SW01 - The Edge of Nowhere

by Elizabeth George

  Seth jounced in the direction of the house. He passed the field where Mrs. Cartwright’s horses grazed. He glanced over at them, but then he frowned. There were no colts or fillies with the mares, and at this time of year there should have been because part of the farm was used to raise horses.

  The farm truck wasn’t visible on the property. Nor was the family’s old SUV. The truck was usually kept by the barn and the SUV had a spot next to the house near a huge old maple, but now in the place of the SUV was a pile of wood. This consisted of the four cords that would see the family through the winter.

  Usually the wood was stacked in the shelter. Mr. Cartwright always made a point of that, as soon as it was delivered. He also made a point of planting the enormous vegetable beds for autumn, but Seth could see that that hadn’t been done. Along with the absence of colts and fillies and the pile of wood, Seth wondered what this meant. Mr. Cartwright’s desertion of the family was the first thing he thought of. That would be bad.

  It didn’t look like anyone was at home, but Seth got out of the VW anyway. He went up the stone path to the front porch, and when he mounted the steps, he saw the shifting light and dark against the sheer curtains that told him someone was inside watching television. So he knocked.

  Hayley’s sister Brooke was the one to answer the door. She didn’t hold it open for him to enter, though. She opened it only the width of her body and looked out at him to say, “Hi, Seth.”

  Seth said, “Hey. I was in the area. I came by to say hi.”

  “No you weren’t,” Brooke said. “No one’s just in the area.”

  “Okay.” He looked around, feeling caught. He said, “Hi, then,” and added with a gesture over his shoulder, “Why’re there no colts or fillies this year?”

  “Mom didn’t breed them. She didn’t want the trouble.”

  “Why?” The trouble was the stud fees and the bill for the vet but after that . . . ? The Cartwrights needed money, and horses meant money.

  “I dunno,” Brooke said with a shrug.

  “So’s anyone home?”

  “Just me and Cass.”

  “No Hayley, huh?”

  “She’s at special practice for jazz band.”

  “No Mom and Dad?”

  “They’re over town.”

  “Shopping or something?”

  “I dunno. No one tells me anything.” Brooke looked back into the house.

  Beyond her, Seth could hear the television racket. Some sort of corny music was playing. He could hear Cassie laughing, so he figured she was in there glued to a cartoon, and Brooke was supposed to watch it with her.

  She seemed really changed from the Brooke he’d known while dating Hayley. That Brooke had been a bubbly pest, a skinny twelve-year-old always wanting a ride in Sammy. This Brooke? One thing Seth knew for sure: She wanted more than anything to close the door on his face, but she’d been too well brought up to do it.

  He said, “Hey, Brooke. Is something wrong around here?”

  She turned back to him. “What d’you mean?”

  “The wood’s not stacked like usual. The vegetable beds are looking ragged. So I wondered . . . Everything okay? Nothing’s going on, is it?”

  She said, “Nothing’s going on. I’m just watching Cassie, and Hayley’s not home. Okay?”

  He said, “I didn’t come to see Hayley. Look, are you going to talk to me? Are you going to let me in or what?”

  “Or what,” she said. “I gotta go.” She closed the door softly. It clicked like a sigh.

  * * *

  TWENTY-THREE

  What with waiting for the two different buses to Coupeville as well as the stops they made along the route, Becca had time to do all her math and English homework before she reached the hospital. She was impatient to see Derric. This made the ride tedious, but the fact that the island buses were free made up for just about anything.

  The sun was shining, but the temperature was plummeting on this particular day. As Becca approached the hospital entrance, across the parking lot a bank of trees tossed some of their leaves into the wind. Winter came early to this part of the country, with frost arriving hard on the heels of the last fallen leaf.

  Inside the hospital, Becca raised the volume on the AUD box to block painful whispers hanging from the ceiling like bats. At the reception desk, she learned that the sign-in list for Derric wasn’t there. “That little bit of a girl took it off somewhere with her,” were the receptionist’s words, telling Becca that Jenn McDaniels was here at the hospital, too. She didn’t want to see Jenn, but she wanted to see Derric. She was going to have to put up with one in order to make the other happen.

  Jenn was sitting outside Derric’s door. Her face was screwed up into a knot, and she was copying the sign-up list neatly onto a new schedule. She said without looking up, “You’re not supposed to write anything on this except your name. Then when you come, you’re supposed to check your name off to show you were here.” At that, she looked up and saw Becca. Her face grew more knotted. Becca was grateful that the AUD box prevented her from hearing Jenn’s whispers.

  Jenn said, “Why d’you keep coming here? It’s not like you really knew him or anything.”

  Becca didn’t answer. Jenn had said knew instead of know and for one sick moment, Becca thought Jenn meant that the worst had happened. She said, “He’s okay, isn’t he?”

  “He’s in a coma, stupid. I don’t think that means he’s okay.”

  When Jenn said this, her features looked like a coiled snake, and Becca thought this was too bad because Jenn was actually a pretty girl, otherwise. But she couldn’t let herself be pretty because of rage, which rose inside her and filled her head, and Becca could feel it sweeping toward her. So she ducked into Derric’s room.

  Inside the room and away from Jenn, Becca pulled the AUD box’s earphone out of her ear. She approached the bed. It was quiet in here, with only the sound of the monitor that told the doctors Derric’s heart was beating strongly. Becca had heard at school that Derric was passing all the tests that proved he was alive and well inside his head. He simply wasn’t waking up, and no one could account for that. She’d also heard that a specialist had come from Seattle, but they’d learned nothing more from him than they’d learned from anyone else.

  She reached for his hand, with its long smooth fingers. She enclosed his hand in both of hers and she gripped it tightly. She closed her own eyes and whispered, “Please, Derric,” and then what came to her was sounds: the rustle of clothing, children’s laughter, and a high voice calling Derrrrrrrrr-ick like a chant, over and over. More laughter followed and with it came the music from a brass band.

  But there was nothing more, nothing for her to see or to understand. After standing at his bedside for several minutes, Becca finally released her hold on him, sat down as close to the bed as she could, and took a book from her backpack. It was the only book she’d brought from San Diego, something that she’d sneaked into her things. It was a clear and present danger to her because it was inscribed with loving words about imagination, words her grandmother had written to “my sweet Hannah” when she’d given it to her five years earlier.

  Becca opened it and began to read to Derric, just as the other kids were doing when they came to visit. “‘Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped into a little hollow,’” she read, and she found herself doing what good books always made her do. She sank into the story of an orphaned girl named Anne Shirley and her life in a place called Prince Edward Island.

  IT SEEMED TO Becca that she’d read for a long time when she heard someone enter the room. Lucky boy accompanied a nurse, who bustled to the IV drip and changed the bag, shooting Becca a smile and murmuring, “Hope you all keep coming. It’s important, you know.”

  Becca stretched and set the book on the bedside table. She saw, then, that something new had been added to the flowers and the silly stuffed kiwi bird that had been by the phone the last time she’d visited. A framed photograph
faced Derric’s pillow, and Becca picked this up. As the nurse left the room, Becca studied the picture.

  The setting wasn’t Whidbey Island. As far as Becca knew, there was no community of African children on Whidbey and certainly no group of African children who were in a brass band. But that was what the picture showed: a small brass band whose musicians were all children, and among the children was an unmistakable, grinning little Derric with a very large saxophone in his hands. The band was surrounded by laughing, smiling, clapping children, much younger than the band members. One of them had her arms around Derric’s waist and another was perched on his shoulders. This was the case for the other band members as well.

  Derric looked about seven years old, and his face was filled with so much joy that Becca reached for him, smoothed her fingers against his cheek, and grasped his hand in hers another time.

  Rejoice . . . rejoice . . . rejoice. Becca understood what his whisper meant. His rejoicing came from the music he made and from the children who listened to it. She wondered if anyone was playing music like this—big brass music—when no one was there to read to him. She could hear it clearly, so she knew how important it was to Derric. She wanted to tell someone but there was no one present, so she let herself be taken by the music as he himself was, and with his hand in one of hers and the picture in another, she listened.

  “He’s all right, isn’t he?”

  The words made her jump. She dropped the photo instead of dropping Derric’s hand as she had intended to do. The picture hit the floor and the glass shattered. She cried, “Oh no!” and she turned to see a woman in the room she’d not seen before.

  The woman had long salt-and-pepper hair done up in a ponytail, with wisps escaping from it and framing her face. She wore jeans, black-and-white Converse sneakers, and a hooded sweatshirt that had MARINERS on its breast. She hurried over and picked up the picture. She said, “Whoops,” and Becca said, “I’m sorry. I got freaked. I wasn’t all here.”

  “No harm done,” the woman said with a smile. “I can get another frame, and the picture’s fine. I’m Rhonda Mathieson, Derric’s mom. You must be Becca.” Strange for Derric accompanied the words but Becca didn’t have time to think what the whisper might mean because “Oh yeah, she’s Beck-kuh all right” came from the doorway.

  Jenn entered the room. Her gaze went to the broken glass on the floor and she said, “Great. What’d you do now?” A string of nasty words made up the whispers that accompanied the question along with string beans and minutes on the tanning bed for some reason, which Becca assumed had to be coming from Derric’s mom. She fumbled for the AUD box earphone and put it into her ear. Jenn’s lip curled when Becca did this. Her eyes narrowed in speculation.

  “Just an accident, Jenn,” Rhonda said. “It’s a picture frame. That’s all.”

  But it didn’t seem “that’s all” to Jenn. It seemed like a major crime. Becca looked away from what was coming off the other girl’s face, and she saw that Rhonda had turned to Derric. She wore such an expression of love as she gazed at him that Becca wanted to tell her that when she’d held Derric’s hand, she’d been able to hear and feel what was happening with him. “He’s totally there inside,” she wanted to tell Rhonda Mathieson. But she didn’t want to say that in front of Jenn.

  Rhonda picked up the book that Becca had left on the bedside table. She said, “Were you reading Anne of Green Gables to him?” When Becca nodded, Rhonda said, “What a nice choice.”

  “I didn’t really choose it,” Becca said. “I mean, it sort of chose me.” She glanced at Jenn and saw Jenn roll her eyes. She made a move to take the book back from Rhonda and stow it in her backpack, but the move came too late. Rhonda opened it and read the inscription. She looked up and, handing the book back, said, “Who’s Hannah?”

  “Dunno. The book was secondhand,” Becca said, although she felt her face beginning to flame when she told the lie. But she was saved from any further questioning by the arrival of the next person on Jenn’s sign-up list.

  This turned out to be one of the cheerleaders from the high school, a perky girl with a Bible in one hand and a bunch of balloons in the other. She said, “Oh! Hi there!” And then she seemed to take a reading from the room, probably from the expression on Jenn McDaniels’s face, which was no more welcoming to her than it had been to Becca. She said to Rhonda Mathieson, “I’m the leader of the prayer circle? Courtney Baker? I have sixty-seven kids in it?” in that way of talking that kids tended to use when they’re nervous about something. “We meet at school and pray for Derric?”

  “Rah, rah, rah,” Jenn McDaniels muttered. She sauntered to the door and left the room.

  The cheerleader got busy with the balloons and tied them to the end of the bed. Becca took the opportunity to say good-bye to Derric by touching his hand. The heart monitor raced suddenly. She looked from it to Rhonda.

  Rhonda’s expression said what her voice did not. Who are you really and why is my son reacting to the touch of your hand?

  BECCA WAS STRUGGLING into her backpack out in the hospital corridor when Rhonda came out of Derric’s room. Jenn had resumed her position by the door, where she had returned to the work of copying the sign-up sheet. Rhonda looked from Jenn to Becca and said, “Would you like to go into town for an ice cream?”

  Becca looked toward the door of Derric’s room. Rhonda said with a kind smile, “I think she’ll be in there for a while. She said she’s planning to read the whole book of Gideon to him. Jenn, you come, too, okay? It’s time for you to take a break.”

  Becca saw that Jenn was looking like a girl who’d rather take strychnine than have an ice cream with Becca King. Becca eased the earphone from her ear in time to catch has to that’s what . . . before the other whispers in the corridor from people passing began to overwhelm her. She replaced the earphone quickly and said, “That’d be great. Thank you, Mrs. Mathieson.”

  “Rhonda.” Rhonda looked at Jenn and said, “Come, too, Jenn.”

  Out in the parking lot, Jenn made for the front passenger’s seat, and Becca let her. She could tell it was important to Jenn to ride shotgun, and she herself was happy enough to climb in the back where she could go unnoticed and where the seat was cluttered with old copies of the island’s newspaper as well as flyers for fund-raisers: a group supplying food to the unemployed, an animal shelter, an orchestra, a playhouse, a land conservation organization . . . Everyone on the island was looking for money. Good causes crawled out of every corner.

  Becca had not yet been to the downtown of Coupeville, which sat on the far west end of Penn Cove. Like Langley, the downtown comprised only two streets, and cottages and Victorian houses climbed a hillside behind them. The buildings were quaint and colorfully painted, interrupted by a pier that stretched into the harbor with a wharf building sitting at the end of it, with the white letters C-O-U-P-E-V-I-L-L-E above a wide double door.

  Rhonda parked in front of an old tavern called Toby’s where a screen door was banging in the wind. She said, “Over there, girls,” and she pointed across the street to four wooden steps. These led to an ice cream parlor. Inside there were three tiny tables, all of them vacant. It was getting rather cold to be eating ice cream.

  Rhonda said, “Order up, ladies. I’m going for a banana split myself.”

  Jenn ordered a tin roof parfait. Becca wanted a strawberry sundae. But old habits are the most difficult to break and her old habit was “In through the lips and onto the hips,” so she settled for a biscotti, only to see Jenn scowl as if her choice made her a goody-goody or something. Rhonda added a scoop of strawberry ice cream to Becca’s order and said she wouldn’t feel so bad herself if she had a partner in her own crime.

  They were quiet for a bit as they ate their ice cream, and Becca couldn’t help noticing that Jenn seemed content for the very first time since she’d met her. She took note of ice cream, chocolate syrup, and peanuts perhaps being the answer to appeasing the anger that coursed through Jenn’s whispers like poison.
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  Rhonda dipped into her banana split and said, “Anne of Green Gables was one of my favorite books when I was a girl, Becca. It’s perfect to read to Derric because, obviously, he was adopted just like Anne.”

  “He told me you came to his orphanage in Uganda,” Becca said.

  Rhonda explained that she had gone with her church group to help out at a mission that took street kids in. She said that there were thousands of children homeless on the streets of Kampala because so much of the adult population had been devastated by AIDS. She said, “We think that’s what happened to Derric’s birth parents but no one knows for sure. He was only five when he was found by the mission. He’d been living behind a bar in the city, with eight other children. They’d cobbled together a little shelter from cardboard and tin. The oldest child was ten. The youngest was not quite two.”

  Gently, Becca pushed the rest of her strawberry ice cream away. Jenn continued with her tin roof parfait as if she hadn’t heard what Rhonda Mathieson had said, but perhaps, Becca thought, Jenn knew the story and was used to it. She herself couldn’t imagine becoming used to it. He’d been five years old, on the street, alone.

  Rhonda said, “When I first saw Derric . . . Well, who could resist that smile? We adopted him, and it all worked out. Just like Anne Shirley being adopted by the Matthew and Marilla in your book, Becca.”

  “Except Marilla didn’t want her at first.”

  Rhonda said nothing. She was thinking, obviously, but Becca couldn’t pick up her whispers because she had the AUD box’s earphone in her ear. Then Rhonda said with a quick smile, “No. Not at first. She didn’t want Anne, did she? I’d forgotten that part.”

  Rhonda got up to go to the counter, where she said something about buying more biscotti “to take home to Dave.” Becca then looked at Jenn for the first time since Rhonda had begun telling her story. Jenn, she saw, had finished her ice cream. She’d begun to simmer. Loathing was emerging right out of her eyes and Becca could feel its intensity.