The Edge of the Light

by Elizabeth George

  In Port Townsend, Seth strode down Water Street. Early May had brought a burst of dazzling weather, so the bluebells were beginning to paint the roadsides azure, and the hillside between the lower and upper parts of the old town were ablaze with poppies, the orange of them a pleasing contrast to the wild green grass among which they grew. The spring sun had coaxed hundreds of people into the town. In the late afternoon, they were crowding the sidewalks.

  The fine day lifted Seth’s spirits, but he warned himself not to get cocky about the prospect of seeing Prynne. He had to make her understand how important she was to him. But he also had to realize that there was every chance he wouldn’t be successful.

  Her first gig started at five o’clock. He didn’t want to be there when she arrived. He wanted to walk in while she was already playing because there was less chance that way that she would ask him to leave. Thus, it was five-twenty when he ducked into the coffeehouse. As usual, Prynne’s appearance with her fiddle had brought in a crowd, and she was playing when Seth came through the front door.

  He went to the counter, easing his way through the people. There, he ordered both an Americano and a decaf skinny vanilla latte. He bought an oatmeal raisin cookie to go with it.

  There was no place to sit, but he found a space at a narrow shelf that ran along two of the walls. He stood there and listened, and looked at Prynne. Today she was 100 percent who she’d always been. She was also dressed exactly as she’d been when he’d first seen her: jeans tucked into cowboy boots, a kind of gypsy shirt, a bunch of beaded necklaces, hair wild, eye patch.

  At the end of her piece, the audience hooted, applauded, and stamped their feet. Seth whistled shrilly in approval, which was when Prynne caught sight of him. He waved and tried to look like his normal self. He held up the cookie and the latte. Her lips parted, which he tried to take as a hopeful sign, but she didn’t give any other indication that she was surprised or happy to see him there. She did come over to him at her break time, though.

  Seth hadn’t expected to be so relieved to see her. He’d known he’d missed her, but he hadn’t really understood how much until she was standing in front of him in all her . . . all her Prynne-ness. What he wanted to do then was to grab her, feel her crinkly hair beneath his fingers, and tell her exactly how much they were meant to be together.

  She said, “Hey,” and when he handed her the latte and the cookie, she added, “Thanks. Didn’t expect to see you here. Where’s Gus? In the car?”

  He said, “Becca’s got him over at Grand’s.” And then nothing. Nothing from her, either. He could hardly stand this, so he burst out with, “Didn’t you get my messages? Why didn’t you call me back?”

  She looked away from him. People were jostling as the two baristas called out completed orders. Seth knew this wasn’t the right spot to have the conversation and so apparently did Prynne because she said to him, “Come with me,” and she led him toward the back.

  Outside, they were on the water in the vicinity of the town’s docks, where fishing boats and pleasure craft bobbed. The scents of gasoline, oil, and a barbecue somewhere filled the air. In the middle of Admiralty Inlet, a ferry was making the crossing from Whidbey, accompanied by a flock of gulls. Sunset was still three hours away. Everything was brightly lit.

  Seth said, “I’m sorry, Prynne. Following you like that? It wasn’t the right thing to do. I wanted to know something and I should’ve just asked you.”

  “I guess you had your reasons.”

  “It’s just that when I saw you with that guy and when I heard what he was saying to you—”

  She flashed him a quick look with, “What was he saying? I don’t even remember.”

  “I don’t either.” This wasn’t true. Seth remembered completely: The guy had talked about supplying her with something, not being able to get it, finding it too risky now, and all the rest. But in that moment with Prynne, Seth chose to let it all go. She was still Prynne, and he loved her. He said, “It seemed really important at the time. But alls I know now is that it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except just you and me and being together.”

  She still had her fiddle under her arm, and she placed it gently against the side of the building. She shoved part of her hair behind one ear and with her good eye she seemed to examine him. She said, “You mostly tore a hole in my heart, Seth. I don’t know if it will ever get better.”

  “I want to make it better,” Seth told her passionately. “I know that I can make it better. I was out of line. What I did . . . following you like that . . . sneaking around to check up on you . . . It’s like . . . when you took that Oxy from my mom’s supply, I just lost it.”

  “I said I was sorry about it. I said I only wanted to try it. When I used it once, I didn’t like what it did to me but you didn’t believe that, so what’s different now?”

  “Now I believe you,” Seth told her. “I totally believe you. I want us to be together, and I’m telling you nothing like that’s going to happen again.”

  “Nothing like what? Me stealing your mom’s pills? How’re you going to check on that one?”

  “Not that,” he said. “My following you and not trusting you and checking up on you. That’s what.”

  “How’m I supposed to believe you?” Prynne asked him, and she sounded as despairing as he felt.

  “By trying it with me again. That’s the only way I can prove things. Oh Prynne, please. It’s like you tore a hole in my heart, too. Not with the Oxy, I don’t mean that. But with being gone from me now.”

  “You’ll recover,” she said shortly.

  “I don’t want to recover,” Seth replied. “I want you. Whatever happened to make things bad for us, I swear it won’t happen again. If you’ll only give me a chance.”

  She looked from him to the docked boats. He hoped she looked beyond them to Whidbey Island in the distance. There was, really, nothing more for him to say. He waited in agony.

  Finally, she took pity on him. “Okay. We’ll try it again. I love you, Seth. But you got to trust me.”

  He grabbed her and kissed her. “I do,” he swore.

  • • •

  SHE CAME BACK the next day. He wanted her arrival to be a forever thing. He believed the only way he could manage this was if she took the first step and gave up her escape hatch in Port Townsend: the room she still kept in that house with her fellow musicians. But now was not the time even to hint at her telling her house mates to rent the room out to someone else. He had to ease his way in that direction.

  His parents seemed glad to have Prynne back. His mom’s recovery from the surgery was nearly at an end and—although he hated even to think this—she’d finished up her final Oxy prescription. Seth didn’t like to call those pills a temptation to Prynne, since she’d only taken one to see what it did to her. Still, not having those pills in the house removed a minor worry from him.

  Prynne was perfect around Grand. She helped out where she was needed, she kept an eye on how Jake Burns was handling things, she worked with Grand on language and exercising, she made lunch, did laundry, and even worked in the garden. If there was any problem at all, it was weed. For she’d at last turned twenty-one, and it was legal for her to buy it at either of the two weed shops in the area. She took the opportunity to do this.

  She smoked it some distance from the house, sitting on an old Adirondack chair that she dragged beyond the goat pen to a spot that gave her a pleasant view of Miller Lake across the undulating farmland. At first Seth’s parents didn’t mention the fact that Prynne smoked weed twice daily, both before and after dinner. He appreciated this and figured they might not mention it at all, since Prynne was, face it, not their kid. But finally his mom confronted him about it, on a late afternoon when he arrived home and Prynne was already outside on her chair with a thin cloud of smoke enveloping her.

  His mom was at work in her studio. When Seth rumbled on
to his parents’ property, she came to the door. He got out and watched Gus go running in Prynne’s direction. Before the Lab reached her, Amy called Seth’s name.

  “Got a minute?” she asked him.

  He said sure, but when she shut the studio door behind him, he became uneasy. “Wha’s happening?” he said.

  She was direct. “You know it’s not the marijuana itself. It’s the amount that concerns me.”

  “I know Prynne’s spending a lot of money,” Seth said. “But that’s because she’s buying it legally. Black market stuff would cost her less, but she wants it to be on the up-and-up.”

  Amy waved him off. “This has nothing to do with the cost. We pay her for staying with your grandfather, and if she wants to spend the money on weed, she can. What concerns me, Seth, is the constant smoking and what that’s going to do to her brain.”

  “Geez, Mom, she’s twenty-one. I figure her brain is already set. And she doesn’t have learning disabilities anyway.”

  “What I mean,” his mom went on, as if he hadn’t spoken, “is that I’m concerned about what this constant smoking is going to do over time. What it’s going to do to her desire to strive, to her willingness to grow, to her ability to understand herself and the world around her. If she sits in a haze every afternoon and evening . . . Don’t you see what this means?”

  “Far as I can tell, it means she wants to relax after being at Grand’s all day.”

  “Aren’t you bothered? Is this what you want in a partner, Seth?”

  He didn’t reply. The question felt all wrong, but he wasn’t sure why. He knew only that hearing it closed something off in him, so that a shell seemed to form around his heart.

  “Have you talked to her about it?” his mom persisted. “You can’t possibly want a partner who’s high every day when you come home.” And then when he still made no reply, “Darling, I can see you love her. I know you love her. We love her, too, your dad and I. But we want—”

  “So just accept her.” The words burst from him. “She is who she is and so am I.”

  His mom looked at him evenly and for much too long. She was like a person trying to read his mind. His mind, however, was the last place that he wanted her to be because everything she was saying was the truth and he didn’t know what to do about it. He loved Prynne. He wished she didn’t get high every night. He didn’t want to come home to someone who was blitzed. But he also didn’t know how to bring this about.

  So he said, “I guess you want us to find some other place to live.”

  “Of course not!” Amy said. “Your place is here as long as you want to be here. I was just trying to bring something out into the open between us. We’ve always done that, you and I. I don’t want to lose our willingness to speak openly to each other, honey.”

  Seth felt miserable. He didn’t know why. But he said what he knew his mom wanted to hear. “We’re not going to lose that,” he declared, even though he wasn’t sure he was speaking the truth.

  26

  When Seth saw firsthand that getting stoned had become a second nature activity in Prynne’s life, he told himself that it was okay. After all, she wasn’t doing anything wrong. Plus she wasn’t doing anything dangerous. Plus it was legal. Plus he loved her. So he decided that the uneasiness he was beginning to feel really had to do with himself.

  He’d never been a liar. Ever since he’d been a kid, anyone he tried to lie to could see on his face that he wasn’t telling the truth. So he’d given up on fibs when he’d been around twelve years old, aside from small white lies like telling one of the guys in his gypsy jazz group Triple Threat that his new girlfriend was hot when really he wouldn’t have given her a second look. But he’d lied to Prynne in order to get her to return to Whidbey. In his total desperation to have her back with him, he’d said he couldn’t remember what that guy in Port Townsend had said to her: “I can’t even get it anymore, Prynne. It’s way too risky.” And once Seth had made that declaration to Prynne—that he couldn’t remember what the guy had said—he couldn’t exactly start asking her what “any more of it” meant.

  Not long after Prynne’s return, he found himself obsessing about those words. Could Steve have been talking about weed? No matter that it was legal now, not just anyone could sell it, so if he was selling it on the sly . . . But maybe it was Oxy he’d been talking about and maybe Prynne had been lying about only trying it just that once. Or maybe it was meth, Seth thought. Maybe it was coke. It could be molly. Or K2. Geez, it could be anything.

  He began looking at Prynne more closely when she wasn’t looking at him. He started trying to gauge if her behavior was different from this day to that. Was she slurring her words? Did her eyelids droop? Was her real eye too bright? He was starting to drive himself up the wall, and the worst of it was that the only person he could really talk to about this was Grand because Grand had forever been the person in his life that Seth had turned to when he needed to sort through something.

  When Prynne unexpectedly announced that she had an additional gig the next Sunday in Port Townsend, Seth decided it was time to talk to Ralph. Prynne took off too early for Seth’s comfort, so he loaded Gus into the VW and headed for Newman Road.

  He and the Lab piled out of the car into the sound of crows raising a ruckus above the forest trees and an eagle sounding its five-note descending cry for its mate. Grand’s property was a panorama of flowers, but Seth was immune to its beauty although Gus leaped up the side of the hill and rolled in the wildflowers there.

  Seth called to him, and Gus ignored him. But he did head down the hillside, and Seth followed him to where Becca and Derric were waiting on the porch.

  Derric waved as Seth came into view. Gus charged toward them, barking happily. Becca turned to the front door, opened it, and said something to Grand. As Seth came up the porch steps, Derric said, “’S happening?”

  “Nada,” Seth told him, another lie, as Gus snuffled around the large wooden box on the porch, hoping for a bone. “Prynne’s doing another gig in Port Townsend.” At least that was the truth.

  Becca was shrugging her way into a denim jacket. A thrift store score, Seth figured. It was way too big. “Grand’s waiting for you,” she told Seth. “Even set up the chessboard on his own.”

  “Righteous. No help?”

  “He had some trouble with the pawns. Derric did those.”

  “Still cool, though.”

  “That’s what we thought.”

  None of them said what else all of them were thinking: Nothing had changed, really. Seth had overheard his dad pleading with Aunt Brenda—a catch in his voice—about Grand’s property and what it meant to him. “What’s this really all about?” he’d cried. “For God’s sake, Bren, let’s be honest with each other.” But this had achieved nothing. The only thing Seth could work out from everything Aunt Brenda had done so far was that she and Mike had big plans for the 170 acres Grand owned.

  He forced a cheerful smile anyway and said to Becca and Derric, “Where you guys heading?”

  “It’s a Josh day,” Becca told him. “We’re taking him and Chloe to the Mutt Strut. God, Der, I didn’t think of it,” she added, turned to Derric. “We should have made a costume for Gus. The kids would’ve loved it.”

  Seth was cheered by the thought of the Lab dressed up. Josh would’ve gone for something like a pirate, Chloe for something like a princess. Becca was right. They would’ve loved it.

  He waved them off, told Gus to come inside with him, and joined his grandfather. Ralph was waiting for him at the chessboard. Seth’s only wish as he greeted Grand was that his language skills were what they had been. That was what he needed from him now: Grand wisdom. But Grand listening would have to do.

  “Fave-rit mahl grunsho,” Ralph said slowly, and the twinkle in his eye told Seth how proud he was of coming ever closer to “favorite male grandchild.”

  “How’s it
going, Grand?” Seth asked. Gus greeted Seth’s grandfather in his usual way: by sniffing around to see if Ralph had any treats. Ralph raised his hand slowly and dropped it onto the Lab’s head. Gus waited patiently for the caress.

  “So so,” Ralph said. “Whan shess?”

  “Sure,” Seth said. “It’s, like, the only time I’ll probably ever be able to beat you.” He sat and they began a game made slow by the difficulty Ralph had with the pieces. While Ralph was attempting to move a pawn, Seth said to him, “Prynne’s in Port Townsend. Got an extra gig there.”

  “Fidduh,” Ralph said.

  “Yeah. She’s doing her fiddle at the same place I met her, in that coffeehouse.” He waited for Ralph to complete his move. He counted how long it took. Thirty seconds . . . forty-five . . . fifty. He finally said, “You having trouble, Grand?”

  Ralph looked up at him and his expression said how stupid he thought the question was. Grand had never liked someone stating the obvious. He said in reply, “Mayshens.”

  Seth frowned. “What? Mayshens?”

  “Mayshens, mayshens.” Ralph gestured to the board.

  “You want me to do something?” Seth said.

  “Mayshens whan.” Ralph pursed his lips. He blew out a breath that made a burble. It seemed as if what he was doing was . . . Seth wasn’t sure. But he could tell his grandfather was getting upset.

  He said, “Maybe we should play later. What d’you think? I sort of wanted to talk anyway.”

  At this, to his shock, Ralph’s eyes filled with tears. Seth had never seen his grandfather cry. He said, “What’s wrong? Grand, what’s wrong?”

  “T . . . t . . . talk.” He spit out the word.

  At first Seth thought Grand meant that he was waiting for Seth to tell him whatever he’d come to tell him. But before he could begin to go over what he’d been thinking and feeling with regard to Prynne, Ralph burst out with, “Becca banks,” and with his good hand he grabbed on to Seth’s arm so hard it hurt. “Houch,” he said. “Seff houch . . .” and he began to flush.