The Edge of the Light

by Elizabeth George

  Jenn didn’t wait for them to say hi or to ask her to sit. She pulled a chair out and plopped herself down. She said to them, “I’m seriously sorry. My mom’s insane. I don’t know what else to say.”

  Cynthia said, “Ah. You got talked to by Mr. Vansandt.”

  “He didn’t tell me he’d talked to you guys till the end,” Jenn said. “He was all ‘Has anyone messed with you?’ and stuff like that. He told me my mom’d called him.”

  “G & G’s?” Lexie speared up some pineapple.

  “Those two ladies having dinner for their anniversary?” Jenn said. “To her it was like they’d invited Satan to have dessert with them.”

  Lexie laughed. So did Cynthia. Jenn couldn’t believe they both weren’t steaming.

  “This has nothing to do with you guys anyway,” Jenn said. “It’s all my mom and her minister and saving my soul. They got a baptism lined up for me. I bet they’ll show up here any day now, kidnap me, and drag me off. I got to get away from her.”

  “A cooling-off period,” Lexie noted. “That’s what you need. I had to take one of those. I still do, sometimes, when my mom starts talking about an updo, heels, makeup, and a date to the prom.”

  “I asked my best friend if I could use her couch,” Jenn said. “Just for a couple of nights, but she said no way.”

  “That’s a little harsh,” Lexie noted.

  “Not much like a friend, you ask me,” Jenn agreed.

  “Come to my house,” Cynthia said. “A few days? No problem. My mom’ll be fine with that, and we c’n just trade rooms with my brother while you’re there.”

  “Oh gosh, you mean it?” It was like an answer to a prayer she hadn’t yet made, Jenn thought.

  “Like I said, no problem. You have to be okay with bunk beds, though. That’s what’s in Brian’s room. And . . . well . . . he’s a little odd. Asperger’s.” She smiled. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff he says sometimes.”

  “It can’t be any more odd than what my mom says,” Jenn declared, “especially when she’s speaking in tongues.”

  33

  At lunch, Derric was the one to say, “What’s with Jenn?” when she walked by them without a word and joined Cynthia Richardson and Lexie Olanov at their regular table across the room.

  Squat was the one who responded darkly, “Don’t even ask, man,” before going back to his burrito.

  Becca got to her feet with a quiet “Be right back.” She crossed over to Jenn and asked if she could talk to her. Jenn looked up like someone who hasn’t the first clue about the identity of the person standing before her. Her response was, “I don’t think so,” before she turned back to Cynthia and Lexie.

  Cynthia, though, said, “Jenn,” in that way that suggested someone was being unreasonable.

  Jenn sighed and swung around to Becca. “Whatever,” she said. “What d’you want?”

  “It’s sort of private?” Becca inclined her head in the direction of the Old Commons stairway that led to classrooms above. “Could we . . . Maybe over there . . . ?”

  An eye roll greeted this along with another “Whatever.” After that, though, she followed Becca, past their regular table where Derric and Hayley Cartwright said hi and Squat just threw an indifferent look their way before diving back to burrito-land.

  At the stairway, Becca didn’t waste time, since she could tell how little Jenn even wanted to be with her. She eased the earbud from her ear, though, and she told Jenn she’d found her a place to stay.

  “I didn’t want to say before,” Becca said. “I wanted to check things out first.”

  The response was a string of swear words that came distinctly from Jenn’s whispers and this was followed by just like everyone else when it comes to this which made Becca want to say how unfair that accusation was. When nothing came from Jenn as far as spoken words went, Becca stumbled on. “See, I couldn’t take you to Mr. Darrow’s house because his family is in this huge fight over where he’s going to live from now on. Seth and his dad and his aunt and attorneys . . . ? There’s all sorts of bad feelings, and with Mr. Darrow’s blood pressure needing to stay normal—”

  “Like I’m going to raise his blood pressure, Becca,” Jenn cut in acidly.

  Becca ignored this. “So I talked to Mrs. Kinsale because I knew she has a guest room in her house. I stayed there once, and it’s real nice. She’s real nice.” Becca smiled at Jenn encouragingly. “You just got to like dogs because she has five. Anyway, she says you c’n stay there long as you want. Her house is on Clyde, right above Saratoga Passage and your room would—”

  “I have a place to stay,” Jenn snapped. “No thanks to you.”

  “I know you’re mad at me,” Becca said, nearly flinching from more whispered swear words. “But I didn’t want to get your hopes up before I talked to Mrs. Kinsale. And Mr. Darrow . . . Jenn, I couldn’t bring any more craziness into his life.”

  “Oh thanks, Becca. So now I’m crazy.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant your mom and how ticked off she’d get if you weren’t at home. See, if she turned up at Mr. Darrow’s on top of Seth’s aunt who keeps turning up and on top of everything else like the court and now Seth’s dad is trying to get guardianship of Mr. Darrow away from Seth’s aunt and—”

  “So? No matter where I stay, my mom will probably turn up when she finds out where I am. Mrs. Kinsale’s going to be happy about that? What is she, anyway, about two millions years old? Why would I want to stay with some decrepit old lady?”

  Probably smells was totally unfair of Jenn, but Becca didn’t engage her on that. She said, “Don’t talk about her like that. She’s old but she’s totally nice and she says that as long as you at least try to reconcile with your mom—”

  “What?” Jenn shrieked. “Oh right, Becca! That’s a real help. And I told you. I have a place to stay, okay? Just forget about me.”

  Becca watched her walk off. She followed her. She saw her surge past their regular table, push through two freshman girls, and rejoin Cynthia and Lexie. For her own part, Becca went back to her friends. Derric read her face and said, “She kick your butt?”

  Squat said, “Anyone who tries to talk to her gets their eyeballs singed.”

  Hayley said, “She’s in a bad mood?”

  “Who the hell cares?” Squat commented.

  I do, Becca thought.

  • • •

  WHEN BECCA CONSIDERED Jenn’s reaction, she couldn’t come up with a way to have done it better. So she had to set aside her concerns about her—at least for the moment—so that she could go at the problem of finding the Mrs. Banks she needed to talk to. She used the South Whidbey phone book as a place to start. If she could find the right Mrs. Banks, she was in business. She wanted to do her talking in person, though. Otherwise her only option would be to call and say to whoever answered: “Do you know Ralph Darrow by any chance and can you tell me why he keeps saying your name?”

  When Becca opened the island phone book, she saw an immediate problem. Ninety-five percent of the names listed had only the phone number and the town lived in accompanying them. There was no address. This caused her spirits to plummet when she gave a glance to the very first page. Then she noted that directly under some of the names, a business name was printed in all caps and in red. She concluded that these businesses were related to the name above them: with one of the three Andersons listed connected to Anderson’s Counseling Services in Langley and with one of the seven Arnolds listed associated with Arnold’s Septic Services in Freeland.

  With high hopes, then, she turned to the Bs. There it was: Banks, Betty, followed by Clinton and a phone number. Beneath this, BANKS, BETTY ATTY was printed in all caps and in red. There was still no address, but there was a phone number, and this number had to be of Betty Banks’s office. Becca knew that she could call in the morning and ask for the office’s address. But first she ha
d to talk to Grand.

  She went to his room, where Celia was helping him into bed for the night. She was chatting away in her Celia fashion, telling him a tale about her Balinese cat and the mischief he caused on a regular basis. “If I don’t play with him every morning for at least an hour, he’s just the dickens, Mr. Darrow,” she was saying. She glanced over at Becca and said, “Look who’s come to say good night to you. Hey, d’you want the Galapagos book to look at before you go to sleep?”

  He shook his head and waved her off. It was Becca he wanted to see, he seemed to be saying. Celia got the message and left them. Becca quickly approached the old man’s bed.

  She said, “Is Betty Banks your attorney, Grand?” And when his beatific smile, although lopsided, told Becca that she was correct, she went on directly with, “Have you been trying to tell me that I need to talk to her?”

  Ralph nodded vigorously. “Houch,” he said.

  Since it was the business number she needed to call, Becca knew she couldn’t do it until the following day during office hours. So when the time arrived, she borrowed Derric’s smart phone and called after her first class. She learned that the attorney’s office was on Cedar Lane, off Humphrey Road. Becca’s heart did a little dance at the name of the street: Cedar Lane. She knew this could be the unpaved road lined with cedars that she’d seen in the vision she’d picked up from Ralph.

  She asked Derric where Humphrey Road was. When he told her it was just before you reached the ferry to go over town, she knew she had her work cut out for her. She wanted to ask him to drive her there, but since she didn’t exactly know what her purpose was in going and since she didn’t have the first idea of what might happen when she got there, she understood she had to find the office alone. This meant asking Prynne to stay late at Grand’s, which she hated to do. Something had gone wrong in her relationship with Seth again, but what Prynne seemed to be worried about was where her next hit was going to come from. At least that was what her whispers were saying.

  Derric saved her on this score. When she told him she had to go to Clinton, he offered to drive her. She merely switched his offer to an offer to stay with Ralph instead so that Prynne wouldn’t have to. No problem, was how he responded.

  • • •

  BECCA DID IT by bus and by bike, and she thought at first that she was in luck because the island bus had a stop right at Humphrey Road. But there her luck abruptly ended. The road rolled before her in a series of climbs and drops as it paralleled Possession Sound. She had a feeling that the ride was going to be a long one, and this proved to be exactly the case. For safety’s sake, she removed the earbud and switched off the AUD box, as she usually did when riding her bike.

  She was in excellent condition after nearly two years of biking on Whidbey Island where, as far as she knew, there existed only three or four level streets. The rest of the place was steep ascents, steep descents, curves, and deer jumping in front of you. When she finally reached Cedar Lane—which felt like ten miles of hard riding but was probably only three or four—she saw that she would have to walk the rest of the way. For the unpaved road made a climb that only someone from the Tour de France could have conquered.

  Her spirits were high as she began the ascent. She knew this place because she’d seen it. Grand had been here, it remained in his memory, and it had transferred to her through his vision.

  At the incline’s third turn, she found the address she was looking for. It offered more of a climb on a car’s-width gravel track, but at its top was a welcome sight. Here was the cedar house Becca had seen and there was the stairway that ascended on the side to the second floor of a building that appeared to be a garage.

  At the top of the stairs, she knocked on the same screen door she’d seen in the vision. Someone called out, “No need to knock,” and in she went. But the woman who sat behind the desk she encountered within the office was not the grandmother whose grandkids had shown her dog at the Mutt Strut.

  As Becca was about to back out the door with apologies, someone called out, “Shelley, can you make an appointment with Judge Welsh up in Oak Harbor?” and Becca realized that this woman—Shelley—was a secretary. So when she asked if she could help Becca in some way, Becca told her she was hoping to see Mrs. Banks for a minute. Before this request could be replied to, she added, “Ralph Darrow asked me to come.”

  Shelley hesitated. One of his grandkids drifted easily from her, and to this Becca gave her a winsome smile and said nothing else. Rising from her desk, the secretary asked her to wait and disappeared behind a door that was across the reception area. Less than a minute brought her back to Becca. “Go on in” gave her access to Betty Banks.

  34

  The very same dog from the Mutt Strut was there. Uncostumed, he was lying on a rug to one side of the desk. He looked up, seemed to find no issue with Becca, and settled his head on his paws.

  Betty Banks folded her hands on her desk and nodded at a chair that stood in front of it. She said, “Shelley tells me you’re here for Ralph Darrow?”

  Becca said that she was. She also said that it was awkward but Ralph Darrow had been saying the name Banks for weeks and none of them—the family, the caregivers, and Becca herself—knew what he meant. “Then we saw you at the Mutt Strut,” Becca told her. “Me and my boyfriend? We were there. We saw your grandkids and the dog. Then we saw you, and I realized banks might be a person instead of what we thought, which was, well, banks as in going to the bank.” It sounded lame. Becca wished she could have come up with a way to decorate the facts so they’d be more appealing.

  “Are you a member of the Darrow family?” Mrs. Banks asked after more than irregular and pretty little thing greeted Becca’s opening gambit.

  Becca shook her head. She explained that she lived with Ralph Darrow and was one of the people who helped take care of him.

  At this, Mrs. Banks drew her eyebrows together. Take care of him? “Has something happened to Mr. Darrow?”

  “He had a stroke,” Becca told her. She went on to explain the rest. She didn’t add anything about the dispute between Rich Darrow and his sister regarding their dad’s living situation. But she did tell her about Jake and Celia and about the progress Grand had made in his recovery. She ended with, “So I know he wanted me to come to see you, only I don’t know why. I was hoping you could tell me because it seems really important to him.”

  Betty Banks looked thoughtful. She took thirty seconds before she replied. Becca picked up a vision of Ralph Darrow sitting exactly where she herself was and looking so much like the Grand of old that she felt heartsore when she compared the sight of him then to how he was now. Still, she was hopeful about this, more hopeful when a whisper of he would want accompanied it. But that hopefulness didn’t last.

  “I can tell you that Mr. Darrow is a client of mine,” Betty Banks said. “I can tell you that I did some work for him. But I’m afraid I can’t talk about anything else. It’s called attorney-client privilege, you see. I can only speak about it if Mr. Darrow gives you written permission.”

  • • •

  WHEN SHE GOT home, Becca found that Derric hadn’t been needed after all. For Celia Black’s car was in the upper parking area. So was Jake’s. So she coasted down the new driveway and entered the house. Jake was doing dishes in the kitchen, and Celia was working with Grand on word exercises.

  Becca couldn’t bear to tell Grand that her mission to see Mrs. Banks had been a flop, so she was glad he was occupied. She went to him and kissed his cheek as Celia said, “Now this is going to be a toughie, Mr. Darrow. You listen up. Bet you can’t get it. Bet you five bucks. Gorilla, chimpanzee, baboon, howler monkey, orangutan.” And to Becca, “We’re onto word topics now. I say the words and he’s gotta get the topic they fall under.” And to Grand, “What d’you say, good looking?”

  He said quite clearly, “Ape.”

  Celia hooted. “Smarty pants! Okay. I
owe you five. But no way’re you gonna get this next one. Here goes: Manx, Mexican hairless, Maine coon, Siberian white.”

  Becca thought cats but Ralph Darrow said, “Fee-luh.”

  “Nope.” Celia shook her head and grinned. “I get my five back. It’s felines.”

  Ralph slapped his hand on the table. “Fee-luh!” he said. “Fee-luh!”

  “Ooops. That’s what you meant? Okay. I’ll give it to you. Get ready for the next: coal, iron—”

  “Hey, Becca.” Jake was just coming down the stairs. “I talk to you for a sec?”

  Becca said sure as Celia and Grand went on with their topic exercise. Jake turned on the stairs and climbed back up. Becca followed him as he went into the room that used to be Ralph’s but now was hers.

  “What’s up?” she asked him.

  “I found this in the shop,” he said. “I was looking for a washer to stop a leak in Mr. Darrow’s shower, and I thought he might be keeping stuff like that in this.”

  This was a tobacco tin, decades old by the look of it. It was about the size of a baking soda box, and it was pitted by rust. Jake picked it up from the center of Becca’s bed and handed it over to her. “Take a look,” he said.

  She opened it. Inside were three grayish lumps of what looked like stone streaked with a coppery color. With these she saw a square of tin foil, a Bic lighter, and another piece of tin foil rolled into a tube the approximate length of a cigarette. She didn’t have the first clue what she was looking at, and that’s what she told Jake.

  His response was to tell her to unfold the square of tin foil, which she did. She saw that it was crisscrossed with lines, and for a dumb moment she wondered if this was a message she was supposed to decipher. She said, “Okay, but I still don’t get it.” To which Jake replied, “It’s heroin.”