SW01 - The Edge of Nowhere

by Elizabeth George

  She said, “I’ll give you some time with him, Hayley. It’s always nice to see you. Thanks for coming.”

  Hayley said, “Sure,” and approached the bed as Rhonda left the room. At Derric’s side, she saw that his lips were dry, so she dug a small tin of salve from her purse, and she smoothed some of it on his lips, and then with what remained on her fingers, she smoothed onto her own. It was like a kiss, and she thought about the night they had kissed each other after the Rwandan dancing. She couldn’t get her mind around everything that had changed in that moment and everything else that had happened since then.

  He was such a friend. He was so special.

  Look, I’ll give you Africa till you can have it yourself, was how he’d put it, and he’d pulled out the first of dozens of pictures he’d shown her from the orphanage where Rhonda had first seen him. Check out this van we used in Kampala, he’d said with a laugh. Good thing there wasn’t much rain there or the thing would’ve fallen apart. See this village, Hayl? We went there for a soccer game once, only instead we played music. See that thing there? It’s like an African xylophone. See, this is Warren. He learned to play it when he was seven. For me, though, it was always the sax.

  It hurt to imagine she could hear his words. Hayley put her head close to Derric’s on the pillow. She closed her eyes and whispered into his ear. “Please, come back, Derric. You’re the only one who knows, and I can’t do this alone. You’ve got to come back.”

  When she opened her eyes, though, his were still closed, still with that slight crescent of white showing at the bottom. She said to him, “We’re here at the hospital, Derric. Mom, Dad and me. Derric, things are getting worse.”

  WHEN SHE LEFT him, Hayley went to the imaging center at the back of the hospital. Her father was inside, having an MRI. Her mother was sitting in the waiting area, with a magazine open on her lap. She wasn’t reading it. Instead she was sitting with her head lowered and her eyes closed. She was praying. Praying was what her entire family did. Praying was what they’d been doing for months, but they all did it privately, and none of them admitted it to each other.

  When she sat, her mother looked up. Her eyes were watery. Hayley said quickly, “Did they tell you something?”

  “No, no. I was just thinking about that lighthouse in California. You remember the one with all the steps?”

  Hayley nodded because she’d heard the story. It was her parents’ honeymoon and, on a bet, her father had run up all three hundred steps from the lighthouse out on a peninsula back to the top of the cliff. He’d not even been breathing hard when he finished.

  “Anyway,” her mom said as she fished in her purse and found a tissue, “he’s not out of the machine yet. Listen. You can hear the pounding it makes. They wanted to give him a Valium before he went into it, but you know your dad. He said no. Then he said . . . He said, ‘I think I should get used to confined spaces.’” At that, her mother’s tears spilled over and she pressed the tissue to her mouth and said, “Sorry. Sorry, dear.”

  Hayley knew what he’d meant by confined spaces. She felt her own tears coming and got hastily to her feet. “I’m going outside for some air,” she said. When her mom nodded, Hayley hurried away.

  Outside, the cold made her gasp. A parking lot was the only thing out there, and she looked around, blinking hard. She noticed how beautiful the sugar maple was at the far side of the parking lot, its leaves crimson against a true-blue sky. She walked over to it, something beautiful and uplifting in a day when everything else was grim.

  She saw there was a bench beneath the tree and she sat upon it. She tried to remove her father from her mind, and after that she tried to remove Derric. But neither would leave her thoughts and when she closed her eyes she could see them both, and that made things worse.

  Someone sat on the bench next to her. She looked up to see Seth’s grandfather looking at her. Ralph Darrow was wearing an Indiana Jones kind of hat, and his hair was out of its ponytail for once. He looked like a cross between an outlaw and a mountain man, but he smiled and said to her, “I’d like to join you if you can bear the company.”

  “Guess I can,” she said.

  For a moment they were silent together before Ralph said, “You know, I sure like autumn. Some people think of it as the herald to winter and the long dark days to come. But I like the chance to be inside the house with a fire roaring and my feet on the hearth and me pretending to be reading a book.”

  “I remember your place in autumn just like that,” Hayley said. “Only I remember playing poker with you and Seth.”

  Ralph looked at her with a smile. “And you were one hell of a player, miss. Never saw anyone keep a poker face like you.”

  Hayley found a Kleenex in the pocket of her jeans, and she blew her nose on it. Ralph looked out at the parking lot, where there was nothing to see but cars, and he spoke to them, it seemed. “I stopped by the farm,” he said. “Brooke told me you all were up here.”

  “Mom asked me to come. I should really be inside with her, I guess. My dad’s . . . He had an appointment.” Hayley knew that she’d said too much with that, and she also knew that she belonged inside the hospital with her mother. But there was comfort in sitting at Ralph Darrow’s side. She could understand why Seth loved spending time with him. She said, mostly out of politeness, “How’s Seth?”

  Ralph smoothed his mustache in that way he had. “Well, I’ve got to say Seth’s not too good. But he’s coming along. He’s got his worries, though.”

  “What about?”

  Ralph shot her a look that clearly said, Hayley, I think you know.

  Hayley said nothing, but she stirred on the bench. She really should get back inside the hospital, she thought.

  Ralph said, “Now I’m not one to interfere in the affairs of the heart between two individuals. But I’ve thought some things over left, right, and center, Hayley, and I can’t work out the answer to something.”

  “What’s that, Mr. Darrow?”

  “Time was, you called me Grand. I kind of liked that.”

  “Grand,” she said.

  “Thank you. C’n I go on?”

  “Guess so.”

  “Okay, then. I can’t work out why you aren’t telling Seth the truth.”

  “I did,” Hayley cried. “I tried. He saw me with Derric and he was the one who wouldn’t call me back when—”

  “Except I’m not talking about Derric,” Ralph said. “Didn’t even know about him and whatever. I said I don’t interfere in affairs of the heart and I meant that, Hayley.”

  “But you asked me why—”

  “Why you won’t tell him the truth. Yes, that’s what I asked. And if you and I set Derric aside for just a moment here, I think you know what truth I’m talking about.”

  Hayley made no reply. She wanted to tell him. She wanted to let everything come pouring out. But at that moment, she saw her parents walking out of the hospital, and the wall that was her promise of silence—that point of family pride—came up between Ralph Darrow and her.

  Her dad was moving slowly with that foot-dragging problem of his, and her mother’s arm was around his waist. Hayley could tell from her dad’s expression that he didn’t like this help from his wife. She could tell from her mom’s expression that she was determined to help him anyway.

  Hayley pressed her lips together to keep from blurting out everything. She was so desperate to talk to someone. But with Derric in a coma and with Diana Kinsale having explained that things with Hayley’s father had to play out to the end, Hayley had no one. Certainly she didn’t have her mother or her father, who wouldn’t talk about anything.

  Ralph said quietly, “What would you like me to do, Hayley?”

  Hayley tore her gaze from her parents and looked at the old man. She saw that he was watching her dad. She said in a low voice, “Grand, it was never about Seth.”

  Ralph took one of her hands. He held it enclosed between both of his, and there was enormous comfort in this. “Guess I’v
e known that all along,” he said.

  She said, “Please don’t tell him.”

  “Course not. That’s something for you to do.”

  “I can’t. I promised.”

  “Understood. But sometimes you have to bend a promise. Thing is, no one can tell you when the right sometimes is. And I don’t intend to. He needs you, though.”

  “I don’t want to be needed.”

  “Don’t mean it like you’re thinking,” Ralph said. “What I’m saying is it’s time to help Seth get out of a mess he seems to be in. I can’t do that helping because I don’t see all the parts clearly, and if I intervene in some way, Seth’s not going to like that and I don’t blame him. He’s not a child and I can’t treat him like one. So the way I see it, I need your help.”

  Hayley looked at him. She knew he wasn’t telling the entire truth to her because the last thing Ralph Darrow would do was fail to see things clearly once he had the information he needed, and the second to the last thing he would do was not intervene to help Seth. So she knew he was asking her to help his grandson in order to help herself. And this was fine with her. God knew she needed the help.

  She said, “Okay, Grand.” She got to her feet.

  Ralph Darrow did likewise. “Thank you,” he said. “Now let me go say hi to your old dad.”

  * * *

  THIRTY-FIVE

  It was three evenings later when Seth startled Becca at the Dog House. She’d hidden in a corner of the library for as long as she could, working through some questions in her Eastern Civ book. But when the library closed, she had no choice but to make her way down to Seawall Park where she’d be safe from sight as she returned to the tavern.

  It was icy cold. She knew it would be only slightly warmer inside than outside the place, but at least she had a down sleeping bag there. She could crawl into that and wait for the hours to pass.

  The flashlight was where she’d left it when she departed the tavern, right inside the plywood basement door. She climbed up to the first floor. The old oak bar with the mirror behind it reflected her appearance like a ghost, and here, as usual, she could see the lights from across the street. They were dimmed because of the soaped windows, but they gave enough illumination that, as Seth had done when he’d first brought her here, she switched off her flashlight before she stepped into the room.

  That was when Seth materialized from behind the bar. He rose like the undead. Becca yelped in fright.

  He said, “Cool it. It’s me. Hell, I’ve been waiting for . . . like two frigging hours or something. Where’ve you been?” Dumb-ass chick was pretty much crystal clear, like a thought balloon over his head.

  It wasn’t quite right to be angry at someone because of their thoughts, which she wasn’t supposed to know anyway, but dumb-ass chick was too much for Becca. “I can’t stay in this place twenty-four hours a day,” she retorted tartly. If she sounded a little snappish, he’d have to put it down to her being tired.

  “So where were you? I thought your big deal was to stay out of sight.”

  “I was at the library if you have to know.”

  “And what? Like your stepfather isn’t going to check the library and every other place in town if he shows up? How about the undersheriff? I thought you were worried about him, too.” Lying . . . what she thinks is just what . . . Hayley might have . . .

  Becca desperately wanted Seth’s whispers to be clear. She needed them to be complete, to tell her what to believe at this point. She said, “I am worried about both of them. What? You think I was lying to you?”

  “I didn’t say that. Did I say you were lying?”

  “You were thinking it, Seth.”

  “Oh, you know that, do you? You can read minds now?”

  “It’s written all over you.” They were so perilously close to the truth about whispers that Becca knew she had to change directions as quickly as she could. She was cold, she was hungry, she didn’t see how she was ever going to get out of the Dog House, but she couldn’t let any of that provoke her into revealing something she wanted no one to know. So she said, “Where’s Sammy, anyway? You know, if someone sees that car and then sees you heading down the slope to the basement door—”

  “I’m not an idiot,” Seth countered. “I parked in the lot at the bottom of Third Street. I brought you something to eat.” He shoved a recycled grocery bag onto the counter toward her.

  Becca looked at him curiously. She asked herself what it meant that he’d brought her food: that she could trust him or that, like Jeff Corrie, he was merely adept at playing a role. She approached the sack on the bar, concentrating as hard as she could on Seth’s whispers. She was determined that they were going to tell her who he really was. But she had to hear them first and understand them second. Still, what she netted were only the usual maddening fragments. Maybe . . . even . . . no one . . . Grand . . . They amounted to less than nothing and left her only wondering even more about him: who he was and what he might have done.

  She had to see if he had on those sandals. She strode the rest of the way to the bar, went to the other side, and picked up the bag. She drew out a panini along with a take-away cup. She lowered her head to show Seth her embarrassed gratitude, but what she was really doing was looking at his feet. Boots, not sandals, were what she saw.

  Time of year, she told herself. Rain, snow, sleet, whatever. This wasn’t southern California. People didn’t wear sandals year-round in this place. But she wasn’t convinced.

  Seth said, “Tea’ll be cold.”

  She said it didn’t matter and thank you and she would pay him back for the food when she had the money. Then she added carefully that he hadn’t needed to wait. He could have put the panini upstairs next to her sleeping bag.

  He said, “I wanted to talk to you.” And then his whispers came in some force and they were all about Hayley Cartwright. Hayley . . . what she told her . . . why did she say that . . .

  Hearing this, Becca wondered if Seth knew she’d taken a lift from Hayley on that day her bicycle tire had gone flat. If he knew that, it was a short jump to conclude that he also knew she’d mentioned his sandals to Hayley. She said, “Go ahead. Talk away.”

  He said, “Let’s go to the back.”

  She evaluated this. It seemed safe enough. There were unsoaped windows but they overlooked Saratoga Passage not the town. So she said fine and she followed him down a hall from the bar into what had once been the restaurant. The lights from Seawall Park down below gave the room illumination enough to see that their shoes left footprints in the dust.

  Becca looked at hers. She looked at Seth’s. The sandal print came into her mind once again. It was like a yellow caution sign. Until she got to the bottom of why it had been next to where Derric had fallen, she knew she couldn’t believe in Seth completely. And when she did get to the bottom of why it had been next to where Derric had fallen, chances were still good that she’d know she couldn’t believe in Seth at all.

  “Aren’t you going to eat the sandwich?” he asked her. He was looking at her as if she smelled bad, and that look plus his whispers told Becca that, panini or not, he hadn’t really come as a friend.

  She knew right then that she couldn’t continue to live like this and expect Seth Darrow—or anyone else—to keep coming to her aid. She was going to have to do something to change her circumstances, and she was going to have to do it soon.

  He said, “I need to talk to you, Becca. Hayley thinks—” and Becca heard nothing else for a moment because the force of Seth’s whispers when he said Hayley actually pounded against her eardrums along with Hayley came . . . why can’t you . . . no I didn’t, why would I . . . know me, KNOW ME . . . something special . . .

  Actual words accompanied the whispers. But the whispers themselves overpowered everything. Becca flung her hands up. She put her palms over her ears and cried, “Stop it!” before she realized what she was doing and how all this would seem to Seth.

  His surprise at her reaction abruptly stop
ped both the whispers and the words. After a moment she was able to hear him say, “Stop what? I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m the one getting accused. So if you’ve got some reason for asking Hayley about my sandals, I want to know what it is.”

  She said, “What sandals?” She wasn’t playing dumb with him. For the moment she was only trying to regain her footing in the wake of his words and whispers.

  Seth didn’t understand that. How could he? He pushed his chair back with a scrape against the old wooden floor and he snapped, “Oh that’s just great! So you think so, too. I can’t believe it! Well, let me tell you: I didn’t touch that dude! I wouldn’t have touched him! Who the hell do people think I am?”

  He jerked away from the table, then. He strode over to the large plate-glass window and he banged his fist against it once, so hard the glass quivered the length of the room. His shoulders heaved. He gulped loudly.

  Becca stared at him. She felt momentary wonder. Oh my God, she thought. Seth was trying not to cry. And then she heard what’s the point . . . total joke. And then, quite simply, Becca knew.

  Sometimes whispers weren’t random thoughts. Sometimes whispers were also signs. And these whispers of Seth’s were telling her something about what was real and what was not. He hadn’t done a thing to hurt Derric Mathieson. He hadn’t lifted a finger against him.

  Becca got out of her seat. She was hesitant, but she still approached him. She put her hand on his shoulder and she felt him flinch. He swung around, and she flinched, too.

  Before he could speak, she said, “I saw your footprint in Saratoga Woods, Seth. It was right above where Derric fell. I asked Hayley about your sandals because I thought maybe a lot of people around here wear them, maybe it wasn’t your footprint at all.”