Under that felt, wrapped in a bandana, was a folded sheet of paper and a little cheap phone, and I reached for my own phone to call the police, because the paper was a note, and the note was a cry for help.
She had written it fast, the letters shaky. It said that if anyone ever found this, her name was such and such, and that she was trying to get away from a man who hurt her, and that she had hidden a second phone here, one he did not know about, in case the day came she could not get to it. It said if she did not come back, something had gone wrong, and to please, please tell the police.
Six months that note and that phone had sat under the felt of a guitar case behind my counter, while I wondered now and then whatever happened to the scared girl who pawned it. She had not been embarrassed, that day. She had been terrified, watching my window the whole time, and she had used the one safe minute she had, alone in a pawnshop, to hide a lifeline where the man watching her could never find it.
I did not waste another second. I called the police, and I told them everything, the note, the phone, the day she came in, the way she watched that window, and I put it all in their hands.
They took it seriously, thank God. They had her name. They had a starting place. And I will not lay out everything that happened next, because it is hers and not mine to tell on the internet. But I can tell you the ending, because the ending is why I am writing this at all.
They found her. She was alive. She had gotten away from that man, months back, on her own, scraped and frightened but out, and she had been too deep in just surviving to ever come back for a guitar. When the police reached her and told her a pawnbroker had found her note and called them, she cried, they said, for a long time. Not out of fear. Out of the plain shock of learning that a stranger had found the message she left in a bottle and actually made the call.
She came into my shop a few weeks ago. Steadier now. Safe. She thanked me in a way that near broke me, and then I did the only thing that felt right. I gave her back the guitar. Would not take a dime for it. It had never really been mine. It was just holding her lifeline for her until she was strong enough to come back for it.
Thirty years across that counter, I have learned to read the difference between a person who is embarrassed and a person who is afraid. If someone ever comes to you like that girl came to me, watching the window, needing to let go of something like it hurts, pay attention. She may be leaving you a message. And if you ever find one, for the love of God, make the call.