SW01 - The Edge of Nowhere

by Elizabeth George

  “So think of how everything’ll look to him once Jenn shoots her mouth off. Becca was there that day. Becca has disappeared. Becca hasn’t been in school. Jenn wants to hurt Becca because hurting people is what she does best. So she’s going to help the undersheriff find her. You know where she is, don’t you?”

  Seth looked cagey. “I’m not saying that.”

  “You don’t have to say it. I know you, Seth. If she came to you for some reason, you’d help her. That’s who you are. So help her now.”

  Seth examined her, chewing this over: not only her words but what they meant. He said, “I didn’t push him, Hayley.”

  She said, “I know. I’m sorry I ever said or thought . . . Look, we have stuff to talk about, you and I, but we can’t right now. Right now the important thing is protecting Becca. You’ve got to keep her away from the undersheriff and away from Jenn. Will you do that, Seth?”

  He nodded slowly. She turned to leave. But she could tell he was watching as she walked back to the truck.

  * * *

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  It was still early in the morning when Becca ducked out of the Dog House and pedaled toward the edge of town. She took a shortcut she’d discovered and ended up on Sandy Point Road, a route that would have destroyed her weeks earlier. But now she had no trouble with it, in part because of Seth’s bike and in part because of the shape she was in. Soon, she knew, she’d be able to do twenty miles with no problem.

  She made quick time to Diana Kinsale’s house, where the lights were on in the kitchen and the porch as well. Diana met her at the door. She was dressed for the day. She said, “Becca. Come in,” and she led the way to a sunroom. Her house was filled with warm autumn colors. Walking through it felt like falling into a hug.

  In the sunroom, all five dogs were lying on the warm concrete floor and tea was laid out for a visitor. Diana said, “All dogs stay,” as they raised their heads. Tails wagged, but they obeyed as always.

  Becca said, “They got to stay inside last night?”

  “No. They just wanted to say hello to you this morning.”

  Becca felt a tingle go over her as she understood from this that Diana had known she was coming. And she heard quite distinctly It’s just between the two of us, Becca, but this frightened her. She knew when she heard a whisper from Diana that Diana was making the choice to be heard. She just didn’t know what this meant.

  She remembered her grandmother saying to her, “Sometimes you’ve got to take the leap, hon, and this is going to be tough for you. See, when most people leap, they leap in darkness, but until you learn to master the whispers, you’ll always be leaping in half-light.” Becca finally realized how this applied to her: The whispers as she received them at this point in her life told her something, but they didn’t tell her everything, and with Diana this was one of those half-light moments.

  The half-light was duplicated outside the sunroom because dawn was breaking over the Cascade Mountains. It was making of the sky an unfurling banner in which the color rose was transforming into apricot, then into pearl gray, while above them both the arc of black night still hung.

  She said to Diana, “I need to trust you, Mrs. Kinsale.”

  Diana sat and gestured for Becca to do the same. She poured some tea. She said, “I think you’re in the midst of trust now. You wouldn’t have come here otherwise.” She looked out at the still, dark water that even now was just beginning to reflect the sky. She said, “It’s going to be beautiful today.” And then after a pause, “How can I help you, Becca?”

  Becca looked at Diana and felt her complete acceptance. This seemed to flow from Diana, like a river that Becca could plunge into if she wanted to. So she said what she’d been longing to say for weeks upon weeks, which wasn’t at all what she’d come to say.

  “D’you know where my mom is, Mrs. Kinsale?”

  “Safe is what I know,” Diana replied. “Safe is what I see.”

  Becca’s vision blurred. “I miss her.”

  “It’s a hollowness inside your chest. I know that feeling.” And when she spoke, the peace that came from Diana was a pool of calm.

  Becca said impulsively, “Can I live here with you? With you and with the dogs?” Then before Diana could answer, the rest poured out of her like a flood that sought to join that pool, as water always will. “The undersheriff is looking for me. I had to run from the Cliff Motel. I’ve been in the Dog House and I’ve missed school and I want to take a bath or a shower and I want to go back to school and have a place to live and—”

  Diana rose and came to her. She knelt in front of Becca’s chair and placed her hands on Becca’s knees. Becca looked down at them. She saw they were rough from gardening and rough from a long and useful life. She said, “Will you finally trust me, Becca?”

  At this, Becca felt something heavy and painful release from inside her. The sensation was like parts of her body lifting and dissolving and being washed away. “Yes,” she said.

  “Good. I want you to trust what I say to you. Here, this house, the dogs and I . . . these things aren’t what you need right now. Eventually they will be and when that time comes, I’ll know and I’ll tell you. But the time isn’t right.”

  Becca’s heart sank. “Why not?”

  “Because there are things you need to resolve first.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “You do. It doesn’t seem like it. But you have the wisdom to move forward and do what you need to do.”

  Wisdom? It didn’t feel like wisdom, Becca thought, whatever it was that was churning inside her. What it felt like was being caught in a maze where at every dead end loomed something else that she either didn’t understand or didn’t know what to do about: Derric, Seth, the sheriff, Jeff Corrie, her mom, hiding out at the Dog House, missing school all this time . . . It made Becca desperate for someone to rescue her.

  But there was no rescue that she didn’t bring about herself. That, she realized, was Diana’s point. She said, “I wish I’d known Derric better before everything happened. I wish I’d known everyone better. I’d be able to do the right thing then.”

  “Which is what?”

  And here was the point of departure. The road forked here, and Becca knew she could choose which route to take. She’d chosen so badly in San Diego with Jeff Corrie’s gleaming smile upon her. To choose badly again . . . Becca didn’t see how she could cope with that. There was too much at stake. But Diana was waiting—just as Jeff Corrie had waited—and Becca had to decide if she wanted to know what this woman before her was really made of.

  She finally swallowed hard. “I’d have to tell the undersheriff what I saw in the woods.”

  Diana rose. She moved an ottoman over to Becca’s chair and she sat on it, close to her instead of across from her. She put her hand on Becca’s arm and said, “The undersheriff’s caught up in this as much as you are. Your worries match his because they’re centered on the same situation and the same group of people.”

  “Except I’m part of that group because he wants to find me. So if I talk to him—”

  “He’s turned all around, Becca. Just like you. It’s no different, really, except that he’s an adult. He’s trying to sort through the same doubts and fears. He’s trying to help Derric. Same as you.”

  “I get that, but I can’t go to him, Mrs. Kinsale. Not only because of the Dog House and everything but because he’ll go after someone if I do.”

  “Isn’t that the point?”

  “Not if that person didn’t do anything.” Becca cast an agonized glance at Diana, whose faded blue eyes watched her so kindly, whose fingers were so warm on her arm. She fought with herself for a moment, trying to reach a decision. Then she said on a sigh, “Seth.”

  “Ah.”

  “He doesn’t like Derric, but he didn’t push him.”

  “No?”

  “Dylan Cooper probably did.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “Which part?”

&nb
sp; “Let’s start with the Seth part. Are you sure that he didn’t push Derric?”

  Becca considered what she knew about the boy, and her mind filled with images: Seth and his dog, Seth giving her his bicycle, Seth handing her a sandwich from the Star Store on her first day in Langley, Seth driving her to Coupeville just to see Derric, Seth helping her find the Dog House.

  Diana said quickly, “Yes. Yes. I see.”

  Becca stared at her. Diana cocked her head. Becca said, “You . . . you see?”

  Diana smiled. “I do.”

  Another fork in the road, Becca realized. Another decision for her to make. She plunged on. “Seth’s always helped me. I want to help him now.”

  “That certainly makes sense. Let me think a minute.” Diana looked back out at the water, where dawn was coming on quickly now, stretching fingers of light up into the sky. She said, “I remember you that day, in the woods. You were looking for a dog, and I gave you Oscar’s leash. Let’s go back to the moment when you arrived in the woods. Close your eyes and tell me what you see in your memory.”

  Becca did as Diana asked. She allowed her mind to fill with the images of that day as it unfolded: heading across the meadow with Seth and Gus, walking toward the opening in the trees that marked the trailhead into the woods, huge fir trees overhead, more trails opening off of the one they were on. But she didn’t have time that day to learn the names of the trails because the moment she stepped into the woods—

  Becca opened her eyes. She looked at Diana and was very afraid of revealing more. It was a half-light moment. Go on, hon.

  Diana said nothing. She took a sip of her tea. She waited.

  Becca spoke, “All right. I could hear mind whispers in the air so I knew the woods were full of people. Usually I have to be with people to hear their mind whispers, but this was different. I don’t know why. And there was a scent, and I knew from this that Derric was there. Then Gus heard dogs barking and he ran off. Seth had to run after him. I tried to follow, but I got lost.”

  “You’ve been lost ever since,” Diana murmured. “Not just you, but all of you. You, Seth, Hayley Cartwright, Jenn McDaniels.”

  “Jenn thinks I’m ‘after’ Derric. She wants to get me into trouble. She was how the AUD box broke. She threw it against a wall. From the day I got to school, she’s been a complete—”

  “Yes,” Diana murmured. “But let me think a moment.”

  They sat in stillness. Diana’s eyes were closed. When she opened them, she said quietly, “We need to take a drive. It won’t take long. I think it’ll allow you to resolve one thing of all the concerns you’re trying to deal with.”

  DIANA DROVE THEM in the direction of town, but at the end of Sandy Point Road, she didn’t head into Langley. Instead of right, she turned left, and soon enough they came to the main highway. They crossed over onto Cultus Bay Road, which led to the other side of the island.

  The way began with forest, deep and dark, where conifers grew in abundance and alders wore their seasonal crowns of yellow leaves. When the forest ended, farmland spread out for half a mile or so, and then they were in the trees again, and the road carved a path south until, finally, they began to curve downward, and the scent of salt water grew strong as they approached the water.

  They crawled along a hairpin turn and then another. After a third, a rutted driveway to the right displayed a crusty handpainted sign reading LIVE BAIT with a faded red arrow pointing in the direction of the water.

  Diana pulled to the shoulder here. She nodded toward the driveway, saying, “We must walk from here.”

  The pebbles crunched loudly beneath their feet as Diana and Becca walked along the unpaved lane. Their breath was misty in the air, which itself was damp and held the scent of seaweed and smoke. Some two hundred yards along, the lane fanned out to a lumpy parking area and here stood several ramshackle buildings.

  One of them was a wretched rusting trailer, a single-wide with threadbare curtains and drooping steps leading to a porchless front door. Another was an unpainted shack with LIVE BAIT lettered across its side. The last was an ancient gray house whose roof sagged ominously and whose rain gutters were so choked with debris that they looked like miniature garden planters with weeds growing from them.

  Like the single-wide trailer, the building had precarious-looking steps that climbed to a narrow porch and a door, one with a screen in poor repair. Also like the single-wide, the house had windows with threadbare curtains, although it was easy to tell that these curtains had been fashioned from bedsheets long ago.

  The house stood near the water, and stretching out from it was a pier. To one side a clothesline extended from the house to the bait shack, and on it hung clothes, although how they were supposed to dry in the cold, damp weather was anyone’s guess. Piled here and there with no apparent sense of order were mounds of fishing nets, floats, crab cages, buckets, wheelbarrows, and life rings. Farther off a toilet lay on its side, with a rotting hammock draped over it. An aluminum boat sat on a boat trailer near the toilet, a huge dent in its bow and a tarp thrown over a hump that was its motor.

  The woodsmoke they’d smelled as they’d walked along the lane was coming from the house. As they observed it, a light came on. The door opened, and Diana drew Becca out of sight but not so far that she couldn’t see a man come outside. He was coughing wetly, and he headed down the pier to hack and spit and pee into the water. A gull sat sleepily on a piling at the end. He picked up a shell and threw it at the bird. He spat again, this time on the boards of the pier. He ground his foot into the spit and headed back toward the house.

  Diana touched Becca’s arm. Becca looked at her. Let’s go, my dear.

  They didn’t speak until they were back in the truck and Diana had driven farther along to the end of the road, where a boat launch identified the area as Possession Point. Then Diana braked the truck for a moment, looked at Becca, and said, “You know why I brought you here.”

  “Jenn lives there,” Becca said.

  Diana put her hand on Becca’s shoulder. Becca felt the same tingle she’d felt before at the woman’s touch. “People usually hate because of a despair they can’t let themselves feel.”

  Becca swallowed and looked out the window. She nodded.

  They said nothing else until they had returned to Diana’s house. Then she said to Becca, “There are always answers to questions. To Jenn, to Derric, to Seth, to everything. The point of struggling through the questions is to recognize the answers when you see them and not to give up until you find them.”

  She got out, and when Becca did the same, she faced her over the hood of the truck. “You can do this, Becca,” she said firmly. “Trust me in this. I know that you can.”

  * * *

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Seth was heading out to his car in the morning darkness when the Star Store’s manager zoomed into the parking lot and pulled up next to him. Jake cranked down the window of his Toyota and said, “Glad I caught you. Got a call this morning, and Trevor can’t restock. Truck’s showing up any minute. C’n you stay?”

  Seth said sure. He always needed the money. He went back to the store and was swinging open its door when the delivery truck pulled into the parking lot off Second Street. The guy slid open the back and the smell of vegetables wafted out. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage . . . Seth went back inside to the storeroom, where he took a knife from the holder and sharpened it.

  He was ready when the delivery man rolled the first stack of boxes into the vegetable area at the front of the store. There, the windows looked onto First Street and the streetlights were still shining on sidewalks empty of people. Seth set to work, slicing the dirty ends off the broccoli. He’d been doing this for less than five minutes when he saw the sheriff’s car rolling toward him from the direction of city hall.

  Seth looked to see who was driving, but he pretty much knew it would be Dave Mathieson. The undersheriff locked eyes with him and pointed in a way that said Don’t move an inch. But Seth wasn’
t planning on moving. He was planning on doing his job.

  In three minutes Derric’s father was standing in front of him, one hand resting on the gun on his hip. The undersheriff said, “I want to talk to you.” Seth thought that was pretty obvious but what he said was “How’s Derric doing?”

  The undersheriff ignored this question, but Seth was ready for what he had to say in place of reporting on Derric’s condition. “I want you coming clean about this Becca King,” he said, which allowed Seth to see that Hayley had been right. Jenn McDaniels had shot off her mouth.

  “What d’you want to know?” Seth asked.

  “The nature of her relationship with Derric.”

  “Absolutely no clue.”

  “Then where she is. Everyone says her name. No one knows where to find her. There isn’t even a picture of her at the high school. Unavailable for photo on the day they were taken. There’s nothing about her on Facebook, either. If she’s not on Facebook, I have to wonder if people are just making her up, if she even exists.”

  “I’m not on Facebook.”

  “I rest my case.”

  Seth dropped his gaze. He understood perfectly what the undersheriff meant. To Dave Mathieson, he was just some dropout kid waiting to be arrested for breaking into the second home of a dot-com millionaire at Useless Bay. He said, “Yep, that’s me, Sheriff. Start to finish.”

  At that, Dave Mathieson seemed to realize he’d crossed the line for a supposed officer of the law talking to a kid holding a head of broccoli. He said, “Look, Seth, I’m just trying to find this girl. I want to know what happened to Derric, and I think you understand that. Everything I’m hearing now keeps taking me back to Becca King when it’s not taking me back to this other name—Laurel Armstrong—who apparently isn’t anyone either, at least not anyone on Whidbey Island. So I want to talk to this Becca. But she’s like a ghost around here.”

  As the undersheriff was speaking, Becca herself materialized exactly like the ghost he thought she was. Seth saw her over the undersheriff’s shoulder, crossing First Street from the Dog House. He saw her heading toward the Star Store, and he knew that she was probably looking for him, for it was too early for her to be seeking anyone else because there was no one else out and about other than himself, Jake, and the undersheriff. He tore his gaze away from Becca as the sheriff said, “What does she look like, at least?”