SW01 - The Edge of Nowhere

by Elizabeth George

  What happened that day is Derric falling because he slipped somehow, was what Hayley wanted to say to the undersheriff. But she could tell that he thought it was something else. The only other thing it could be was Derric was pushed, shoved, or thrown from the path. She didn’t want their conversation to head in that direction.

  Undersheriff Mathieson said, “What do you two know about that day in the woods? What were you doing there?”

  Jenn went first. She said she’d been there for a run with some other kids who were getting ready for the South Whidbey triathlon. They’d been over in Putney Woods where there were more trails and a circuit had been marked, but when they heard the sirens they crossed over on Coral Root Link. She added that they’d parked on Lone Lake Road and started their run from there. It was easier because there was a parking lot there, whereas if they’d gone in another way, like on Keller Road, they’d have had to park on the shoulder, and since they liked to hang out after the run, the parking lot on Lone Lake Road was . . .

  Hayley wondered if Jenn knew how guilty she sounded. She was determined not to sound the same way. She prepared herself mentally to respond to the question that came her way in about one minute: “What about you, Hayley?”

  She’d taken her little sister Brooke to dance class in Langley, she said, and rather than drive all the way back to the farm, she’d just gone to the woods for a walk till the dance class was over. She could’ve walked around the village for ninety minutes, she supposed, but she’d been in the shops about a thousand times so she decided to go to the woods for a while.

  The undersheriff said, “Were you there to meet Derric? You can tell me, Hayley. I understand how things are with boys and girls sometimes.”

  She could feel the fire on her skin, turning her red. Her answer was the only one she could give without ending up unraveling most of her life. So she said, “I was alone because it was only ninety minutes,” which, of course, didn’t mean a thing at all. She just felt she had to add something more, and the only other thing to add would have been a full explanation. For Hayley, a full explanation was out of the question. No one knew what was going on, and she fully intended to keep things that way.

  * * *

  TWENTY-ONE

  Diana Kinsale drove Becca back into Langley in the kind of silence that old friends travel with. This felt good to Becca.

  The ride wasn’t long. When they pulled up to the motel, Debbie came out of the office. But she did it so quickly that it was clear she’d been waiting.

  She came off the porch just as Becca opened the pickup’s passenger door. Becca caught what in God’s green earth . . . this is how you repay, but she heard nothing else because Diana got out and spoke.

  “I’ve brought your assistant back from Coupeville,” she said. “How are you, Debbie? I haven’t seen you for a while.”

  Debbie didn’t answer Diana. Instead, she said to Becca, “You’ve been gone for hours. You said Seth was taking you to Coupeville just to show you the bus routes and the stops.”

  “Yeah. He did. Only he got into a conversation with his old girlfriend and I could tell—”

  “So he just left you to fend for yourself?”

  This, Becca knew, was another black mark against Seth. She said, “It wasn’t like that. I saw Mrs. Kinsale while Seth was talking and she offered me a ride.”

  “But you’ve been gone ages. I was worried about you. Anything could have happened,” and the whispers that came in a rush with this were with him . . . drop out . . . happen when drugs are . . . pain takes such . . .

  Becca wanted to cover her ears. She wanted to say to Debbie that she—Debbie—was not her mom, so she needed to stop worrying about her. She also wanted to say that Debbie didn’t really know Seth so she had to stop thinking such bad stuff about him, but on the other hand the truth was that Becca didn’t really know Seth either.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” Becca said. “I guess it was a little dumb of me.”

  Diana said, “It’s part my fault, Debbie. We stopped at the cemetery so I could visit Charlie. I do apologize. Anyway, it’s good to see you. I’d love to get together with you sometime. Useless Bay Coffee, maybe? When you have the time?”

  Debbie said, “Sure,” although not a chance was as obvious from her expression as it was from her whispers. As was think . . . bring her back . . . oh right, which came through the air like pellets from a BB gun.

  It all made Becca very tired. She said thanks to Diana and took a few steps toward room 444. But Debbie’s words stopped her as Diana pulled out of the motel parking lot.

  “I get that you didn’t bring dessert. But you forgot about the tacos, too? Chloe and Josh have been waiting for you.”

  BECCA WENT BACK with Debbie to her apartment. She found Chloe and Josh on the sofa, shoulder to shoulder, watching an old video of Survivor. “Grammer has them all on tape,” Chloe announced. “We like it best when they have to eat bugs.”

  “Or snakes,” Josh added. “We like it when there’re snakes, too.” Then he scooted off the couch and asked anxiously, “Did you see Derric? Is he coming over to play?”

  Becca touched his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I saw him for a minute, is all,” she said. “He was pretty much asleep, but I think he’ll be over to play again. Just not yet.”

  “Oh,” Josh said, and his voice was small.

  “I thought you wanted tacos with Becca,” Debbie said to him. “She’s here now. Don’t you want to eat? What about you, Chloe?”

  “Tacos!” they cried at once. They dashed toward the kitchen with a “C’mon, Becca!” which gave Debbie a chance to ask quietly, “How is he, then? I wasn’t sure what to tell Josh.”

  Becca said, “He’s still in a coma,” and when Debbie nodded sympathetically, Becca felt a little better about things. But then serves him right . . . what did he think came right after that nod, and Becca felt those whispers like a slap against her cheek. She blinked and turned away. But then Debbie said, “Poor kid. I’m really sorry to hear that,” and the strangest thing to Becca was that Debbie sounded completely sincere. So she was either lying or serves him right referred to someone else. And that, of course, was the problem with whispers.

  Then Debbie sighed. She said, “Well, I don’t know how you feel about cold tacos, darlin’, but if you want ’em, we got ’em,” and when Becca approached her on the way into the kitchen, Debbie put her arm around her shoulders and gave her a quick hug.

  That hug made Becca want to say something to Debbie about having seen her daughter’s grave, but she knew this was dangerous territory. Still, she felt bad that maybe Debbie was stuck somewhere, waiting to change the fact that her daughter had died when that was the very last thing that would ever be possible for her to do.

  She said, “Mrs. Kinsale stopped at the cemetery on the way back to her house. She wanted to put flowers on her husband’s grave. She had the dogs with her. They were running all over the cemetery.”

  “Those dogs of hers.” Debbie sounded cautious, but she wasn’t angry. Becca figured it was safe to go on.

  She said, “I was chasing them around to catch them. I saw your daughter’s grave.”

  The wall whooshed into place. Becca’s ears were hit with what felt like a pressure change of that helmet . . . and she knows. Then no no no came like the wind, the way it blew off the desert into San Diego, that ruthless and dry Santa Ana wind that withered everything in its path.

  Becca said, “That’s a really pretty picture of her. The one at her grave.”

  Debbie said, “We can heat the tacos in the microwave.”

  * * *

  TWENTY-TWO

  Seth Darrow brooded about his argument with Hayley for almost a week before he finally decided that he had to talk to someone about it. In that time, he did what he always did. He worked his early-morning job at the Star Store, he rehearsed with the trio, and he hung out at South Whidbey Commons. He avoided his parents and the potential for questions about what he was doing to fin
d a tutor for the GED. But none of this took his mind away from Hayley.

  “Got to move on, favorite male grandchild,” was what his grandfather would have said. But Seth was finding it completely impossible to do that. So after a week of brooding, he was ready to talk. To someone. About anything.

  The best person for this job was his grandfather. Plus, Ralph still had Gus, and Seth was ready to get his dog back. So he drove over to the property on Newman Road.

  Ralph was out in the garden up on a stepladder. He was deadheading his massive collection of rhododendrons, dropping the dead flowers onto the soil beneath the enormous shrubs.

  Gus had been snoozing on the front porch of the house, but he’d obviously heard the car and recognized it. For as Seth began his descent into the garden, Gus bolted in his direction. He barked and leaped and licked Seth’s cheek.

  Ralph said nothing during the reunion between Seth and his dog. They rolled on the lawn together, and they ran in circles, and Seth brought Gus’s ball out of his pocket and he began to throw it.

  Ralph said, “You’re undoing his training. That tendency of his to bolt . . . ? It’ll be trouble if you don’t stay consistent with him, Seth.”

  “He’s good if there’s a ball involved. Or food. He’ll do anything for food.”

  Ralph shook his head. “Leave him for now. Make yourself useful. Move this ladder for me.”

  “Where d’you want it?”

  “Grandson, where d’you think I want it? In front of the next rhodie, for God’s sake.”

  Ralph sounded irritated, but Seth knew he wasn’t. Fighting with the garden was part of his joy. Still, Seth said to him, “Don’t you ever get tired of doing all this?” in reference to the size of the place and its wealth of plants. “I mean, everything here just keeps getting bigger and you keep getting taller ladders and where’s it going to end?”

  “With my death, I guess,” Ralph responded. “Tough to outlive a good rhodie.” He shoved his hand into his pocket and brought out a Butterfinger. He broke it in half and handed part over to Seth. “Love these things,” he said. “They get stuck in your teeth and you can enjoy them for the rest of the day.”

  They worked on their candy for a few minutes while Gus snuffled around their feet. Ralph gestured over to part of the garden hill where boulders formed a retaining wall and greenery tumbled. He said, “Those wretched old plants over there didn’t bloom all damn summer. I’ve been babying the things for five years now and there’s not a single bud on them. Damned if I know why.”

  Seth looked around. “I don’t know why any of this blooms, to tell you the truth.”

  “It blooms because I take care of it. I do the same darn thing to that stuff on the wall, but nothing happens. Which is the story of gardening in a nutshell, I guess. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and most of the time you don’t have the slightest idea why.”

  Seth reached down and scratched Gus’s ears, but he glanced at his grandfather. He knew Ralph wasn’t really talking about the garden. He said, “Grand, I did everything I could to show Hayley love, and she still picked him over me. She disrespected me—”

  “Not a verb, grandson. Let’s not make it one just because the rest of the world’s trying to.”

  Seth sighed. “She showed me disrespect by wanting to be with this guy who’ll never care about her like I do. It makes me . . . I need to do something about it and I don’t know what.”

  Ralph took another bite of his Butterfinger. He looked not at Seth but at one of the rhodies. He said, “You sure about all that? You have the measure of all other people, Seth?”

  “Didn’t say I did. But what I need right now is for Hayley to be on my side, Grand, and she’s not.”

  “And your side is what?”

  “I need her to be okay with what I decided to do. About school, I mean. She said she would be when I dropped out. She said she understood how hard it was for me and how music was more important to me and how I wanted to make it with the trio and how if I could publish some of my pieces . . .” Seth kicked at the lawn. Gus, at his feet, rose in an instant. He dropped the ball and barked. Seth threw the ball as far as he could. It disappeared over the edge of lawn, heading in the direction of his grandfather’s pond.

  “That dog goes in the water and you’ll have a mess on your hands,” Ralph said. He used his tongue to move the Butterfinger around in his mouth, the better to enjoy it. He said, “Go on, then. What’s this girl done to tell you that she’s not on your side?”

  “What d’you mean ‘What’s this girl done?’ I just said. She’s with him. We’re finished, and when I show up at the hospital, she acts like . . . like whatever. Hell, I do not know.”

  Ralph nodded. He was wearing a baseball cap with his long gray ponytail sticking out the opening in the back. He took the cap off and made an adjustment to how it fit. Without the cap, his hair was flat against his skull. Seth could see the age in him when he was exposed like this, with deep lines in his forehead and around his eyes.

  Ralph said, “That’s just it, Seth.”

  “What is?”

  “What you said at the end. You don’t know. It’s like that plant on the wall over there. I’ve done what I can do to make that plant bloom and it won’t for now and I’ve got to accept it. Maybe it will bloom someday and maybe it won’t and that’s how it is.”

  “Hayley’s not a plant.”

  Gus came running back into the garden, the ball in his mouth and his paws muddy. He’d been near the edge of the pond, but he hadn’t gone in. There was a mercy in that.

  Ralph said, “Grandson, you can’t force love out of Hayley. You can try but, trust me, you’re going to fail.” He picked up the clippers he’d been using on the plant and shoved them into the back pocket of his jeans. He nodded at the ladder and said, “Catch that for me. I think I’m done out here for the day.”

  They carried the ladder to the gardening shed, which was tucked behind Ralph’s house close to a grove of alders. It was too tall to fit inside the shed, but an overhang protected it and others from the weather. Seth set it there. Gus investigated it for interesting smells. Ralph spoke again.

  “So why’d you really go to that hospital, Seth? You tracking this girl?”

  “I didn’t know she was there.” Seth told him about Becca: who she was and how she’d needed to see where the hospital was and what buses to take to get to Coupeville. She’d asked him to take her, and he’d agreed. He hadn’t known that Hayley would be there.

  “So what happened to this Becca while everything was going on with Hayley?”

  Seth dropped his gaze. “Damn,” was his answer.

  “‘Damn’ happened to her?”

  “I don’t know what happened. I forgot about her. I felt so wrecked after talking to Hayley that I took off.”

  “Hmm.” Ralph took out an old cowboy neckerchief and wiped his hands on it. “Sounds like you were pretty darn miserable.” When Seth nodded, Ralph said, “Got it,” and headed toward the house.

  Seth followed. Ralph paused and then did something unexpected. He put his arm around Seth’s shoulders and guided him forward. He said, “Grandson, not everything in life is about you. If you can learn this now when you’re eighteen years, you’ve got one of life’s big lessons mastered.”

  “Fine. Okay. I know that, Grand. But I don’t get what that has to do with Hayley.”

  Ralph chuckled. Then he did something more unexpected than putting his arm around Seth’s shoulders. He kissed him on the side of his head. He said, “Throw that ball for Gus for half an hour. Wear him down so he’ll give me some peace. Then take yourself over to the Cartwrights’ place and say hi to Hayley’s little sister, Brooke. I expect she’s missing you.”

  “She’s twelve years old!”

  “I didn’t say to marry her, grandson. I said to say hi. You can manage that.”

  SMUGGLERS COVE FARM and Flowers was a sweep of farmland north of South Whidbey State Park. Decades earlier, it had been carved o
ut of a massive forest. When Seth reached the place, he didn’t turn into the long driveway at first. Instead, he pulled to the side of the road and looked at the farm.

  He’d always liked it. To him it was like something out of the nineteenth century, representing an ideal of what a farm should look like, with rolling hills, a pond behind the house, all the red buildings, a tractor parked somewhere, and four cords of wood stacked in a wood shelter.

  As far as Seth was concerned, it was perfect. But Hayley had always pointed out that it was perfect to him because he didn’t have to live there and do any of the work. She also thought it was completely ridiculous to have everything on the farm painted the same color of red. “More economical that way, my dad says,” she’d said. “But gosh, you’d think we could at least make the house a different color.”

  Seth thought the house was fine as it was. He liked the way it sat off the road on a rise of land with the forest trying to creep up behind it. He also liked the fact that the long low chicken house was close to the road and across the side of it SMUGGLERS COVE FARM AND FLOWERS had been hand-painted in white a long time ago. The words were fading, and he liked that, too. The fading suggested permanence to Seth, and he liked to know some things would always stay the same.

  He turned into the drive, which, like so many driveways on the island, was unpaved. Years and years ago, a hard pack of pebbles had been laid down, but over time the movement of cars and other vehicles over the hard pack had created tracks. Between these tracks and along their edges grew moss in the winter, creeping buttercup in the spring, and wild grasses in the summer. Autumn was a transition period. The rains began, and the ground waited for something to leap from it anew.