The Edge of the Light

by Elizabeth George

“Why . . . why did she come to see you?” Becca asked. “I don’t get it. How would she know . . . ?”

  “She learned about the cell phone in Saratoga Woods. She wanted to know if the owner had been tracked down.”

  “Oh.” Becca’s voice sounded small to her ears. She felt small, too. She also had never felt so alone.

  “She wanted to know who found it, too, because she wants to talk to him.”

  “C’n I ask . . . I mean . . . What did you tell her?”

  “The truth. Which is what you’ll do when it comes to talking to Derric.”

  “But I mean, like, what did you tell her when you saw the picture?”

  He was silent. In that silence they were eyeball to eyeball. Becca longed for a whisper or a vision that could help her understand what Dave Mathieson was thinking and what he was planning and what, above all, would happen next to fracture her carefully constructed world on Whidbey Island. But there was nothing. There was only the void.

  “I told her I’d pass the picture around,” he finally said. “But I’m hoping you don’t make me have to do that.”

  38

  Seth spent a little time trying to tell himself that the black tar heroin didn’t belong to Prynne, that she just did weed. Besides, he decided, if this black tar heroin that was now in his possession did belong to Prynne, wouldn’t she be desperate for it? Wouldn’t she be going into withdrawal? Wasn’t that how things worked?

  He didn’t want to consider what he knew about Whidbey Island: black tar heroin was the cheapest substance to buy if you needed to score some, and you could find it by simply asking around. With this tin box of dope gone missing, if Prynne was the person using, it would be easy for her to get more.

  He decided to go to Port Townsend to get to the full truth about Prynne. He did what he never before had done and called in sick to work. As far as the household knew, however, he set off for his job site with Gus like always, but this time, he didn’t drive to Wahl Road but rather up to Admiralty Bay.

  Once the ferry docked in Port Townsend, Seth made his way to the house where Prynne had gone to on the day he’d followed her. His driving felt automatic, as if the VW knew the way and all he had to do was to go along for the ride. When he reached the right street and spied the big hedge and the arbor, he got a large rawhide bone from the glove compartment and gave it to Gus to keep him occupied.

  The same van was in the driveway. Seth went around it to the door in the side of the garage. On this fine day it was standing open, and from within came an ancient song by the Doors. He saw that a large worktable ran the width of the double garage and at this table the same guy he’d seen before was working. He was bent over a square of unfired tile, meticulously carving a design into it. To his left were tiles waiting for design. To his right were finished tiles waiting for a glaze. The garage was hot from a kiln that stood in one corner. In front of it were boxes packed with finished tiles. They bore funky dogs on them, as well as orcas, octopi, dolphins, sea stars, mermaids, foxes, and funky cats. This, Seth figured, was one of the ways that Steve—that was the name, he remembered—supported his family.

  Steve looked up. He frowned. It seemed to Seth that the other young man figured he’d seen him somewhere but couldn’t remember exactly. He also seemed to figure Seth was some kind of customer, since he slid off his stool and said, “Happening, man?” in a way that wasn’t unfriendly.

  It was exactly the friendly nature of that greeting that prompted Seth’s fury. He wanted to take the guy down and pound his head on the concrete floor. But what he was there for was the truth. So he took the tobacco tin from the pack he was carrying and he tossed it to Steve, saying, “Look inside.”

  Steve didn’t cooperate. He said, “What the hell? Who are you?”

  “Open it, dude.”

  “Man, I don’t know what you want, but . . .” He seemed to put the pieces together then. A light bulb went on, and he said, “Oh hell. Did Prynne send you? I told her—”

  “Open it!” Seth raised his voice.

  “Chill,” Steve said. “I got kids in the house and a pissed-off wife who wouldn’t mind punching my lights today. Okay?” He opened the tin. Seeing the black tar heroin within it, he said, “I told her no more. About six times I told her no more. So if you’re here to buy more for her or for yourself or whatever, that game’s not on.”

  “When did you sell this to her?”

  “I didn’t, man. I used to sell it, yeah, but it got too hot. Besides, my wife’d drop-kick me into the next time zone if she knew I was dealing anything but weed. So I stopped, okay? And this stuff here? This amount? It wouldn’t’ve lasted Prynne a week, so if I’d’ve sold it to her, it would be long gone by now.”

  “You expect me to believe any of that?”

  “I don’t care what you believe. I’m telling you the truth. Believe what you want.”

  Seth’s vision seemed covered by a veil of red then. He shouted, “You did this to her. She only did weed before you but—”

  “Crap’s sake! Shut up! What the hell’s wrong with you?” Steve brushed by Seth and closed the door. He went on with, “She found me, man. I didn’t go looking for her. I don’t need to go looking for anyone. And don’t ask me how she found me because I don’t know, okay? Dopers? They can smell it in the dark.”

  “You got her hooked!”

  “You got to be kidding. She came to Port Townsend because she was hooked. You don’t believe me, go talk to her parents. They’re in Port Gamble and they kicked her to the curb years ago when she wouldn’t give the stuff up. She told me she tried to a few times, but she couldn’t hack it and that was that.”

  “And you sold to her anyway?” Seth asked, incredulous. He couldn’t even begin to process the information that Prynne had been gone from Port Gamble for years and not just for the few months she’d claimed. “You knew she was trying to get straight and you sold to her anyway? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Steve cast him a look that said he was nuts. “I’m a businessman, dude. It’s all economics to me.”

  • • •

  SETH DROVE STRAIGHT to Port Gamble. It was a forty-minute drive south on the Quimper Peninsula and a turn that took him through one of the area’s Indian reservations. Beyond this, Port Gamble stood, a tiny town at the top of Teekalet Bluff.

  Seth had never been there, so he didn’t know that Port Gamble was more a history lesson than a habitation. Its main street boasted a short string of widely separated houses that bore historical markers. These identified their dates of construction as well as their early owners. This same little street featured a museum, a former firehouse, a mercantile, and a building that appeared to function as the tiny town’s municipal offices. There were only a couple more streets in the place, and every one of them was deserted. Some of the houses looked like holiday rentals. Nearly all of them had been restored. As had been the white, steepled church, which advertised on a notice board outside that it was a superb place for weddings.

  It seemed that while Port Gamble had once been a thriving little mill town, it now was a living museum offering a glimpse into what life might have looked like in a previous century. It existed to serve the interests of tourists and wedding planners. Prynne’s parents, as it turned out, were there in Port Gamble to meet the needs of both groups.

  It was easy enough for Seth to find them. He and Gus sauntered over to the museum with its enormous anchor and well-kept bronze bell in front. As Gus searched for dog smells along the building’s foundation, Seth ducked inside and asked a man sweeping the floor if he knew of the Haring family. “Rooster Tea,” was the man’s reply.

  This turned out to be the short version of what he might have said, which was that Prynne’s parents ran the Rooster Café and Tea Room. It was three doors away and across the street. Seth hoped at least one of the Harings would be there.

  He was in luck. He’d ma
de it to Port Gamble before everything closed up in the late afternoon, and although it seemed as if tea time itself was over, he saw that lights were still on in the back of the place. Figuring there had to be a back door, he went in search of it, with Gus loping ahead between the café and the building next door, which appeared to be someone’s home. As he reached the corner, Gus gave a sharp bark. Seth recognized it as his want-to-play bark and picked up his pace to see a curly-haired man smashing a garbage bag into a plastic can that was mostly full.

  Seth said, “Are you Mr. Haring?” and the man looked over. He’d been watching Gus galumphing around the lawn behind the café, his ears flapping and his tongue lolling cartoonishly out of his mouth. Seth called, “Gus! Get back here! Now!” As usual the Lab completely disregarded the command.

  The man said, “Ben Haring,” as he tightened the lid on the garbage can. “Who are you?”

  “Seth Darrow,” Seth said. “That’s Gus, my dog. Well, obviously. C’n I talk to you for a minute?”

  “We’re not hiring. We’ll need someone later on in the month if you want to come back. Now, the weather’s still too iffy for a lot of visitors.”

  Seth told him that he wasn’t there about a job, that he was a finish carpenter on Whidbey Island. When Ben Haring assumed this meant he was looking for carpentry work and began to speak about that, Seth corrected him once again. “It’s Prynne,” he said and he added dumbly, “your daughter.”

  Ben Haring’s face altered. A steeliness came to it. Seth couldn’t tell if the man was preparing himself for the worst or arming himself from some kind of onslaught. He said, “What’s happened? Who are you?”

  Seth gave him only the facts that seemed important enough to share: He was a musician, Prynne was the fiddler in his gypsy jazz group, they lived together on Whidbey Island, and she was helping care for his grandfather after a stroke.

  Ben Haring said, “So what can I do for you? You can’t be here to tell me Prynne’s finally found a cure that took. Not that it wouldn’t be good news but I expect she’d come to tell us herself. That’s more her pattern.”

  Seth didn’t like the use of the word pattern. He also didn’t much like Mr. Haring. He started to feel that he was taking part in the biggest betrayal of his life, but he had to know what the true situation was, and Prynne’s parents were probably the only people who could tell him.

  Ben Haring opened the back door of the café and said, “You better come in,” and he led the way. Seth whistled for Gus and called out, “Milk Bones!” which did the trick. He pulled one from his pocket and leashed Gus to the railing of the old house’s back steps. When he followed the way Ben Haring had gone, he found himself in a large professional kitchen.

  Seth didn’t know how to begin a conversation that could lead him to ask about Prynne and heroin. It turned out that he didn’t need to. Prynne’s mom, who was as pale in the face as the flour she was measuring into a mixing bowl, said to him, “Has she overdosed?” the moment Prynne’s dad explained who Seth was. With an agonized glance at her husband, Mrs. Haring went on. “Or has she stolen something?”

  That pretty much confirmed things. Seth felt hollow inside, as if someone had taken the self out of him so that all that remained was a shell.

  “She’s into heroin,” he said. He felt he needed to lean against the wall and hoped he didn’t slide down it to the floor. “She says she’s not, but we found some. And I followed her once when she went to a house in Port Townsend where there was this guy . . . ? He said I should talk to you.”

  “Here.” Mrs. Haring sounded quite compassionate. She brought a stool out from beneath the kitchen’s island work counter and said, “Sit here, dear.” She went to a large restaurant-size fridge. She took out some orange juice and poured him a glass.

  “He said she moved to Port Townsend in the first place because of heroin, because you guys threw her out. I want to help her. I want to make her okay because if I don’t . . . I love her,” he said simply. “I figure if you can tell me what to do . . . or if you know how to help . . . or anything?”

  Ben Haring leaned against the counter in front of the large stainless steel sink. He said, “You can’t help her, Seth. You can’t, I can’t, her mom can’t, her brother can’t. She can help herself, but she has to want that, more than she wants to use.”

  Quietly, then, the Harings told Prynne’s story, and Seth recognized it from so many similar stories that had played out on Whidbey over the years. Prynne, they said, was their troubled child. She began stealing alcohol from them when she was eleven, so they both stopped drinking. She then switched to weed—this was when she was twelve—and then she got into prescription opiates. At that point, they sent her into a recovery program. There, she learned about black tar heroin, and when she got out, she went after that. They put her through two more recovery programs, but nothing helped her. The need for drugs had become a hunger so ravenous she had to keep feeding it. When she turned eighteen years old, they asked her to leave.

  “I think the eye started it,” Mrs. Haring said. “Losing it so young, being in the hospital all that time, with all the drugs involved . . . I think that’s where it all began.”

  “It’s why we put up with everything for so long,” Ben Haring said. “The rest of us—Prynne’s brother, her mom, myself—we all felt guilty that she’d suffered so much. That one thing—our guilt—it’s what kept us going. It kept us trying to find a way to help her.”

  “We finally decided that until she was invested in her own recovery,” his wife added, “we wouldn’t send her into any more programs and we wouldn’t see her. It must sound cruel to you because you love her. We love her, too, but something . . . It just seemed to us that sometimes the life you save has to be your own.”

  39

  Jenn tried to put the kiss out of her mind. She also tried to put out of her mind the fact that, when asked, she’d said yes to the whole idea of being kissed by a girl. Much more than that, though, she tried to put out of her mind that in that instant when Cynthia had asked if she could kiss her, Jenn had been longing for exactly that.

  She hadn’t thought twice about saying yes, and it had turned out to be a real kiss. It wasn’t just a peck on the cheek between friends or even a peck on the mouth that happens when a kiss intended for the cheek accidentally gets misplaced.

  That one kiss had segued into another. That kiss had evolved into a third. Jenn had found herself all pulsing heart and throbbing veins. Then Cynthia had murmured, “Have a good sleep,” and returned to the lower bunk. Her breathing, becoming regular and deep within minutes, told Jenn that she’d gone quickly to sleep.

  Not so for Jenn. She’d wanted to ask Cynthia what it meant that she—Cynthia—had felt like kissing her—Jenn. But to ask that question would indicate that the kiss itself and those that followed meant something to her, and she didn’t want to go there in her brain let alone in a conversation. She thought, at the end of a night spent mostly observing Brian Richardson’s ceiling constellations, that it might be best to forget the whole thing.

  The next day comprised their final training session before tryouts for the All Island team. Despite the fact that they’d trained for weeks on end, they didn’t take a break to rest on the day before tryouts. They worked as hard as ever. Cynthia knew the various stations that would be set up to test the girls’ skills and their overall athleticism, and she pushed Jenn hard. Lexie did the same. At the end of it all, Jenn was dripping sweat and the other two girls were in the same condition.

  In the locker room afterward, Cynthia stripped in that unselfconscious way she had, shedding workout clothes as she went: tank top first, sports bra second, shorts third, undies fourth. By the time she reached her locker, she had only her athletic shoes and socks on, and she kicked these off before she opened the locker and grabbed her soap, towel, shampoo, and conditioner. She said to Jenn, “You looked super good out there today,” and Lexie said,
“You’ll kick butt tomorrow, Jenn.”

  Lexie strode off to the showers ahead of them, but Cynthia remained at her locker. Jenn found that she wasn’t sure where to look because the thing about Cynthia was that she was sort of like someone you make up in your head. She was also like someone you wanted to look like. She had breasts that were . . . what? Well, they were luscious. That was the word. Her hips were slender and her legs were long and her stomach was a board. Between her legs the hair was darker than her head hair and . . . Jenn turned away. She grabbed her soap and towel. What she knew was that it was completely wrong for her to be noticing Cynthia Richardson’s body.

  Cynthia said to her, “Jenn . . . You okay? I mean . . .” and it was the very first time that Jenn could remember Cynthia sounding anything but 110 percent self-assured.

  Jenn said, “Sure. Yeah. Why?” But she had some trouble meeting the other girl’s gaze.

  “Oh. Good,” was Cynthia’s response. Then, “You seem a little different today.”

  Now, Jenn thought, was the moment to ask those questions that had kept her awake. But she just couldn’t do it. So she said, “Nope. I’m cool.”

  Cynthia said, after a moment, “Good. I’m glad,” and then Lexie yelled, “I’m almost done in here. You guys coming or what?” from the showers where water was blasting against the tiles.

  Lexie was fast on this day. When Jenn and Cynthia got to the showers, she was finished. Although she and Jenn had a regular work night at G & G’s, both Gertie and Giselle knew that the following day was tryouts for Jenn, and they’d insisted she take the night off in order to be thoroughly rested.

  Lexie, however, still had to work, so she was toweling herself off by the time Cynthia ducked her head into the stream of water she’d been using. Lexie threw her towel over her shoulder and said, “I’m outa here, you guys. Good luck tomorrow.”

  “You coming?” Cynthia asked her.