SW01 - The Edge of Nowhere

by Elizabeth George

  “I know Hayley.”

  “They were talking in the lobby of the hospital—”

  “Hospital? What were you all doing there?”

  “I came to visit Derric Mathieson. I guess Hayley was there to see him, too.”

  “I see.” Diana looked thoughtful. Becca could tell Diana knew something about something, but she didn’t ask her what the somethings were. She thought about doing so, but it seemed impolite and none of her business. She looked out the window, instead, and she saw that the plains of Coupeville were fast giving way to forests as the pickup sped along the narrow highway.

  Inside the truck cab, it was warm. The rhythm of the road was pleasant. Diana reached for the knob of the radio and turned on some music. Soon, Becca felt lulled. Oscar was so toasty against her shoulder, and because of all this, she grew quite drowsy. Soon she was asleep.

  * * *

  NINETEEN

  A bump in the road awakened her. It was dusk now, but Becca could see they were pulling off a narrow lane and entering an even narrower gravel track that ran between two brick pillars shadowed by fir trees. Diana had switched her truck’s lights on, and in their glow, Becca saw they’d come to a cemetery. There were tombstones aplenty, shadowy beneath enormous trees.

  The little track curved, and they followed this curve to a section of the cemetery where there were fewer trees. Here, Diana Kinsale parked her truck. She said to Becca, “Got to make a quick visit to Charlie. Are you okay with cemeteries? Some people aren’t.”

  Becca was more than okay with cemeteries. Since her earliest childhood, she’d been taken to them, once it had become obvious to her mother and grandmother that the whispers had skipped a generation in Laurel’s case and had descended with double force into Becca. “She’ll calm down here,” was how her grandmother had put it as she’d hoisted Becca out of the car. “You just think that Paul Revere poem, and she’ll ignore it and I’ll go blank and she’ll be fine.” Off Becca would go among the graves, then, and she’d hear not a single whisper for once.

  Becca said to Diana, “I like cemeteries.”

  Diana said, “So do I. So do the dogs. I’m letting them out for a run.”

  She lowered the tailgate of the pickup and the dogs scrambled out and away among the graves. Diana took a couple of potted white chrysanthemums from the truck bed, asking Becca to bring along a small metal tool case as well. Then she walked over to a grave where a stone bench faced a granite marker with CHARLIE KINSALE, BELOVED LIFE’S COMPANION carved into it. He’d been dead a long time, Becca saw from the date, but his stone looked new. She saw why this was when Diana set the potted plants down and opened her toolbox. From this she took rags and polish. She set to work.

  When she had finished, Diana fixed the chrysanthemums on either side of the stone. She went over to a spigot for some water and watered them thoroughly afterward.

  She said to Becca, “I’d plant them, but they’d never last. Took me a while to understand they’re not intended to. Here. Sit with me on the bench for a minute.” She went to the stone bench and patted it. She called, “All dogs come,” and from various points in the cemetery, the animals came running.

  The dogs milled around her feet, nosing her pockets for treats. She dug out some kibbles and handed them out. Tails wagged encouragingly. Diana said, “Charlie’s been gone for years, but I still miss him. You do, you know, when someone dies.”

  The idea of missing someone was like the swooping of a bird too close to her face. Becca felt a kind of agony along with it. She longed for her mother so strongly that her eyes filled with tears and she knew they’d spill over, and she’d have to explain them if that happened. She got to her feet abruptly and walked out into the cemetery, just to the point where Diana’s headlights ceased illuminating the graves.

  Diana came after her. She put an arm around Becca’s shoulders. “I’ve upset you. I didn’t intend to,” and at her warm touch Becca felt unburdened for the first time since she’d futilely phoned Laurel from Blue Lady Lane.

  She said, “It’s okay. I’m fine. I better get going, though.”

  “Let me show you something first. It won’t take long.”

  She led Becca back the way they had come on the gravel track, dipping into some cedar trees at the far edge of the cemetery. Here, there was another grave and its stone had an angel perched on it. It was the kind of gravestone that a picture can be fit into, and Becca could just make out this picture along with the words on the stone—TERESA GRIEDER—and that she’d been fourteen years old when she had died.

  Becca said, “Oh,” and next to her Diana said quietly, “This is the source of everything that Debbie feels. It’s the one thing she would change in her life if only she could.”

  “Seth told me she was killed on her bike,” Becca said. “But Debbie told me Ms. Ward over at the high school killed her.”

  They both gazed at the stone. From the dates upon it, Becca could see that Reese Grieder had been dead for fifteen years.

  Diana said, “They’re both telling you the truth, Seth and Debbie. But like everything else, there’s more to it than a bicycle, Reese, and Ms. Ward. There’s a deer, too. It leapt out into the road in front of poor Reese and in front of the car. Ms. Ward veered to avoid the deer. And Reese veered to avoid the deer, too. But they veered toward each other and Reese was hit. She wasn’t wearing her helmet.”

  “How terrible,” Becca said.

  “If Debbie could do anything in her life differently from what she’s done, she’d go out after Reese. She thinks she should have been able somehow to make things different.”

  “No one can do that really.”

  “That’s the truth of the matter,” Diana agreed. “There are no do-overs in life. We can’t change what’s happened, no matter what we do.”

  Becca saw that the grave was unkempt. The gravestone had lichen growing on it. This filled her with even more sadness, and Diana said as if realizing this, “Debbie can’t bear to come here, and no one wants to mention to her that the stone’s going bad because of the weather.”

  She linked her arm with Becca’s. They turned and headed back toward the truck. Diana said, “Sometimes, we can’t see a reason for what happens, so we try to find one because it’s easier to do that than to go through the pain of recovering. That’s one of the things that people do.”

  PART THREE

  The Dog House

  * * *

  TWENTY

  Hayley Cartwright knew that Seth Darrow would never be able to understand their breakup. He made it all about Derric because of his own insecurities. But the truth was that their breakup had very little to do with Derric at all.

  Seth thought otherwise because of a night when he was supposed to be playing a gig with his trio over in Lynwood. He’d gotten there only to discover with his friends that they’d been double-booked with a Seattle group called Paranoid Amber, and this had put him into a mood. Hayley couldn’t blame him. He’d bought a ticket for the ferry, gone over town, showed up as scheduled with the other members of the trio, only to find out someone had made a mess of things.

  On his return to the island, then, he ducked into Langley’s performing arts center. The marquee out in front said that a troop of Rwandan dancers and musicians would be performing, and since Seth was all about music, he had decided to peek inside.

  The usual suspects were there. These were South Whidbey’s ageing hippies who came out of the woodwork any time music and dance were involved. Derric and Hayley had been among them, dancing. They’d gone to this concert for reasons having nothing to do with dating. Instead they’d gone for reasons having to do with what Hayley wanted to do with her life and with where Derric’s own life had begun. Not in Rwanda, of course, but in Africa. From the expression on Derric’s face during that evening, Hayley could see a happiness that she’d never seen in all the time she’d known him.

  But Seth had witnessed none of this. All he took note of was Hayley with Derric, who was tall, nice l
ooking, incredibly built, sexy, an A student, and an athlete. Aside from the mutual interest they shared in music, Derric was, in short, pretty much everything that Seth was not. He was also pretty much everything Seth thought that every girl wanted and that he ought to be.

  At the end of the dance, she and Derric were laughing because they were both wretched dancers. But so was nearly everyone else on the stage, except the Rwandans. She and Derric swayed in a hug, the way people do when they’re having a wonderful time. Then they kissed. It was a spontaneous thing, with Derric’s hands cradling her face and her arms around his waist.

  Seth saw this, but he didn’t confront her. Instead, he took off, and she hadn’t even known he was there until the end of the evening when Derric walked her out to the farm truck in the parking lot. They stood there talking, and they kissed again, and she liked the kiss. But that was the extent of it: She liked kissing Derric Mathieson. Period.

  What she didn’t know was that Seth was watching from his VW. Dimly, she heard a car start, but until it pulled up next to her, the truth was that she hadn’t thought about him at all. But then a voice said, “Great going, Hayl,” and Seth shot Derric one of those looks that tend to suggest someone has just stepped in someone else’s vomit. After that, he gunned the motor and took off.

  She’d phoned his home the next day to explain and asked his mom to have him call her. When he didn’t, she called him three more times. The third time being the charm, she’d caught him still in bed and she’d asked his mom to wake him up. When he was finally on the line, she said, “So are we finished? Is that what this is about?” and he’d said in his typical Seth way, “Whatever, Hayley.”

  How lame, how stupid, how totally weird, how completely insane had been her immediate reaction. She’d kissed Derric Mathieson. She liked kissing him. She might kiss him again if she had the chance. Big deal. End of story. But it was a story Seth Darrow didn’t even want to hear.

  She told herself that if that was the case, Seth Darrow wasn’t worth the time spent thinking about him. She turned to school for comfort and she found that comfort in the jazz band, in the marching band, and in hanging with Derric. They weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend but they were close friends and mostly they talked about Uganda and what he remembered of Uganda. They did this because of Hayley’s plan: the Peace Corps in Africa.

  Her mother didn’t agree with the plan. Her father didn’t know about it. There were far greater worries than where Hayley was going to go as soon as she was old enough to do so, and her father was worry number one. So as far as her mother was concerned, it was a case of, “We aren’t going to talk about it, Hayley,” and that was life at the Cartwright farm. There was so much that they weren’t going to talk about that most of the time what they did talk about amounted to the weather and who was going to do what to keep the farm going another week while pretending everything was A-OK.

  Hayley was tired of all this. Seth, of course, didn’t know about any of it. So when she’d run into him at the hospital up in Coupeville, things had gone from bad to horrible.

  They were broken up, so it was none of his business that she was there, and she figured her being there in the first place was what he wanted to talk to her about. So she’d prepared herself to say that, as far as she knew, they weren’t together any longer so if she wanted to drive up to Coupeville, it wasn’t up to him to ask her about it. But it turned out he’d wanted to talk to her about Saratoga Woods because she’d told him about parking the farm truck down the road at the entrance to Metcalf Woods where no one was supposed to park at all. Unless, of course, they had a reason to park there, that reason having to do with not being seen.

  What Seth had known was what everyone knew. To get from Metcalf Woods to Saratoga Woods involved a complicated hike. You had to know where you were going or you had to have a map, but in either case it didn’t make sense to go into Saratoga Woods that way.

  So what Seth said to her at the hospital that afternoon was, “Why’d you hide your truck by Metcalf Woods? You were meeting him there, weren’t you? Is this supposed to be some big secret between you two? Because it isn’t, okay?”

  She said sharply, “I don’t have secrets, Seth,” and of course this was an outright lie.

  Their argument went on from there. It became about Derric. It went on to Seth’s dropping out of school for his music. It shifted to his grandfather taking Seth’s dog. Then it made its way to whether Seth had even bothered to get a tutor yet to help him study for the GED since he’d been out of school since the previous January. It was one of those arguments that turn out to have no real starting point and no real ending point, just a lot of pain generated and a lot of forgiveness needed to get past it.

  But there was no time for forgiveness, because in the middle of their argument, Derric’s dad came into the hospital along with Jenn McDaniels. Jenn went over to the reception desk to check in on the list while the undersheriff came over to Hayley and Seth. He said hello to Hayley and he nodded to Seth, who mumbled something about being really sorry he hadn’t paid his speeding tickets on time. The undersheriff couldn’t have cared less about speeding tickets, and Hayley felt like telling Seth this, but then Jenn McDaniels came over to them, said, “That stupid list is already screwed up and I’ll have to fix it,” and then took the temperature of the Seth/Hayley/Undersheriff Mathieson moment and knew in that Jenn McDaniels way of hers that something somewhere was wrong. Jenn cast a shrewd look from Hayley to Seth to Hayley to Seth. For sure, she knew they’d had a fight. That could mean trouble, Hayley realized.

  SETH PRETTY MUCH disappeared after that, which was fine with Hayley. She didn’t want to talk to him any longer, since talking to him was pointless. Instead, she went with Undersheriff Mathieson to Derric’s room while Jenn went back over to the reception desk to rescue her all-important list of visitors and to figure out how it had gotten messed up.

  In Derric’s room, the undersheriff approached the bed with something like reverence. Hayley held back respectfully. The undersheriff touched Derric’s forehead in a tender way and said, “Come on, little man. Time to wake up now,” and the term little man seemed strange to Hayley because Derric was not only over six feet tall, he was also taller than his father. Still, she could tell it was a term of affection and Dave Mathieson had probably called Derric that from the first moment he’d seen him.

  Then the undersheriff bent and kissed Derric’s forehead, and he took up his hand to hold it. He uncurled Derric’s fingers and something fell out. From where she was standing not too far from the door, Hayley saw it was a piece of paper.

  Dave Mathieson read the note aloud: “‘Give this back to me when you wake up. B.’” His lips curved and he said, “Ah, kids,” and he put the note back into Derric’s hand. What Hayley thought was that B would be Becca. Give what to Becca? was what she wondered.

  Then Jenn McDaniels came into the room. She said, “Someone came here actually pretending to be me, if you can believe that. It was right after you, Hayley. Did you see anyone?” and she acted as if a crime had occurred.

  Hayley figured that Becca had been the one to do the pretending. Once again, who else could it have been? But she wasn’t about to tell Jenn McDaniels that. She didn’t know what any of it meant, that Becca hadn’t signed her own name, that she’d come more or less on the sly, and that she’d put a strange note into Derric’s hand. But one thing was for sure: She intended to find out.

  The undersheriff said to Jenn, “Sounds like the kids are enthusiastic about coming up to see him. Let’s hope they stay that way. Meantime . . . I’d like to talk to you girls about that day in the woods. Come with me, okay? Let’s have a Coke.”

  “EITHER OF YOU have a cell phone?” was what the undersheriff asked them. He’d taken them to the cafeteria where instead of Cokes he’d bought an enormous brownie for them to share, along with three small cartons of milk.

  Hayley thought Dave Mathieson wanted to make a call. She knew that there was virtually no way Jenn
would have a cell phone. Her family was so poor that they were lucky to have shoes. So she reached for her purse.

  She said, “I have one. My mom just got it for me because—” But the because of it all couldn’t be spoken: the need to contact Hayley because something bad might happen on the farm. The undersheriff didn’t know that and he didn’t need to know.

  “Where is it, Hayley?” The undersheriff sounded a little sharp and this took her by surprise, but Hayley dug the cell phone out of her purse. She said, “Mom decided she’d like to be able to get in touch,” which was not a lie. Lots of mothers liked to be able to keep tabs on their kids.

  Undersheriff Mathieson took the cell phone from her and turned it over in his hands. He said, “This wouldn’t be a replacement phone, would it?”

  She said. “No. Why?”

  “Because we’re tracing a cell phone that was left in Saratoga Woods, in the information shelter at the edge of the meadow.”

  “Someone must’ve lost it,” Jenn said.

  “Someone hid it. Ralph Darrow found it. It’s a throwaway phone, but we’re on its trail. People don’t generally know how easy they are to trace.”

  He was watching Hayley’s face as he spoke, but Hayley was stuck on Ralph Darrow found it and how Ralph Darrow led to Seth. Thinking this, she didn’t say anything but she didn’t have to because the undersheriff went on, his eyes plastered to her face.

  “Those phones all have serial numbers, Hayley. Serial numbers lead to the stores that sold them. Stores that sold them lead to the days they were sold. Days they were sold lead to credit card receipts or to the closed-circuit films of buyers. It takes some research but it’s only a matter of time, which is all that police work is, really. A matter of time.” He cocked his head at them. Still, he kept his gaze fixed on Hayley. He said, “So eventually we’ll find out who bought the phone because that’s the girl who made the call to nine-one-one about Derric. She knows something about what happened. And what happened is what I want to know.”