The Edge of Nowhere (17 page)

THEY DIDN’T TALK
on the route from Coupeville back to Newman Road, where Ralph lived. It was dark, and he liked to concentrate on his driving. “Us oldsters,” was the way he put it, “don’t need to hit any deer in our declining years.”

Ralph liked to talk like an old island hand, which he was in a way. But the rest of what he was he never spoke of: a graduate of Stanford University, a postgrad of Cal Tech, and a nuclear physicist. It turned out that he’d preferred working with his hands, not stuck in his head. A few years out in a world defined by rush hours on California freeways and work hours in the lab, and he was ready to return to Whidbey Island, where he’d taken up life as a master carpenter.

His house was on the eastern side of Newman Road, which created a semicircle that began on the highway and ended on the route into the center of the town of Freeland. A bumpy drive led up to the property. It was deliberately unpaved because Ralph hated paving. Had he had his own way in the matter, he wouldn’t even have disturbed the land enough to build a house on it. But he’d been married then, long before his wife had passed on, and Seth’s grandmother hadn’t been a woman who would have considered living her married years and bringing up her children in a tent. So the house had been built, all of it with Ralph’s own hands. At this point it had stood sympathetically in a dale on its huge plot of land for forty-two years.

When they got inside, Ralph lit a fire and pointed to one of the two armchairs that sat in front of it. He took the other and rested his feet on a hearth fashioned from river stones.

Seth joined him. He looked around this room he’d known as long as he’d known anything, and he realized that there wasn’t a single object in it that had not been made by his grandfather’s own hands, except for a picture frame on the fireplace mantel, in which Seth and his immediate family and Ralph all posed with Seth’s sister at her graduation from South Whidbey High. It came to Seth as he looked up at this picture that Hayley had taken it. But that was as raw a spot inside him as was the fact that his sister Sarah was on a scholarship at Stanford while he was here, freshly minted as the family ex-con.

Seth sighed. Ralph glanced at him and waited. He could see what Seth was looking at, and he knew it was a sore spot in Seth’s heart that the hand of cards he’d been dealt prevented him from being what his older sister was.

Seth finally said, “I guess the smart DNA all got used up by the time I got here.”

“Meaning?” Ralph asked.

“Meaning Sarah. It’s like all the DNA got worn out. It’s like I’m the turkey sandwich and she’s Thanksgiving dinner.”

Ralph chuckled. “Most people like Thanksgiving dinner only for the sandwiches afterwards,” he said.

“You know what I mean, Grand. I get tired sometimes.”

“Of?”

“Of being the family loser.”

“That’s how you see it?”

“Definitely.”

Ralph nodded and considered this for a few moments as the fire popped and crackled. Then he slapped his hands on the arms of his chair and got to his feet. “You come with me, grandson,” he said.

Ralph went to the door, where he grabbed his old denim jacket and a flashlight. He handed a second flashlight to Seth. He went outside and began to walk in the direction of the forest.

Uh-oh, Seth thought. He needed to deal with Gus. He needed to get to his VW. But he also knew his grandfather. Ralph had an intention about something and when he had an intention, there was nothing Seth would be able to do to divert him from it. So he followed.

Ralph strode to the forest behind his house, to a trail that disappeared into the trees. The trail marked a narrow trek, hacked by Ralph through thick vegetation that grew like a contagion everywhere. They came to a secondary trail some way into the forest. They took this and then a third trail. At that point Seth knew where his grandfather was taking him although he didn’t yet know why.

It was a clearing, perhaps the size of four parking spaces. In it, two ancient hemlocks had grown close together to form a V with their branches. In this V was a tree house. Across from the tree house and in the clearing stood an old log bench overtaken by lichen.

When they reached this spot, Ralph made for the bench and sat on it. Seth did the same, and together they shone the beams of their flashlights on the tree house, fifteen feet above the ground and accessed by a ladder.

This was no ordinary tree house. It had a viewing deck in front of its door. It had two glass-paned windows, and both of them opened. It had a metal roof and screen-topped metal chimney that spoke of a woodstove inside the place as well.

Ralph pointed to the structure and said, “Now that, grandson, is not the work of the family loser.”

“I ought to use it more,” Seth told him. “I put you to a lot of trouble not to be using it.”

“Using it wasn’t ever the point. Building it was. Just look at that thing, Seth. There’s artistry in it, and you were the artist.”

“No, I wasn’t. You showed me what to do.”

“That’s how we all start. Knowledge is passed along. But at the other end of the knowledge has to be someone with the talent and skill to make something out of it.”

Seth observed the tree house. It was a single room only, but he knew that, inside, it was worthy and perfect because that was how Ralph had insisted it be built. It was rainproof and snowproof, and it was warm inside when you lit the small stove.

As they looked on the tree house together, Ralph spoke. “Where’s Sammy, Seth?”

Seth told him that the VW was in the parking lot of Saratoga Woods.

“And Gus?” Ralph asked.

“Hayley’s got him.”

Ralph looked away. His lips curved down. He smoothed his mustache. “Hayley,” he finally said, and he sighed. Then he murmured, “There’s a kind of wood that won’t take sanding, no matter how you go at it. It can’t bear it, Seth.” He meant by this that Seth had to let this one go, let Hayley go, let it
all
go and get on with his life.

“I know that,” Seth said, “but I just can’t do it.”

“How’s ‘can’t’ been working for you so far?”

“Not at all,” Seth admitted.

“Why’d you go out there, anyway?” Ralph asked. “Why Saratgoa Woods of all places?” and what Seth knew was that Ralph was asking because of Gus. He wanted to know why Seth had taken the lab out to Saratoga Woods, when the woods were vast and Gus wasn’t yet trained well enough to run there.

“It wasn’t the best idea,” Seth said morosely. “I made the wrong decision.”

“True enough and I’m glad you see that,” Ralph told him. “So let’s do something about it.”

FOURTEEN

S
omething
was getting Sammy first. Ralph said they’d go by way of Lone Lake, which shimmered like a silver coin in the moonlight, motionless water with a canopy of stars slung over it.

Seth could tell from his grandfather’s silence that it weighed heavily on his mind that Seth felt like such a loser half the time. He knew it weighed doubly on his mind that Seth hadn’t yet got past Hayley Cartwright.

They came upon Saratoga Woods from the direction opposite to the one Seth had taken earlier in the day. This route carved through a woodland of conifers that were black in the darkness, split occasionally by narrow driveways, overgrown with moss and ferns.

At Saratoga Woods, Ralph pulled the truck next to poor little Sammy. The VW looked sadly abandoned at this time of night. Seth thought his grandfather would just drop him off and head back home, but instead, Ralph shut off the Ford’s engine and got out as Seth did.

Seth said thanks: for paying his bail, for coming up to Coupeville, for carting him back to the woods. Ralph nodded, but then he cleared his throat and from this Seth knew his grandfather had something to say.

It was this. “Not a good time for Gus, grandson.”

Seth said, “Huh?”

Ralph said, “Best I hang on to the dog for a while.”

This hurt, and Seth was surprised by how much. Ralph had given him the dog, and to have Gus taken away like this, with ten brief words, was a blow that felt like a fist smashing right below his heart.

Ralph, of course, knew all this, so he said, “It’s the woods, grandson, that’s all it is.”

“What’s that s’posed to mean?”

“You can’t train a dog and be his friend at the same time, Seth. Training comes first. Friendship follows. The way I see it, you’ve got some things on your mind right now, things that need dealing with. Training a dog’s not one of them. You take some weeks now and get yourself sorted out. Gus’ll be fine with me.”

“It’s Hayley, isn’t it?” Seth demanded bitterly. “It’s the fact that I handed him over to Hayley and not someone else when the deputy took me.”

Ralph shook his head. He was about to say that Hayley Cartwright was only part of what he was concerned about, but suddenly a telephone began to ring. He and Seth stared at each other and then looked around to find the source of the noise. Simultaneously, they headed for the information shelter.

The ringing stopped. Then in a moment, it began again. It was an easy matter to trace the sound then. Ralph plucked the cell phone from one of the shelter’s rafters.

Seth heard only Ralph’s end of the conversation, which began the way Ralph always answered the phone. “Ya
hoo 
. . . What d’you mean ‘Who is this?’ Who the dickens is
this
? . . . I heard the ringing and followed the noise, that’s how . . . Saratoga Woods, outside of Langley . . . You nuts, or what? . . . Ma’am I am seventy-two years old and so’re my eyes and no way am I making that drive tonight. I’ve done it once already . . . You want it, you send someone for it . . . Ralph Darrow . . . I’ve got no problem whatsoever with that.”

He flipped the phone closed and shoved it into his pocket. He said, “Cops. Someone used this thing to call nine-one-one today about some kid falling in the woods. You know anything about that?”

Seth shook his head.

Ralph evaluated him for a good thirty seconds. “I can’t help you if I don’t know,” he pointed out.

“There’s nothing to know,” Seth declared.

SETH’S GRANDFATHER WENT
the way they’d come, which was also one of the routes he could take to get to Smugglers Cove Farm and Flowers, where Hayley Cartwright and her family lived. Seth, on the other hand, went into Langley to the Cliff Motel.

It came to Seth that he didn’t know which room Becca King was staying in. Several rooms were lit, and he didn’t think it would be one of his better ideas to knock on all the doors looking for her. This meant he would have to ask Debbie Grieder where Becca was.

He went to the office. The door was unlocked, and a bell rang to alert Debbie that a potential customer had just walked in. She came from the back where her apartment was, and when she opened the door, he could hear the television and Chloe and Josh squealing over something that they were watching.

Seth said, “Hi, Mrs. Grieder,” in his most polite voice. “Came by ’cause Becca left something in my car, only I don’t know which one of the room’s hers.”

Debbie gave him the kind of look a teacher gives to a kid when she suspects there are lice crawling in his hair. She said, “What?”

“Her cell phone. Must’ve fallen out of her pocket. I didn’t notice till a while ago.”

Debbie held out her hand. “I’ll give it to her.”

Seth said, “I sort of need to talk to her, too. I mean, just for a second. It won’t take long.” He wanted to add that it wasn’t exactly Debbie Grieder’s business what he was doing there since she wasn’t Becca’s mother or anything, but he didn’t. He might not have been a scholastic whiz kid, but he wasn’t stupid.

Debbie said, “You need to stay away from that girl, Seth Darrow. She’s fourteen years old.”

“I know that. I’m not interested in her in that way.”

“Then
what
way are you interested in her?”

“No way, really. But we lost Gus in the woods this afternoon, and I wanted to be able to tell her what happened.”

Debbie had an expression on her face that said she believed that story pretty much as firmly as she believed the moon was made of Limburger cheese. But she said, “She’s in room four-forty-four. Make it quick.”

Seth nodded and backed out of the office so that the daggers Debbie was aiming at him with her eyes wouldn’t end up in his back. He went to Becca’s room and knocked on the door.

When she answered, Seth was surprised to see that she was in her pajamas. It seemed early for that. She also didn’t have her glasses on, and she wasn’t wearing her usual mask of makeup, so she looked different to him. Her eyes were bloodshot, too, as if she’d been crying.

Seth wanted to feel some sympathy for her, but the sight of her brought everything back to him in a rush. Most of all what it brought back was the hours he’d spent in the jail, worrying about his parents and what they would say, thrashing over the mess he’d made of his relationship with Hayley, waiting for the cops’ questions to begin . . . His mind went a little crazy with everything he wanted to say to Becca about the kind of trouble he was now in and the fact that now he’d even lost his dog and the hassle he had caused his granddad and—