The Edge of the Shadows

by Elizabeth George

  “Derric,” he said. “I remember you too.”

  She laughed joyously. “Oh my God, this is so cool!” And then she took note of Becca, saying, “You were here with that dog. And the guy with the ear gauges.”

  “Becca King,” Becca said. “When I saw you, I could tell you were from Africa and I thought Derric’d like to meet you.”

  “The coolest ever,” Rejoice exclaimed. “Mom, did you know . . . ?”

  Darla Vickland shook her head. “These two just showed up.”

  Her husband said, “This calls for pie, I think.”

  One of the other kids said, “Dad says everything calls for pie.”

  They all laughed. Darla invited Derric and Becca into the house, and Rejoice locked arms with the boy she didn’t know was her brother. She said, “Wow. I hope Kianga shows up someday too.”

  Now, on the end of the pier in Coupeville, Derric and Becca entered the café. They hadn’t talked much on the drive. There was a lot to say, but Becca knew it could wait. They ordered burgers, sweet potato fries, and Cokes when the waitress came. When she went to get their drinks, Derric looked long at Becca.

  He said to her, “You feel closer to me than I ever expected anyone to be.”

  “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “It’s good. And I want this—what we have—never to end. Problem is that I screw up a lot.”

  “We’ll both screw up now and then, don’t you think?”

  “I want there to be no secrets between us, Becca. Not after today. If it hadn’t been for you and everything you’ve tried to do and tried to make me do, I’d never have found her. But I did, only because of you.”

  He looked so earnest. He was so loving. Becca thought how good it would be for him to know everything about her from A to Z. Only, how could she tell him the A to Z when it began with whispers, when it coursed through the major screwup of her life, and when she had no idea where her story was likely to end? What else would she discover about herself? The whispers had been in place for years. The memory pictures were something new. And then there was the quickening. How could she explain that?

  So she said, “Stuff just unfolds, don’t you think? And we need to be there—like, to be present—for the unfolding.”

  Derric nodded. Still, he gazed at her. She had the feeling he was looking into her soul, and she wished like anything she wasn’t using the AUD box. But a promise to herself was a promise to herself, and she’d promised herself that Derric would have the privacy he needed to sort through his thoughts.

  He said, “I got to tell you something. It’s about Courtney Baker. You know. When we were together last year? When you and I were broken up?”

  Becca said, “You don’t need to tell me. And anyway, I think I already know.”

  He was silent. He looked beyond her, to the windows through which the town lights made a string like a necklace along the main street at the land end of the pier. He seemed to be getting his courage up about something and Becca wanted to tell him that enough had been said. But then he went on with, “I just wish it’d been you. It was s’posed to be you but I was too dumb to know it at the time.”

  “It’ll be me eventually.”

  He turned back to her. “When?”

  “I guess when I’m not so scared that it’ll change things between us.” She thought of her mom, of her many stepfathers, of what Laurel’s passion for men and her need to be taken care of by a man had done to their lives. “’Cause that’s what sex does,” she continued. “It changes things, Derric.”

  “It doesn’t have to.”

  “How can it not? Nothing stays the same, and this . . . you and me and sex . . . It’s something important. At least, that’s how I want it to be. Not like you and me in the backseat of the Forester or whatever. And not like you and me unprepared for the consequences. But you and me making a decision. We decide. I get on the pill. We act like rational human beings who want to take the next step.”

  He thought about this. For a moment Becca thought he was going to say that he couldn’t wait, that for God’s sake he was seventeen and did she have any idea what it meant to be seventeen and male? But he surprised her. He said, “It was only one time with Courtney. After we did it, I felt . . . It was like being empty. Nothing was planned. We’d gone to this Bible group and I figured we were going to talk about not doing it. Only, I wanted to do it anyway and I guess she did too. But after . . . We broke up a couple of days later. She thought it was because I’d gotten what I wanted, but that wasn’t it at all.”

  Becca found that his words didn’t hurt as much as she’d expected them to. She nodded and was only thankful that he didn’t feel it was necessary for her to talk at that point.

  Then he said, “I guess you’re right. It does change things.” Then he smiled that Derric smile of his, the same one his sister, Rejoice, had smiled when she’d first seen the saxophone boy standing in her family’s farm yard. “You know, you’re pretty smart for a girl,” he said. “I’d like to hang with you for a while if that’s okay.”

  It definitely was.

  • • •

  THE PROPERTY LIGHTS were on when Derric and Becca drove up the incline of Ralph Darrow’s driveway. The trail lights were also on as they wended their way around the hillock. But the house below the hillock was dark, and Becca would have thought that Ralph was not at home except his truck was in its regular place and the hour suggested he had probably already gone to bed. On the porch, she kissed Derric fondly and went inside the house with a wave goodbye.

  If Ralph was asleep, she didn’t want to take the chance of waking him up, so Becca didn’t turn on any lights. She knew the place well enough to find her way to her room and besides, there was still a glow in the fireplace where embers told her that Ralph was probably at home. She began to cross the room toward the hall that would take her to the back of the house. But she stumbled against Ralph’s armchair.

  He was sitting in it in absolute silence. She gave a cry of surprise, but then she saw that he was asleep. It was a deep sleep if she hadn’t awakened him, but she didn’t want to leave him there till morning because she knew what a grump he’d be if he woke up all stiff. So she reached for the light next to his chair to rouse him. She put her hand on his shoulder and said his name and when the light fell on his face, she saw that something was very wrong.

  His eyes were open halfway. His face was gray. One side of it pulled down in what looked like a sneer.

  She said, “Mr. Darrow? Grand?” He did not respond.

  She saw then that he had the receiver of the cordless phone in his hand. He’d had his dinner by the fire because his empty plate was by his chair on the floor, but there was nothing else. No book, no game of chess set up, no magazine, nothing. Just the phone in his hand and she grabbed it from him.

  She saw from the screen that he’d dialed nine and one and that’s all. And she understood he’d been trying to call for help.

  She cried out once, but then she made the emergency call. When that was done, she immediately called Seth.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Seth came out of the hospital and looked around. He saw Prynne sitting on a bench beneath a sugar maple on one side of the parking lot, and he walked over to her. She stood when he reached her.

  His throat hurt, so tight it was with everything he’d been holding in. The last thing he wanted to do was to cry, so he concentrated on Prynne. “Aren’t you cold? Why’d you come outside?”

  “Better energy out here,” she said to him. “I wanted to send him whatever I could. What’s happening?”

  “Dad’s calling everyone. My sister, my aunt, all my great-uncles. Nieces, nephews, you name ’em. They’re coming.”

  Prynne gazed up at his face. “But he was breathing, right? Becca said he was breathing. She said his eyes were open. She said . . . Oh Seth, I’m sorry. It’s a s
troke, right?”

  Seth nodded. He went to sit on the bench and he stared at the ground. “I don’t want him to die,” he said.

  Prynne dropped beside him. She put her arm around him and roughly kissed the side of his head. “He won’t. What happens next?”

  “They said the next twenty-four hours will tell them a lot. If he makes it, he’ll . . . God, it’ll kill him to go into rehab. Or . . . What if he can’t live at home anymore? Prynne, he’s lived there for more’n forty years. If they make him leave, it’ll kill his spirit. It’ll—”

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Prynne said. “Maybe this whole situation is something you guys need to take one hour at a time. D’you think?”

  He met her earnest gaze. “Yeah. I think.”

  • • •

  SETH PICKED UP his sister at the Whidbey-SeaTac Shuttle late the next morning. She’d managed to get the first flight out of San Jose. Prynne was with him still, and he introduced them but Sarah hardly noticed that Prynne was a female and probably Seth’s girlfriend because her mind was completely on their grandfather. He was holding on, Seth told her.

  “Everyone’s at the house,” he said.

  He meant his parents’ place. It was larger than Ralph’s and large was needed because Seth and Sarah’s aunt Brenda had arrived on the scene, and Aunt Brenda required space to spread out the fullness of her response to her father’s condition. This response so far involved a lot of shouting and insisting that “plans” had to be made at once. The great uncles were all there, Ralph’s four brothers along with their wives. Along with Seth’s mom and dad, the house was teeming with people.

  All of them had opinions about what should happen next, but Brenda was insisting that “as the oldest child of the patient in question,” her opinion on the matter held sway. She’d been arguing vociferously for permanent assisted living. They needed to sell Ralph Darrow’s property in order to maintain his life in a way that was comfortable, she said.

  “You’re out of your mind,” was how Seth’s dad greeted this. Ralph Darrow’s brothers joined him in this opinion. “It’s too soon to be making decisions like that.”

  That point didn’t deter Brenda, who spoke of gaining conservatorship over her father. Nor did Brenda deter Seth’s dad, who suggested that they have a look inside Ralph’s safe deposit box at the bank in Freeland, to which he—and not Brenda—was a signatory. That enflamed Brenda, so she began to talk of attorneys. Seth’s father said no one had ever been able to talk to his sister, and he’d stormed outside.

  Seth and Prynne had left at that juncture to pick up Sarah. He didn’t particularly want to go back.

  Sarah said, “Take me to Grand’s.”

  This was fine by Seth. He wanted to see how Becca was doing. She’d wanted to go to the hospital with the family on the previous night, but Seth had told her to stay at Ralph’s and to watch Gus, if she would. He didn’t know how long he’d be at the hospital, so he couldn’t take the dog.

  When they got to Ralph Darrow’s place, Gus came charging up from the garden. Becca had been keeping an eye on him from the porch along with Derric Mathieson. They rose from two of the chairs and came to the front steps.

  Poor Becca looked like someone who hadn’t slept in days. She was still wearing what she’d had on the previous night, and her hair was uncombed and standing up at weird angles. She said, “How is he? What’s . . . ?” but didn’t seem to want to go on. She was wearing her hearing device and she pulled it from her ear in what looked like a gesture of frustration but then she shuddered for some reason and put it back in.

  Seth introduced her and Derric to his sister. Then he said, “He’s the same. I guess it’s okay because he didn’t . . . you know.”

  Becca said, “I should’ve been here. I was supposed to be here. I mean, he knew we were going to La Conner and I’d left him dinner and he’d heated it like I told him to and he’d eaten it because I saw the dish on the floor next to his chair. But if I’d been home—”

  “You could’ve been in your room studying,” Seth said. “You could’ve gone to bed. You could’ve been sitting on the front porch with Derric. Sure, if you’d been in the living room with him you could’ve grabbed the phone and made the call but what were the chances of that, Beck? Don’t blame yourself.”

  “What’s going to happen?” Becca directed the question to all of them in general, but Seth was the one to answer.

  “Right now they’re all fighting. My dad, my aunt, Grand’s brothers. What to do next and everyone wants something different.”

  “So what’s gonna happen?”

  “Nothing for now. No way’s my dad letting Aunt Brenda sell this place and—”

  “Sell it?”

  “That’s what she wants to do.”

  “But no one even knows what’s going to happen to him right now,” Derric pointed out.

  “Which is why,” Sarah said presciently, “there’s going to be one hell of a fight in the Darrow clan.”

  • • •

  SETH RAN INTO Hayley that afternoon. He and Prynne were just coming out of the hospital, having left Sarah at Ralph Darrow’s bedside. Like Seth’s, Sarah’s position was simple. No one was sending Ralph Darrow anywhere.

  At first, Seth thought Hayley was also there because of his grandfather. But it turned out she was there because of Brooke, who was inside and being taken care of. Hayley explained what was going on. Then, with a glance at Prynne, who was listening sympathetically, she said, “Thanks, Seth. For taking her to the clinic.”

  He said, “It’s cool. She just didn’t want anyone to know she was feeling rotten. And you guys have so much going on. How were you s’posed to figure the whole thing out?”

  Hayley didn’t look unburdened. She said, “I guess,” in a quiet voice that made Prynne say gently, “But what else, Hayley?”

  Hayley gave a shaky smile. She brought her fingers to her lips, and behind them she said, “Brooke knew there’s no medical insurance. Derric’s mom says there’s a group on the island to help people with medical bills, but that’s a drop in the bucket at this point unless we do something like . . . Medicaid . . . Welfare. Dad should be on disability, but he’s been so stubborn. Like getting on disability will be admitting . . . You know.”

  Seth wanted to say that he could help her, but he knew he couldn’t, for the problem was vaster than Brooke’s bleeding ulcer and Hayley’s dad’s condition. There was also the farm.

  Hayley said, as if reading this on his face, “We’re going to have to sell. It’ll kill my dad. The farm was his great-grandparents’ place. But there’s no choice. There’s just not enough money. I thought if I didn’t go to college—”

  “You can’t do that, Hayley.”

  “—it might make a difference, but it really won’t. Nothing will.”

  Prynne put her hand on Hayley’s arm. She said, “I was talking to Seth about getting through one hour at a time for now. Maybe that’s what you guys need to do.”

  “There aren’t enough hours,” Hayley replied.

  • • •

  ON THEIR WAY back from the hospital, it had been the plan to take Prynne to the ferry so that she could go home to Port Gamble. But instead she asked if Seth would mind taking her to Smugglers Cove Farm and Flowers instead. She said, “I’ve been tossing an idea around about that place, Seth. I think there’s a simple solution. Not an easy one, but a simple one.”

  So he took her there. But she didn’t have him drive her all the way up to the house. Instead she asked him to stop by the chicken barn. At first he thought she was going to make a suggestion about the chickens or perhaps the barn. But instead, when Prynne got out of the car, she walked to the east of the barn. There she looked out into the fields. They were, as they had been for the last twenty-four months or so, lying fallow. They were useless at the moment, good for nothing but weeds.


  That, it turned out, was Prynne’s point exactly. “Nothing grows better than weeds,” she said.

  At first Seth thought she was totally nuts. They were supposed to support themselves growing weeds?

  Prynne smiled as if she read his expression. “It’s legal now. And there’s a huge need for THC. Every day they discover another use for it, Seth. It won’t be easy because unless the law changes, it’s going to take greenhouses and they’ll have to get the state government involved to make sure everything’s on the up and up. But the exposure here? They must get at least twelve hours of sun six or eight months of the year. So how tough do you think it’s going to be, finding people who’re gonna be willing to invest in the biggest cash crop this state is poised to produce?”

  “Not weeds,” Seth said. “You’re talking about weed.”

  “Now that it’s completely legal in the state, someone’s going to grow it. Why shouldn’t it be the Cartwrights?”

  He looked out at the fields. He could picture them with their future greenhouses, greenhouses that he would help build. With the state’s approval and marijuana now legal and medical marijuana in high demand . . . Prynne was right. Someone was going to grow it. Why shouldn’t it be the Cartwright family?

  He turned and grabbed her by her shoulders. He kissed her soundly. “I think I got luckier than I’ve ever been in my entire life when I went to Port Townsend to hear you play the fiddle,” he said.

  “I don’t exactly disagree,” she told him. She stepped into his arms and kissed him back.

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