Seasons' End

by North, Will

  “Tyler was the only one who knew everything, who knew all the betrayals.”

  “Help me out here.”

  “Okay, think about it. Old Adam learned Pacific Pioneer was finished, but no one else knew, except Tyler. Rob knew Tyler would not be made partner in his own family’s firm, but no one else did, even Old Adam, until Rob told Tyler that night on the beach. And though Pete may have suspected an affair, only Peggy—and later Rob—knew Tyler’d assaulted his wife.”

  “Okay, I get that. I can see those as reasons for killing himself, maybe; he’s ruined. But why try to kill Pete?”

  Colin was smiling.

  “What?” his companion demanded, punching him playfully on the shoulder.

  “Do you remember what you said last Monday morning, when I told you I’d found her in the middle of the Highway?”

  “I must have had too much wine tonight; I don’t.”

  “You said she’d gone there because she knew I would find her on my bike run.”

  “Oh, yeah; right.”

  “But you were wrong She didn’t think that, Tyler did. She didn’t put herself there, he did.”

  “Huh?”

  “Tyler laid her there in the road, before dawn, knowing I’d be along before the ferry traffic started.”

  “You mean he wasn’t trying to kill her?”

  “I don’t know, Pats. Honestly. Given his mental state, he could have been. All he knew was that he was finished, and, in a sense, I think he didn’t want Pete to ever know how finished he—and they—were. The weight of everything he was hiding, everything he’d packed into little boxes and kept separate and locked away in his head, finally broke him. I keep thinking of a wave cresting on the beach, but it’s a tsunami and everything will be engulfed.

  “Maybe some part of him wanted Pete to die before she could discover all the ways he’d failed her, okay? But I’m thinking that that part of him didn’t win. So he hedged his bets. He left her precisely where he guessed I would be the first to find her. I think he was trying to save her from himself. If she was hit, it would look like suicide. But if she wasn’t, he knew she’d be found and looked after.”

  “Jesus.”

  They sat quietly for a few moments, watching the expanse of water below fade from blue to silver.

  “What about Young Adam?”

  “Do you know what? I think that may be the happiest outcome.”

  “I’m listening…”

  “That kid’s resilient. But the good news is that, for the time being, Justine’s going to take him under her wing, while Pete recovers. I think the two of them will thrive. They’re two of a kind.”

  “Two.”

  “Yeah. I know. That boy, that bright young thing: he haunted them all, but maybe Tyler, I think, far more. Much as he may have struggled to keep Two’s death in a separate box, he knew it was his carelessness that killed the boy, the golden haired son so like himself and in whom Tyler saw his second chance at life.”

  “And Pete?”

  Colin shrugged. “Old Adam says she’s been so busy sorting out the financial mess Tyler’s left her in that she hasn’t even had time to deal with his suicide. It’s horrible for her, though…has to be.”

  Patsy looked out at the water far below. “I need to ask you something, Colin.”

  “No, you don’t. I know it’s about me and Pete, and the answer is no. I’m not running off to rescue her. I’ve spent so much of my life in a box of my own construction, in a fantasy—about her, about loving her, about those families and their life. So stupid; such a waste...”

  “I’m not sure it’s ever a waste to love someone, even from a distance,” she said.

  “But I feel…”

  “What, Colin?”

  He was about to continue, when it dawned on him she was talking about herself, about her own lost years.

  “I feel like such a fool.”

  “That would make two of us, sweetie.”

  Patsy lifted the nearly empty bottle of wine.

  “Remember that bottle of Dom Perignon we shared at the end of our first year?”

  “Yes. I made a fool of myself then, too.”

  “No you didn’t, darling man; I did.”

  The statement hung in the air, shimmering. Colin turned to her.

  “May I share something with you?” he said.

  Patsy nodded.

  “I think you are the loveliest, smartest, most grounded and wonderful woman on this entire island.”

  “Big deal; it’s a small island.”

  He held up his hand to silence her.

  “You know what else I think? I think I’m the dumbest man on this island: a swirling pit of dimness. Not to mention blindness…”

  “I’m liking this part,” Patsy said, grinning. “Do go on.”

  Colin paused, then took a breath.

  “Yes, exactly; ‘go on.’ I’d like to go on with you, Pats. On and on, forever and a day. If you’ll have me. Though why you would is a mystery.”

  “To you, doc; only to you.”

  Patsy reached her hand across the table and placed it atop his. She patted it gently, as one might the hand of an errant child.

  “You’re right about one thing, you know,” she said, turning to him and smiling.

  “Only one?”

  “One.”

  “And that would be…?”

  “You are, without a doubt, the dumbest man on this island.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  “And also the best.”

  “It’s a small island.”

  She gave his hand a slap, and they rose and went indoors. The air was cooling quickly; the marine layer was creeping in from the sea.

  a reader’s guide

  On the surface, Seasons’ End is about what happens during one weekend at the end of the summer on an island in Washington’s Puget Sound. But look at the book’s title: why do you suppose the apostrophe follows the “s” in the first word?

  Colin Ryan, the island’s veterinarian, appears initially to be the principal male character. But his role in the book is actually quite different. Who is he to us? What purpose does he serve?

  Will North often creates characters he calls “truth-tellers.” They are typically secondary characters who are able to see more clearly and say more honestly what is happening to the principal characters. Who are the truth-tellers in Seasons’ End? What is it about them that makes them free to see and tell the “truth?”

  Tyler Strong is a central figure in Seasons’ End. And yet he is not a sympathetic character at all. How does his own history shape him and the story? Does that history make him any more sympathetic?

  Martha “Pete” Petersen is a bright and lovely woman. Why has she stayed with Tyler? What does their marriage represent for her? How does she change in the end?

  Toward the book’s conclusion, it is as if Tyler is living in two realities at once. Is there evidence of this characteristic early on?

  Tyler is a serial adulterer. Peggy is only the latest. What drives him? What void is he trying to fill?

  A terrible accident kills Tyler and Pete’s elder son, “Two.” How does that affect the parents? How does it affect their other two children? Does it have anything to do with Tyler’s descent into madness?

  For much of his adult life, Colin has seen Pete as his soul mate, the woman he loves, albeit privately, and thinks he understands deeply. In the end, he discovers he’s known almost nothing about her or her life. How does that discovery change him?

  Will North calls Seasons’ End a “dark romance.” As the losses and betrayals mount, does romance survive? Where?

  acknowledgments

  I HAVE THE GREAT GOOD FORTUNE to live on a beautiful island in Washington’s Puget Sound populated by talented, warm, and good-natured neighbors and friends. It is the kind of place where I consider it a bad day unless at least four people driving the other way wave to me on my way to buy groceries. My fellow islanders are a big part of what makes t
his such a magical place to live and work, but a special bowing and scraping is due the regulars at the Burton Coffee Stand with whom I spend a raucous hour every morning: laughter is a great way to start the day and the hilarity there is as rich and vivifying as the coffee.

  Let me hasten to add, however, that all of the characters in this story are fictitious or—in one or two potentially recognizable cases—are used fictitiously.

  There are writers’ resources aplenty here and I owe special thanks to the staff of the Vashon Public Library, the Vashon Bookshop, and the Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Museum. On matters of police procedure, I had the help of several officers in the Vashon Substation of the King County Sherriff’s Office. For background on the shipping industry in Alaska, I thank James Soriano, and for commercial law, Gayle Bush at Bush, Strout & Kornfeld, Seattle.

  I am grateful, too, for a team of early readers I can trust to give unvarnished comments on early drafts. For this latest book, they include: Francine Tanguay, Kate Pflaumer, Martin Mann, and Clare Stebbing.

  And I’m especially delighted to thank the principals at my new publishing house, Booktrope: founders Ken Shears and Katherine Sears; project manager, Beth Bacon; designers Annie Brule and Phil Bevis; proofreader Hunter Richards, and all the other members of my creative team. An author could not ask for more responsive and enthusiastic partners.

  Finally, my deepest appreciation to my extended family: Susan, Eric, Baker, Nancy, and Tom. They understand that when they talk with me, some part of me will always be AWOL—working on the latest book. Thank you for your patience and love. And to Marion Robbins and her late husband, Ron, both as dear to me as surrogate parents, I extend my enduring affection.

  —Will North

  November, 2013

  about the author

  WILL NORTH IS THE PEN NAME of an international award-winning author and ghostwriter of more than a dozen nonfiction books. He was an honors graduate in English literature at the State University of New York at Albany, received a full scholarship in journalism from the Pennsylvania State University, and rose to an appointed position in the Administration of President Jimmy Carter before turning to writing books full-time. As a ghostwriter, he has written books with and for Bill Clinton, Al Gore, several famous Everest mountaineers, a team of dinosaur-hunters, a renowned physician, and others.

  North came to fiction late and almost by accident, when an event in his own life led to a debut novel, The Long Walk Home, which received enthusiastic national reviews. Another novel, Water, Stone, Heart, followed the next year. Both are set in the British countryside. His latest novel, Seasons’ End, is set on an island in Washington’s Puget Sound near Seattle where he lives with his wife and their Shepherd/Lab rescue dog, Baxter.

  Forthcoming from Will North and Booktrope, a gripping new mystery series set in the rugged countryside of Cornwall, England. In the first book in the series, North captures the landscape, people, and regional dialects with uncanny precision, and his team of investigators and forensic specialists must grapple not just with murder but also with the paranormal, prostitution, drug smuggling…and an almost perfect puzzle: Some There Are Who Know—a Davies/West Mystery, available Winter 2014.

  ALSO BY WILL NORTH

  The Long Walk Home – Alec has carried the ashes of his late ex-wife, Gwynne, all the way from his arrival at London’s Heathrow Airport to Cadair Idris, a towering mountain they had climbed years before, the mountain behind Fiona’s farm. But the weather is vicious and, as he waits for it to moderate, Alec and Fiona realize they are drawn together by mutual loss and longing.

  Water, Stone, Heart – From the moment they meet, Nicola and Andrew are drawn to each other but also are at daggers drawn. It takes a nine year-old sprite who calls herself “Lee” to make them see the truths about themselves. And it takes a cataclysmic flash flood for Nicola and Andrew to risk a second chance at love.