The door flew open.
“Oh! Thank God you’re open.”
An older woman rushed in, worry and panic clearly etched in every line on her face as her body swayed.
Jett immediately came out from behind the counter to grab one arm as Trask took hold of the other.
“Come. Sit down,” Jett said. “Take a deep breath and tell us what’s the matter.”
“Uh, I’ll just take off,” Dustin chimed in, walking gingerly around the group. “I’ll catch up with you later, Jett.” Out the door he went.
Good to know that Dustin wasn’t crisis material.
If he hadn’t been crossed off Jett’s list before, he was permanently red-X-ed now.
Trask, on the other hand, was stepping right up, as she’d intrinsically known he would.
Jointly, they led the woman to a chair.
“Can I get you a glass of water?” Jett asked solicitously.
“No. Nothing. I can’t even begin to think about myself right now. Not when Richard is…” The woman sobbed.
“What’s your name?” Jett asked.
“Eloise,” the woman replied. “Eloise Harting.”
“Okay, Eloise. Deep breath, and start at the beginning,” Trask urged.
“My…husband,” she began, sucking in the air that Trask had suggested, her voice gaining a little strength. “Every year, he and two of his buddies go ice fishing up north.”
She mentioned a lake with which Jett was unfamiliar, but it seemed like Trask knew exactly the location because he nodded.
“That’s a hell of a ways north, and pretty remote for a winter excursion,” he suggested mildly.
“I know. I know,” Eloise answered, wringing her hands. “That’s what I’ve been telling him for the past few years as we’ve, you know, gotten older, but he always laughs off my concerns and heads out, anyway.”
Jett could tell that the woman loved her husband, even if he did put her through this challenge every year.
“So what happened?” Jett continued, gently probing.
“Just a week ago, both of Richard’s friends cancelled on him, and I thought that would be it, but Richard decided he was going to go, anyway.”
Trask’s eyes met Jett’s over Eloise’s head, and they shared a worried look. It wasn’t smart to go into the wilderness, solo, any time of the year, but in the winter, it was especially dangerous.
“When did he leave?” Trask asked.
“Two days ago,” she answered. “He drove his truck up to the spot where the three of them normally park, then he snowshoed the five miles to the cabin that one of his friend’s owns, which is right by the lake.”
A hell of a jaunt, especially with so much snow on the ground.
“They have an ice shack there that Richard hauled out onto the lake that first day. He then cut a hole in the ice and set up his gear. It was a lot for him to do in one day, especially since his blood pressure has been questionable lately, so when he called me that night, I scolded him for doing all that.” The woman wiped a tear from the corner of her eye and sniffed.
“He poo-pooed my worries, and assured me he was fine; looking forward to the next day’s fishing.” She sucked in another breath. “That’s when I made him promise he’d call me at least twice every day, once in the morning and once when he was in for the evening.
“I heard from him last night, and he was elated that the fish had been biting. He’d caught a good mess of rainbow trout, and teased about me cleaning them when he got home.”
She gave a watery smile and sniffed again. Jett plucked a tissue from a box they kept on the counter, handing it to Eloise, who blew her nose.
