The Edge of the Light

by Elizabeth George

  At the library in Langley, the fog was so thick that Camano Island—just two miles across Saratoga Passage—was completely invisible, but you could make out the curve of First Street as well as the street that descended to a small marina at the bottom of the bluff upon which Langley sat. Derric pulled Becca’s bike from the back of the car and set it on the pavement. He looked around, saying, “Maybe you should come with me. I don’t like that you have to ride around in the fog.”

  “It’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Anyway, I wasn’t invited.”

  “What’re they going to do if I show up with you and say ‘Oh hey, wasn’t Becca invited, too?’”

  “No worries, Der. If it gets worse, I can go over to the motel and wait it out. I’ll play pirates with Josh and Barbies with Chloe.”

  “Doesn’t that sound great?” he teased. He kissed her good-bye and Becca watched him drive off before she rolled her bike to a spot near the little city hall where she could safely lock it.

  What she’d said to Derric about her need for the library’s Internet had been completely true. But the reason for her need of the Internet? From start to finish, once again she had lied to him.

  • • •

  BECCA KNEW SHE ought to feel guilty about her lies, since she kept preaching to Derric about lying to his parents. But she couldn’t take the chance of telling him the truth. So for the past sixteen months she’d lived in a no man’s land between the two poles of truth and falsehood, and she’d constantly reassured herself that revealing nothing to Derric about her life as Hannah Armstrong in San Diego protected him at the same time as it protected her.

  There was no graphic design project. What there was, instead, was Becca’s need to use one of the library’s computers in order to log on to the Internet for a private reason.

  Sunday morning was the perfect time, because Whidbey Island was thick with churches, and much of the population on the south end of the island attended them. There were three churches in the village alone, and within five miles of Langley, there had to be at least four more. Because of this, Sunday mornings rendered the village a ghost town. Only the village coffee roaster was open, along with the sole café that offered breakfast. Sidewalks were empty, and there was no one in the library except a middle-aged female librarian with pink-tipped pigtails working behind the desk.

  Once seated at the computer farthest from this woman, Becca logged on to Google. She typed into this search engine the name of the person most responsible for her flight from San Diego: Jeff Corrie. He was her mom’s fifth husband, the man to whom Laurel Armstrong had so dumbly revealed her daughter Hannah’s ability to hear the broken-up thoughts of others. Why Laurel had done this when she’d never told any of her other four husbands was a question she had never answered. But her weakness throughout life had always been men—what else could five stepfathers possibly indicate?—and somehow her greatest weakness had been the last one she’d married, Jeff Corrie.

  Hearing the thoughts of others equated reading minds. That was how Jeff Corrie had seen it, and this dubious skill of Hannah Armstrong’s had been too much for him to resist. He had an investment firm that specialized in financial opportunities for senior citizens, and once he learned what his stepdaughter could do, he figured there was no better method to get those senior citizens to hand over their pensions than to know from the first what was on their minds. In this way, he could reassure them with facts, figures, and opportunities that looked to be surefire winners.

  That was where his stepdaughter Hannah Armstrong had come in. Coffee maker, tea maker, mineral water provider, cookie deliverer, sandwich girl . . . She came in and out of the conference room where either Jeff or his partner, Connor, or both of them had met with their potential clients, and afterward she faithfully reported on what she’d heard in those clients’ broken-up thoughts. She did this for three years as Jeff Corrie and his partner moved money here, there, and everywhere and made it next to impossible for the elderly to understand what was actually happening to their funds. Hannah Armstrong had not known about this part of the enterprise. She only knew she was helping old people to be less anxious about investing.

  Then things fell apart one afternoon when Hannah heard among Jeff Corrie’s whispers what she believed was his responsibility for the death of his partner. At that point, she’d told her mother the truth. At that point, she and Laurel had fled with a plan to drop Hannah off with a new identity on Whidbey Island where she would be in the care of Laurel’s old friend Carol Quinn. With Hannah—now Becca King—safely tucked away, Laurel would lay a false trail to Nelson, BC, until it was safe and Jeff Corrie was himself also tucked away: in prison where he belonged.

  It had all sounded so good, so easy, and so absolutely perfect. Indeed, the trip from San Diego to Washington State had all gone like a dream. But once on Whidbey Island, the newly born Becca King discovered that her mom’s friend Carol had dropped dead of a heart attack minutes before she was supposed to leave her house to meet the ferry on which Becca was sailing. Laurel herself was, at that point, out of range of the throwaway cell phone she’d purchased for Becca, and she had remained out of range to this day. Thus Becca had been imprisoned on Whidbey Island for sixteen months, which included the day that she had discovered to her horror she’d misunderstood Jeff Corrie’s whispers, for his partner Connor West was not dead at all.

  A long list of newspaper articles posted to the Internet existed on the topic of Jeff Corrie and Connor West. These articles began with the disappearance of Connor West, gone without a trace in a situation that was highly suspicious: with a BLT half made on the countertop in his condo’s kitchen, with the water running in the sink and a coffee carafe broken upon the floor. That had been the start of Jeff Corrie’s troubles, which had only increased when a neighbor of his mentioned to the San Diego police that she hadn’t seen Corrie’s stepdaughter or his wife in a number of weeks.

  Once Connor West had been found very much alive on a boat in Mexico, the focus of the stories altered. First they’d concentrated on the finger pointing that Jeff and Connor were doing at each other about their embezzling, which was fine with Becca, since it kept the papers’ interest off her and her mom. But now as she scrolled through the stories she’d already read to collect new information on where matters stood, she saw that things had undergone a significant change in San Diego. Connor West had given an interview to a reporter, and what he’d said was paraphrased in the midst of the newspaper article:

  According to Mr. West, the stepdaughter of his partner Jeff Corrie was also involved in what went on at Corrie-West investments. His claim is that without the girl’s participation, nothing would have come of Corrie’s scheme to embezzle money that was placed into their hands. West also suggests that the girl’s mother, Laurel Armstrong, had from the first known what was going on and it is this that prompted her to flee with her then fourteen-year-old daughter when the scheme began to fall apart.

  The reporter had then, it seemed, spoken to Jeff Corrie about the assertions his former partner had made, for Jeff was quoted as saying, “That’s so ridiculous a claim that I’m not even going to comment.” But then he’d gone on anyway, and what he’d told the reporter was paraphrased in the same manner as Connor West’s words had been:

  When it was pointed out to Corrie that his wife and stepdaughter’s disappearance suggests they were indeed involved, Corrie’s claim was that he’d come home one day from work and they were gone. He revealed that the only clue he’d ever had as to their whereabouts was a single telephone call from the sheriff’s department on Whidbey Island in Washington State.

  Becca’s blood went to ice when she saw this last part. The only thing she could think of doing was to look into the identity of the reporter who’d uncovered this information.

  There was, luckily, a byline with the story. It had been written by one Olivia Bolding. Becca searched her out as she’d searched out the stories o
n Jeff Corrie. What came up was a slew of articles written by her along with links to her blog, to her website, to her Facebook page, and to Wikipedia.

  Becca chose the last option. In short order she learned that Olivia Bolding was twenty-nine years old and that she had already been nominated twice for a Pulitzer Prize in journalism. These nominations had been, Becca read, for a story about a twelve-year-old Detroit boy’s descent into heroin addiction and for another story about Mexican girls being smuggled into the United States and sold into sex slavery. Becca wanted desperately to believe that, compared to these stories, she was far beneath the notice of a reporter. But she had a feeling that if Olivia Bolding became intrigued by something, she didn’t let go of it.

  It seemed to Becca once again that her only hope was going to come from finding her mom. So she logged on to an e-mail account that only a single individual on the planet even knew existed.

  9

  There were families out and about when Becca left the library. People were beginning to crowd Cascade Street, not only the main route into the village but also usually the best place from which one could observe the Cascade Mountains—topped with snow—in the far distance. Today, though, beyond the gray veil of fog, there was little visible in the waters of Possession Sound. This fog would make biking to her next destination risky. But she felt she had little choice in the matter. She needed to recapture some kind of tranquility, and there seemed to be only one way to do this.

  She headed out of Langley on her bike. Although she passed churchgoers, she could hear nothing of their whispers. This was just as well. The freedom inside her head allowed her to consider what she’d learned from her e-mail.

  Her correspondent was Parker Natalia, a talented fiddle player whom she’d come to know the previous autumn. A native of British Columbia, he’d been in town for Langley’s yearly gypsy jazz festival, and for a time he’d played with Seth and his group. She’d learned first that Parker was Canadian. In short order, she’d also learned that he’d come to Langley from the very same town that Laurel had fled to: Nelson. When he’d made his return to British Columbia, then, Becca had maintained a secret contact with him. He’d been doing his best to locate for her a woman she’d explained was her cousin. Laurel Armstrong had immigrated to Nelson a few years ago, had been Becca’s claim, and the family had lost contact with her. A town of ten thousand people, Nelson wasn’t a huge haystack from which a single needle had to be drawn. But so far nothing Parker had done was sufficient to unearth Becca’s “cousin.”

  He’d accepted Becca’s claim that the situation was urgent. Thus, he’d put ads in the local paper and had posted have-you-seen-this-woman flyers throughout Nelson’s small downtown and inside a mall that stood a short distance from an arm of Lake Kootenay. He’d also posted flyers out on the docks in the lake on which Nelson sat, where people came and went from their boats, even in winter. He’d crossed over the lake to the other part of town and fixed posters to light poles there. But if Laurel Armstrong was indeed in Nelson, she wasn’t responding to his efforts to find her.

  Parker had pointed out in his last e-mail to Becca that she might want to expand her search to Castlegar and to Trail. And in this most current e-mail that he’d sent to her reply of “Parker, I know she’s in Nelson,” he offered a different possibility. Maybe, he wrote, her “cousin” Laurel had never actually immigrated to Canada. He pointed out that the nearest border crossing to Nelson was north of Spokane. Becca’s “cousin” could have decided that Spokane was a better situation for her, Parker wrote. “It’s a bigger city, there’s more action, and she wouldn’t have had to go through the hassle of trying to get Canadian residency.”

  On the other hand, he went on to tell her, one of the regular customers at his family’s restaurant in Nelson was a cop. He’d see if that cop would contact Canadian immigration because, if Laurel had actually entered Canada at any one of the border crossings in the state of Washington, there was going to be a record of that.

  Throughout all of this, Parker Natalia hadn’t questioned why Becca was so determined to find an individual whom, she claimed, she hadn’t seen in years. From a large and closely knit Italian family, when it came to wanting to contact your relatives, Parker understood.

  Now more than ever, Becca needed to find her mom. With the reporter Olivia Bolding on the case, Becca ran the risk of being tracked down. She might need to leave Whidbey in a rush, and she didn’t want to do that, because Laurel would have no way of knowing where she’d gone.

  Becca headed out of town. The fog made her cautious. It increased the time it took her to reach the end of Sandy Point Road and its zigzag of streets that took her to Diana’s house. When she finally got there, she was wet from the damp and cold to her bones.

  She rang the bell. A chorus of barking followed. As before, all of Diana’s dogs came storming from the direction of the sunroom save for Oscar. He merely paced, and over the bouncing and bobbing heads of his comrades, he looked gravely at Becca through one of two windows that sided Diana’s front door. Diana herself was nowhere to be seen. Becca frowned when the woman made no appearance as she waited.

  It was odd. Diana wouldn’t go off and leave the dogs inside her house. And she wouldn’t go off and leave Oscar behind. He was her constant companion, and even if Diana had for some reason gone somewhere without him, he and the other dogs would be in the run.

  Becca tried the door and found it locked, also highly unusual for Diana if she was home. She went around to the side of the house to try the door to the mudroom, and she found the same. From there, she hurried to look through the sunroom windows. But nowhere was Diana in evidence.

  Becca felt the first twinge of panic when she saw Diana’s slippers and her robe next to the chaise where she sometimes rested in the sunroom. She had the distinct sensation of something being wrong, and she decided to go to the nearest neighbor. Diana lived alone. Diana could be ill. Diana could even be dead. No one would find her for days, and in that time the dogs would be in the house and they wouldn’t have food and they wouldn’t have water. . . . Becca forced herself to become calmer. She forced herself to walk, not run, back the way she’d come. She was on the driveway about to head to the nearest neighbor when the front door opened and Diana called her name.

  “My goodness,” she said, and in reference to her dogs. “I wondered what got into them. Hello, Becca. I was in the shower. Isn’t it a ghastly day?”

  Until tomorrow . . . time isn’t right . . . came to Becca, rendering her momentarily mute. She felt a chill beyond the chills she was already feeling from the weather. Those few words represented the first time that she had heard Diana Kinsale’s whispers without Diana intending her to hear them. The whispers were choppy, just as Ralph Darrow’s had been in the days before he’d had his stroke.

  She said, “What’s wrong, Mrs. Kinsale?” and she felt the same fear she’d felt when she’d phoned her mother from outside Carol Quinn’s house after learning of that woman’s death.

  At Becca’s question, Diana inhaled so deeply that Becca knew she was attempting to align her thoughts with whatever she said next. This was, “Nothing’s wrong except exhaustion from doing too much work in the garden this morning. I plant and plant every spring, and I forget that a glorious garden in summer means a pile of work to winterize everything once January rolls around. I overdid things. Sometimes I forget I’m seventy-four. Do come in, Becca.”

  Once inside, Becca greeted the milling dogs. They sniffed at her pockets. Diana said, “Do ignore them,” then she paused on her way to the kitchen and said, “On the other hand, would you put them in their run? Not Oscar, though.”

  Becca called the dogs through the kitchen and the mudroom where the doorway marked the closest route to their run. They came, hopeful of treats to follow. As she hadn’t intended to come to Diana’s, she had nothing in her pockets, but she couldn’t bear to disappoint them. She grabbed a package of freeze-dr
ied chicken on her way out.

  They crowded around her: out the door, across the lawn, and over to the dog run. She swung open its gate, and in they went after her, giving her the loopy dog smiles that were characteristic of them when they knew something special was coming. Once they were inside, she rewarded each. But she also recognized that the large run had not been cleaned in ages. The stench was overpowering.

  At this, she felt a resurgence of concern, because Mrs. Kinsale was religious about keeping the dogs’ run shipshape. Becca looked from the run to the house, and this allowed her to see that the lawn, too, was speckled with piles of poop. This told her that Mrs. Kinsale hadn’t been walking the dogs as she usually did, nor had she been throwing the ball for them down on the beach at Sandy Point, nor had she carted them to one of the island’s dog parks.

  Becca hurried back to the house. Mrs. Kinsale was in the kitchen, where the Seattle newspaper was spread on the table within the nook. She was in the process of folding it up, and she turned and offered Becca a smile.

  She said, “Have I forgotten that we’re practicing today?” And when Becca shook her head, “Good. I thought my memory was going along with the rest of me. Would you like some hot chocolate? Doesn’t that sound perfect for a day like this? Hot chocolate with marshmallows on top?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Becca said. “But only if you let me make it.”

  “All right. There’s a container of African chocolate in the pantry. I think you’ll like it.”

  As she set about it, Becca said, “I’ll clean up the dog run for you, Mrs. Kinsale, if you have some mulch delivered. And there’s poop on the lawn, so I’ll get that, too.”