First Real Kiss

“You seem tired.” Luke opened my door for me in the driveway of Harvey Pooler, 4444 Fenwick Way. “Should we call it a day after this?”

I sat in his car instead of getting out. “I really thought we’d find the person I’m looking for by now.”

“We’re only a third of the way done.”

Which left scores more disappointments. “I shouldn’t get discouraged.”

“No. You shouldn’t.”

“Well, look at you.”

“What about me?” he asked. “Oh, you mean look at me, looking on the bright side?” He took my hand and lifted me out of the car. “Let’s attribute it to my visualizing a large, yellow smiley-face sticker on the side of a toaster.”

How did he remember things like that? “You promised to tell me why you know so much about me.”

“And I will. I think you’re almost ready to hear them.”

“I’ve been ready.” I followed him to the door. “You’re holding out on me.” I knocked on the heavy wooden Mission-style door.

“Well, you did say you love me, so I think that you may be—”

The door creaked open loudly, and there stood a tall, square-shouldered man of late middle-age with a paunch belly and a friendly face that broke into a broad smile.

“Eloisa!” he hollered over his shoulder. “Come here. You’ve got to see this. They found each other!”

***

“They found each other!” The words re-echoed in my ears. “Congratulations, you two.”

I backed up, bumping into Luke, who placed his hands on my hips to steady me.

“Come in, come in.” Harvey Pooler waved us into his low-ceilinged home with arched doorways and half-timbers. He placed us on a leather, nail-head love seat, and Eloisa—or who I guessed was his wife Eloisa—peeked in, gasped, and then disappeared for a minute, reappearing momentarily with a tray of glasses of iced lemonade.

“Gilson Kelso called and warned me you might be stopping by.” Harvey handed us each a lemonade, and Eloisa placed a coaster on the coffee table for each of us.

“Gilson Kelso?” I asked, still a little dumbfounded by the statement. “That’s someone we asked to sign Marcia Dawsonside’s release form for the history she’s writing.”

“He was on the fire department with me back in the day. Retired now. We both are. He’s a dog breeder now, and a fine one.”

Ah, that made sense. It was the first thing that had in a full minute. “Marcia Dawsonside wanted us to ask you to sign this, but I had an ulterior motive.” I dusted off my speech, hopeful for the first time that it would do some good. Harvey Pooler was my answer! But—he couldn’t be my rescuer. I didn’t feel it in my spirit, that oomph I knew I’d feel when I met him again. “I agreed to help her get the signatures, and Luke here is helping, because I am looking to find anyone who knows about my rescue. Anyone who remembers anything specific.”

I was rambling, not saying it right.

“Oh, I remember. It was dramatic, not the type of thing a person is likely to forget in a lifetime. Like something out of a movie.” Harvey set down his lemonade as I gripped mine tightly enough to break the glass. “That’s what I meant when I said I’m glad you found each other.”

“I’m sorry? You’ll have to explain what you mean.” Luke set down his lemonade and leaned forward. “Sheridan and I had never met before this past month.”

Eloisa sat down beside Harvey. “My Harvey came home and described it to me that night. He almost never does that, since being a rescue worker is such a difficult job, and he protects my feelings, but that single aspect of the Great Quake was so inspiring—he told me all about it. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

“That’s just it, though.” I was starting to feel desperate. “I don’t remember anything except that I was pulled from beneath something heavy and then carried by a kind firefighter to an ambulance.” Plus the crushed bones in my hips, of course, and the bad news from the doctors around me. “Are you the one who pulled me from the library?” Had I found him at last? Had I romanticized the whole event into falling in love with my rescuer, and misremembered the whole thing?

Indeed, I hadn’t recorded the events in my journal until a few weeks—and a few trips through anesthesia—after it happened. It’s possible I invented the whole strong jaw and shaggy brown hair memory. But not the kind words that reassured me.

“If it was you, Mr. Pooler, I have to thank you, and not just for pulling me from the building, though that was vital, obviously, but also for the reassuring words that I was going to be all right.” The kind voice, the one that melted my fears away, I’d depended on it. “Those words buoyed me through months of surgeries and physical challenges.”

Harvey chortled. “You’re saying you don’t know?”

Eloisa took his hand and looked up at him lovingly. “They clearly don’t know, sweetheart. Break it to them gently.”

Luke sat back, and his shoulder pressed hard against mine, as if to steady me. Or maybe he needed the steadying.

There wasn’t a literal earthquake happening in Torrey Junction at the moment, but there might as well have been.

I could barely breathe, and the ground rocked beneath me.

Was Luke Hotwell my long-lost rescuer?