Things come in 3's

The couple arrived in London at their friends’ house late on a Thursday night. By Friday evening, she’d lost her first item. A thinly hammered 1” hoop of 24k gold that barely weighed a thing. She’d bought the earrings over ten years ago, though she didn’t usually buy herself jewelry. It probably had fallen out on the post dinner walk to the pub as she wrapped an unnecessary scarf around her neck for the not so chilly air. She kept the remaining earring.

The next night she lost her phone. This loss was a bit trickier. The four of them had gone to see Mike Berbiglia’s Old Man and the Pool in Covent Garden. She’d eaten an edible before they’d taken the tube. A wave of slippery aloofness hit her right as they walked into the packed theater, the large open space swallowing her up as they sat down in their pod of 4 seats, one cushy maroon velvet floppy seat next to the other. Softly stoned, she giggled thoughtfully through out the performance, taking in the marvel of being surrounded by her husband, dear friends and laughing strangers as Mike went on about the not always cheerful dualities of getting older and parenting children.

At the end of the show, everyone got up and rushed towards the doors. It was as if the audience had turned into a herd of cattle in the scope of 90 minutes and decided their surroundings were no longer sufficient, everyone needing to trot out of the gates of their too tight pen and move onto richer pastures along the London streets. She, not one to move with a herd, had to navigate against the flow of cow traffic to find the WC and did not realize that her phone fell out of her jeans pocket and onto the floor between the seam of her folding seat. Her phone was collected by a laughing stranger from the carpeted floor and placed into the handbag of a show goer who was traveling on the tube towards Paddington Station.

By the grace the Find My app and her husband’s savvy tech abilities whilst under the spell of a gummy, the men tracked down her phone, called it and spoke to the unaware woman who had mistakingly put the phone into her bag. The left the theater to collect the phone while she and her girlfriend waited at a nearby restaurant and ordered a massive amount of papadums. In a matter of 20-30 minutes, the phone was retrieved and back in her hands before the entrees were served.

The second loss had been remedied and she thanked the gods, St. Anthony, and, most importantly, the men for their successful efforts. The group of friends buzzed with the happy outcome and the relief that the next day would not be spent in an AT&T store. Crisis averted.

Two days later, in the highlands of Scotland on the eve before their 24th wedding anniversary, the third thing goes missing. As the couple lay in bed, encouraging their confused jet-lagged bodies into a state of REM, she gets a text from their dog sitter to call her as soon as possible.

“Beau is missing.”

The dog sitter explains that Beau didn’t come when she called all the dogs into the kitchen for their dinner of kibble. Beau is their (at least) 10 year old big brown dog that lives in the kitchen, next to the fridge, under the counter, always looking forward to a next meal or juicy leftover. This was all very strange.

Her husband madly looks at the Ring camera footage searching for their sweet, loving, lumbering ridgeback, boxer mix. Scanning hours of the four cameras he’d strategically placed around the property in the event of an intruder, not an escapee, her husband finds nothing. Beau was not to be found exiting or entering their home except in the shot from the morning walk at 8:53 am with all the dogs and dog sitter ambling up the driveway, returning from their stroll.

As she watches her husband perform surveillance 4000 miles away, she prays. She calls to Beau internally, calling on her reiki training to energetically connect to his soul as she holds a heart shaped stone of red jasper to her heart. “Beau, come home. Beau, come home. Beau come home. Wherever you are, Beau, come home.”

Beau is not a solo traveler, he’s a willing participant when one he loves is traveling. He prefers sunning himself on terra cotta tiles to long walks along a beach. Between the two of them, she and her husband try to imagine where Beau could have gone, where he could be stuck, why he was playing hide and seek without telling anyone he had started the game.

They each share ideas over text with the dog sitter. Did she check the closets? Under the truck? In the shady area by the trees, below the sea grapes, behind the house on the rocks… She texts neighbors to be on the lookout.

The sun has set in St. Thomas. The searching is paused. It is almost midnight in Braemar. They call to Beau on the Ring cam throughout their night. There is little, if any sleep between the two of them.

The next morning, their sunshine arrives 5 hours ahead of home’s silent, unstirring darkness. The couple goes downstairs to the hotel’s breakfast room to eat scones with clotted cream and drink coffee to wash away the fog of worry. The click-clacking of silverware hitting china grates on their nerves. The silvery sky calls to them through the tall paned windows. With knapsacks, hiking boots and just-in-case rain gear they head out for a hike.

For a few hours the couple climbs up above the little town that nestles next to the Dee River. They breathe in the clean, wet air. They taste the dew of morning on their tongues.They watch bands of gold from ancient beech trees sprinkle down to a mossy floor. They listen to the trickling of mountain streams traveling under the trail. The feel alive as their sweat and panic mingle under their windbreakers. Their pace is steady and purposeful, though their destination unknown. If only the trail could go on forever and this caving in feeling was just a fever dream.

Back at the hotel hours later, as soon as the sun shines above Tropaco Point, the couple uses their phones to orchestrate next steps, to make calls to more neighbors, more friends. They post photos and rewards on social media. Droves of people go searching for Beau. The couple questions if they need to go home and look for Beau themselves and realize it will take them at least 2 days to get there. Beau’s fate is in the hands of their community.

24 hours and still no signs of Beau. Exposure, no water, goat traps, 90 degree heat.

24 years. A bottle of 1998 Pomeral. Local venison. Uneaten lobster.

There are no answers in their togetherness.

She dreams of ravens and a german shepherd at Heaven’s gate. He dreams of his father who died 11 years ago. They start their day again in the breakfast room and turn to the outdoors again, drinking in the insane beauty of the highlands, using their awe to diffuse their mounting fears, the encroaching grief.

When the St. Thomas morning finally catches up to their Scottish midday, one friend sends drone footage and shadows play tricks on them. A scaling of the rocks on the other side of their point is planned. The couple walks. The couple waits.

Almost 48 hours later Madison finds Beau’s body. He calls her husband. They were out on a walk in the dark under a canopy of stars.

She lies down, sinking into the grass as if looking for a mother’s lap. He makes calls to let the community know that the search is over. He becomes the fireman, the representative of thoughtfulness and reason. She somehow carries herself back to the hotel and runs a hot bath to numb the stinging tears, to sink into something that can contain her. He is performing tasks as she turns to goo.

After what feels like years and minutes he arrives at her side. Kneeling on the cold tiled floor, he grasps her wet shoulders with his cold hands. She holds his head in her balmy palms. He wilts into her wet arms and sobs. Together they meet a resolution to their torment, an acknowledged knowing to their illuminated dread.

When the bath water is no longer hot the couple makes their way to the four poster bed to cocoon under flannel blankets and cotton sheets. She holds him, he holds her and there is still a void. She can’t get warm. He can’t sit still. Their grief is a brown paper package waiting to be opened with one pulled string...

She has to believe that Beau had a path, had a plan. That he outsmarted the cameras. That he grew wings to climb rocks too large for his senior status. That he deliberately picked a place they had never been to. That he waited for them to leave to carry out his plan. That he traveled with a mighty will to fulfill his plan. That he wanted to get lost.

She knows that he will forever be found in all the hearts who knew him.

Rest In Peace, Beau. You are so loved.