were small, the restaurants few, and the crowds minimal.

She considered it all so perfect.

And with the ocean in front of her, the sharp tang of salt and the scent of seaweed filling the car, she turned left, heading south, and would drive with the expanse of water on her right shoulder the whole way to California.

And with each mile she drove, with each mile more distant from Portland, she grew lighter, she felt more at ease. Leaving the town of her birth had not felt traumatic, not at all. Nor would it in the future, she imagined. She felt a momentary tug over leaving her mother’s grave, but told herself quickly that her mother was not there, and there was no one to judge her for not visiting the cemetery a prescribed number of times.

“No one will miss me,” she said aloud as she drove through Waldport on the coast.

“Well, maybe there are a few people, but I can stay in touch with Facebook,” she said aloud as she drove through Coos Bay.

She stopped at Sharkbites Café for lunch and ate three fish tacos while staring out at the main street that ran through the small town. There was chatter and conversation all about her, and she didn’t listen to any of it. She simply let the voices and the words and the laughter and the clatter of dishes and silverware flow over her, like a noise rainfall, not letting any of it penetrate, not hearing any specific word.

She felt immune, for that moment, from being connected.

As a child, and as a young woman, she often was at the edge of things, at the edge of a group, at the edge of a lunchtime gaggle of girls, at the edge of a school dance—not in the shadows, exactly, but not in the spotlight either.

And when that had happened in the past, standing alone on the fringe of something, there was a part of her that yearned to be closer to the circle, to be inside the circle, but that was not usually the case, or it happened very infrequently. And years ago she had given up on wanting that inclusion. It was not hard. She did not suffer because of it.

Being alone is not the same as being lonely.

And now today she had deliberately placed herself adrift, floating free, much like a lost buoy would drift in the ocean, unanchored, letting the water carry her, not worried about where the end might be, where the final safe haven would be—or even if there was a safe harbor at the edge of the horizon.

It doesn’t matter now. I’m free.

Hazel smiled at the thought of the lost buoy.

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