SW01 - The Edge of Nowhere

by Elizabeth George

  Becca thought how much she’d like to do just that. It had been so long, too long, since she’d been willing even to take the risk of seeing him. And now there seemed an added risk because of that single whisper she’d heard so clearly from Diana. Still, Becca wanted to go. So she said yes. Derric was more than worth any risk.

  They put her bike in the bed of the pickup and set off. Diana made the turn onto Fairground Road, and she didn’t say anything more until they reached the bottom of the steeply curved descent. What she said then caused a shiver of consternation to run through Becca’s veins.

  “May I tell Debbie Grieder that I’ve seen you and that you’re all right?”

  Becca hated to disappoint Diana, but she still had to say it. “Please, can you not?”

  “Becca, what’s wrong? Can you believe in me enough to tell me?”

  But how could she tell her? Becca wondered. Telling her anything meant ultimately telling her that the undersheriff had been looking for Laurel Armstrong and, on the path of Laurel, he’d come to the motel. This meant he’d been a mere few yards from Becca’s room and a mere few minutes from discovering her. To tell Diana this would mean telling her about Jeff Corrie and San Diego as well. It was just too much. So she said, “I can’t. But it’s not like I’ve done something bad. It’s just that . . . I can’t.”

  They were at the stop sign, facing Langley Road, and Diana didn’t move the truck forward. Instead she said, “Do you know that Seth Darrow might be in trouble because of you?”

  “Seth? Why?”

  Diana explained that Tatiana Primavera had seen Seth Darrow driving off from the motel just before Debbie Grieder discovered that Becca’s belongings were missing from her room. To Debbie this meant that Seth had taken Becca’s things and to Debbie that meant that Seth either knew where Becca was or had done something to her. “Debbie thinks she knows which one is the case,” Diana told her. “I’m worried she’ll talk to the sheriff about Seth.”

  Becca let her head fall back against the headrest of her seat. She couldn’t believe she’d caused Seth more trouble. Now she’d have to warn him about this. But how could she? There’d been signs all around Seth that were making it tougher and tougher for her to find safe footing with him. His obsession with Hayley Cartwright and the Cartwright family was one of those signs. The footprint she’d seen in the woods was another. His admission that he didn’t like Derric was a third. Becca felt dizzy with not being able to decide what she ought to do about him.

  They listened to the Dixie Chicks for the rest of the drive to Coupeville. When they reached the hospital, Diana pulled into the parking lot. She said her appointment was across the street. A doctor’s visit, but she wouldn’t be long. She’d come by Derric’s room when she was finished. She’d like to look in on Derric, too.

  “Doctor?” Becca asked quickly. “Are you sick?”

  Diana smiled. “When you get to be my age, you become that line from the poem: ‘Things fall apart / The center cannot hold.’ I’m in the ‘things fall apart’ stage of my life.” She shouldered open her door and told Oscar and the other dogs to stay. “See you in a bit,” she said to Becca.

  NO ONE WAS in Derric’s room in the middle of a school day. So in place of people reading to him, music was playing. It was cheerful marimba music, and it came from an iPod set up on the bedside table. Next to the iPod, Becca saw, the picture that had fallen from her hands now had a new frame. This one was chrome, but there was a smudge of stickiness on it where the price tag hadn’t come off completely. So as Becca sat next to the bed, she picked up the picture and worked her thumbnail against the remains of the glue. She also reached for Derric’s hand to tell him what she was doing. She said she hadn’t brought him anything to read, but she could tell him what was going on around him, if he would like that.

  The music altered in the time it took for two heartbeats. Suddenly there was no marimba music at all but rather a jazzy kind of tune played by saxophones, trumpets, a tuba, and drums. Along with this music came children’s laughter and a voice crying Derric! Derrrrr . . . ic! And over that crying rose the word rejoice, and the jazzy music increased in volume. But none of this was coming from the iPod.

  Derric’s fingers moved in Becca’s hand. They curved around hers, and they held on tightly. Becca gasped and looked at him. His eyes were open. He was looking at her.

  She thought, Oh my God, and she looked around frantically, knowing she had to get someone to come at once. But she was afraid to let go of his hand because she knew, somehow, that letting go would break a connection that had been established between them.

  Becca couldn’t tell if he really saw her, but as she watched, tears came into Derric’s dark eyes. They slid down his temples and began to wet the pillow on which his head lay. Between his hand and hers flowed an immensity of heart pain. He seemed to struggle for breath.

  She said, “Derric, can you see me? Derric?”

  She wanted to hold his hand in both of hers, so she put the framed picture back on the table. She took his hand in her palms.

  Instantly, everything stopped: the music, the laughing children, the Derr . . . ic! the rejoice! and most of all, Derric himself. His hand went slack in Becca’s, his eyes closed, and his breathing returned to normal. Only the faint trail of tears on his temples and the damp spots on his pillow indicated he’d undergone a change at all.

  “No!” Becca sank back in her chair. She looked from Derric to the picture of him, the band, and the children. And she understood.

  It was all so simple. He was just like her. He wanted to go home to Uganda. He was no more a Whidbey Islander than she was.

  She saw the solution to his deep slumber. Somehow, she thought, they needed to make him understand in his unconscious state that he could go home to Uganda. And if they were able to make him understand that, he’d return to them. He’d have a reason to return.

  Becca knew she had to get this information to Derric’s parents. But how to do it? And who was going to believe her anyway, when it came to revealing what Derric was trying to communicate?

  The door swung open. Diana Kinsale came into the room. She took one look at Becca and came to the bed. “He wants to go back to Uganda,” Becca whispered.

  She moved away from the bed. She paced to the far wall and back to the bed and back to the wall where she looked at the map of Africa with its tiny flags.

  She turned back to the bed. Diana stood there with her hand on Derric’s forehead. Her eyes were closed.

  The door to the room opened again and Derric’s father walked in. He looked neither right nor left but rather directly at the bed in front of him and at Diana Kinsale, who stood next to it. Becca froze as Undersheriff Mathieson crossed the room to stand at Diana’s side.

  She turned to him. She removed her hand from Derric’s forehead and extended it to Dave Mathieson. As he bent to kiss his son, Diana nodded at Becca and then at the door. Becca was leaving soundlessly when she heard Diana’s voice as she spoke to Derric’s dad.

  “He’ll be back,” she said. “You can trust that, David.”

  BECCA HAD KNOWN the risk when she’d left the Dog House and sneaked up to the cemetery. She’d also known the greater risk of going to Coupeville in order to see Derric. Those risks had seemed worth it at the time: fresh air and a chance to touch Derric’s hand again. But she had to rethink the value of both as she crept back to First Street and the ancient tavern. For it was late in the day, her approach took her right in front of the Good Cheer thrift store, and as she was coasting by, intent only upon the slope that would take her to the Dog House’s cellar, Jenn McDaniels walked out of the store.

  “Hey!” got Becca’s attention, followed at once by a torrent of foul language, whisper language but perfectly clear to her. She became immediately queasy at the sight of Jenn. With the small, tough girl was a sandy-haired woman carrying a plastic bag of secondhand clothes. Jenn said something to her and jumped into the street.

  “Where the hell have you
been?” she demanded of Becca. The woman moved off toward a line of cars and got inside one of them. She didn’t start it.

  “Oh hi,” Becca said casually. “Is that your mom?”

  “I’m asking the questions, Beck-kuh,” Jenn replied.

  “You are? Is this a cop show or something?”

  “Very funny. Do you know exactly how much trouble you’re in because of school?”

  “So? Are you the truant officer now?” Becca asked her.

  “You’ve dropped out, haven’t you?” Jenn demanded. “Just like that loser boyfriend of yours. And he’s in bigger trouble than you are. Everyone who touches you gets into trouble. Why don’t you leave this place and take your trouble with you?”

  “Nice to see you, Jenn.” Becca began to move off.

  Jenn grabbed the handlebars of the bike. “Nothing happened to anyone before you got here, Beck-kuh King. We were all just fine. Then you show up and Derric gets told to take care of you and the next thing we know, he’s in a coma.”

  “Like I had anything to do with that,” Becca said.

  “Yeah, just like,” Jenn countered. She shifted her weight from one muscled leg to the other. She thought for a moment and then made a shrewd guess. “You were there that day, weren’t you? You knew he’d be there so you figured you’d just show up. Only he wasn’t as happy to see you as you thought he would be and you took care of him for that, didn’t you?”

  Becca said nothing. She was so close to her place of escape, the Dog House a mere thirty yards from where they were standing. She wanted to shove Jenn McDaniels out of the way and run to its safety. She also wanted to smack the other girl right across the face, however. But that was exactly what Jenn wanted, too, because come on come on come on just do it whipped from Jenn’s mind into Becca’s and she could see the other girl balling up a fist in preparation for what would follow. Her mom might be waiting in the car, Becca thought, but here was unfinished business and Jenn intended to complete it. Great way for me to stay anonymous, Becca thought. Great way to stay unnoticed by the undersheriff.

  She said to Jenn, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Think I don’t? Well, let’s see if Derric’s dad agrees with you.”

  Alarm shot through Becca, although she tried not to show it. “What’s that supposed to mean exactly?”

  “Exactly? It means he’s gonna want to know you were there that day, chick. The cops took down names, see, but they didn’t get yours. What d’you think they’ll do when I drop the bomb on them?”

  “They’ll probably ask you if you pushed him yourself. I know I would,” Becca told her. She jerked the bike away from Jenn’s grasp on it. She headed up First Street, away from the Dog House. It was a long hill, upward, but Becca was more than a match for its challenge now.

  * * *

  THIRTY-TWO

  Given time to cool off and think about things, Seth decided there was nothing he could do about whatever his grandfather believed with regard to the camping equipment. To explain who had it would put Becca at risk, and he wasn’t willing to do that. On the other hand, it came to him that there was something he could do about Hayley. He could see now that they were broken up for good, but he wasn’t about to let Hayley Cartwright get away with outright lies. Whether they were lies she was telling someone else, telling him, or telling herself, Seth was going to put a stop to at least one of them and that was the lie about her father. Something was wrong with Mr. Cartwright. The sooner his family admitted that, the sooner they could do something to help the poor guy.

  When he drove into Langley several days later and parked in front of South Whidbey Commons, it had just begun to rain. The afternoon was cold, so he dashed inside the building and grabbed some cider steaming from a Crock-Pot near the espresso machine. He took his cup into the farthest room. The computers were here.

  The connection was slow, like trying to pour cold syrup onto pancakes. Finally, the Internet showed on the monitor. Seth googled “dropping things” because he thought about that water bottle that had fallen from Mr. Cartwright’s hands as well as the logs he couldn’t manage to carry. But he found there wasn’t much to work with so he went with “muscle weakness” next, although it took him several tries to figure out how to spell muscle. That silent c killed him.

  A decent primary list popped onto the screen, everything from “muscle weakness causes” to “muscle weakness symptoms.” Seth worked through this painstakingly. He finally chose “muscle weakness in legs” because of the way Mr. Cartwright had been walking and because of that clutch, which he hadn’t been able to push down, and most of all because he—Seth—could read the four words “muscle weakness in legs” without any trouble. When he clicked on this topic, though, he was horrified to see forty-two pages of sites flash onto the screen.

  This, he realized, was going to be a real problem. He glanced at the computer next to him. A young girl sat there, gazing at her Facebook page. He thought about asking for her help, but he just couldn’t do it. She looked twelve years old, and he wasn’t about to admit to some little kid that he couldn’t read well enough to choose a Web site. So he began to fight through them.

  There were sites for fatigue and muscle weakness, there were sites for causes of weakness in legs, there was something called “fibromyalgia symptoms,” there was something about musculoskeletal disorders. Seth’s eyes ached with what he was trying to do, and he finally put his cheek in his palm. He stared at the screen and thought about how someone with a brain that didn’t misfire like his would have been able to read through this in twenty seconds flat.

  Then his eye saw something that his brain recognized without a struggle. In one of the sites, the first line of an article appeared and in that line were two words Seth didn’t even have to read because he’d been seeing them all his life: Whidbey Island.

  He clicked on this. What he came up with was an article about Lyme disease. He managed to get through it by sounding things out as he’d been taught in elementary school. What he learned was that Washington had the highest occurrence of multiple sclerosis in the country but the lowest incidence of Lyme disease.

  Seth thought about this for a moment. He knew that Lyme disease came from deer ticks. He knew that Whidbey Island was jumping with deer. Sometimes it seemed there were more deer than people, and he wondered for a moment how deer had gotten to the island in the first place. Had they swum? he asked himself. Did they just evolve? They sure hadn’t sauntered across the Deception Pass Bridge. Of course, they could have—

  Seth slapped his forehead. This was exactly what his brain always did. He’d be reading and then one idea would lead to another and before he knew it, he wouldn’t be reading at all any longer. He forced himself back to the matter at hand.

  The story was about a man on Whidbey Island who’d been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He’d been treated for MS for years, only to find out he had Lyme disease. Seth read through the symptoms of both diseases. He felt a ball of excitement inside of him.

  It all seemed obvious. There had, after all, been nothing wrong with the SUV’s clutch. Whatever was wrong, was wrong with Mr. Cartwright.

  Seth knew he had the answer he was seeking. He knew he needed to tell the family about this. He left the computer and headed out of the game room. He was striding to the door of the commons when it opened. The undersheriff of Island County walked in.

  THE FIRST THING Seth thought when he saw Dave Mathieson was that Hayley had called him and turned him in for pushing Derric off the bluff in Saratoga Woods instead of waiting for him to act on her suggestion and make the call himself. As things turned out, though, Dave Mathieson didn’t want to talk to Seth about Derric and Saratoga Woods.

  He said to Seth, “You’re just who I’m looking for. Debbie Grieder’s reported her niece missing. Becca King. What do you know about that?”

  Seth said, “Becca King?” as he rapidly assessed what he could tell the undersheriff without telling him anything useful.
This was the trail of bread crumbs that Becca was terrified of, the one that would ultimately lead her stepfather right to the Dog House to find her.

  “Debbie says that you and Becca are friendly,” the undersheriff said. “Just like you and Sean were friendly, as a matter of fact.”

  “Hey, I knew Sean,” Seth declared. “He taught me to play chess. So put me in jail.”

  “Don’t get smart with me. You were seen leaving the motel after Becca’s disappearance.”

  “Who supposedly saw me?”

  “Don’t worry who saw you. Just know someone did and that person reported you to me. Do you want to tell me about it? We’ve got a missing girl whose belongings were left behind but now are missing, too. For the moment, I’m assuming she’s a runaway. I’m going to continue assuming that unless you give me a reason to assume something else. So, were you at the motel?”

  That question told Seth that the undersheriff didn’t actually know for sure, no matter what he’d been told. So he replied by saying, “Not since Becca left.”

  “So you know she left.”

  “You just told me she was a runaway, man,” Seth said. “Look, what’s this about? You think I did something to her? Why would I? Why would I do something to anyone?”

  The undersheriff just let Seth’s questions hang there. He just let their implications grow. He watched Seth closely, like a book he was reading. The silence dragged on.

  Seth finally said hotly, “I don’t know anything about Becca King. I don’t know anything about anyone else. Or anything else for that matter.”