The Edge of Nowhere (48 page)

“Couch surfing,” Becca told Dave Mathieson. “Aunt Debbie and I . . . We had sort of a misunderstanding about a guy—”

“Seth Darrow?” the undersheriff asked sharply.

“—but we got it straightened out. I’m back home now.”

“Back at the motel?”

“Room four-four-four, where I was before.”

“I didn’t know Debbie had a niece,” Rhonda Mathieson said. “But I guess we’re finding out we don’t know a lot about other people, even people we think we know better than we know ourselves.”

The undersheriff turned a deep crimson at this. He said to Becca, “You never heard I was looking for you? Hayley Cartwright didn’t track you down and tell you? The Darrow kid didn’t tell you? Jenn McDaniels didn’t tell you?”

“I missed a lot of school.”

“We need to talk about that, too. What’re you doing, going truant from school?
And
running off? You know where this kind of nonsense leads?”

All of this might have put Becca on the defensive except his whispers where flying around fast and furiously.
Motel
 . . .
always knew
 . . .
Tatiana
 . . .
damn stupid . . .

Becca looked at Dave Mathieson and then at his wife. Whatever was going on at the moment really didn’t have anything to do with her, with being truant from school, or with running off, and she got this. So she said, “I was acting dumb for a while. But I’m back in school and I’m making up the work.”

“I better not hear otherwise,” the undersheriff told her.

“You won’t.”

“Dave,” Rhonda said, “she’s been good to Derric. I think we can cut her a
little
slack.”

He looked at his wife and then back at Becca. He nodded. He said, “Derric told me some damn fool dog was loose in the woods. He remembers that. He’s remembering other things, too. Kids reading to him, music playing, people talking to him. But he says he feels a special bond with you. So . . . thanks for being part of things here, for being there for my boy. For my
son
.” His face softened at last and he smiled at her. “I hope you’ll keep coming back, Becca.”

She said that she would. He extended his hand. She shook it. But he pulled her to him and gave her a rough hug, and from this she felt how much he loved Derric and how little he was able to say about that love. He released her and she said good-bye. She was just about out of the hospital door when Dave Mathieson spoke again, however.

He said, “You ever hear of someone called Laurel Armstrong, Becca?”

Becca swallowed. This was her moment to reestablish the possibility of contact with her mom, but she knew the reality of her situation because it hadn’t changed one bit. Laurel tied her to Jeff Corrie and danger. So she shook her head slowly and said, “I don’t think so. But I’m new on the island so there’s lots of people I don’t know yet.”

“Debbie tells me you come from San Luis Obispo. How far is that from San Diego?”

Becca thought about this, trying to see San Luis Obispo near the coast of the state, just a few miles inland from Morro Bay. She’d been there once. She’d met the real Becca King before her death, a happy girl struck by acute leukemia, a brave battle fought and then lost forever. She said, “I dunno exactly. Maybe three hundred miles?”

He nodded but he looked at her for a longer time than seemed necessary. So she said, “Why?”

He said, “Laurel Armstrong was connected to the cell phone that made a call from the woods the day Derric was injured. We’ve traced her back to an address in San Diego but we still can’t reach her. So we still don’t know for sure who made that call.”

Becca said, “Maybe someone who didn’t want to get involved?”

He thought about this. “Well, that wouldn’t be you, would it?” he said.

FORTY-FOUR

S
eth recognized the sound of a pep rally going on when he climbed out of Sammy, telling Gus to stay in the car. From the general direction of the gym came the stamping of feet on bleachers, followed by yelling. He dwelled for a moment upon the thought of how nothing ever really changed about high school.

He sauntered over to the administration building, trying hard to look like a guy who felt confident about being there. He went into the reception area where he sent a prayer of thanks to whatever god had arranged for this
not
to be the time of day when Hayley Cartwright sat at the desk and greeted visitors. But no one else was at that desk, either. So he wandered down the corridor, past the nurse’s office, to find himself in front of the registrar’s desk.

Ms. Ward knew him. Ms. Ward knew everyone. She looked up over her glasses and said, “Seth. Coming back to school? It’s been boring around here without you.”

“Nah,” he said. “Me and South Whidbey High School? Not a good fit.”

“So what can I do for you?”

Here was the difficult part, the revealing-of-self part that Seth wasn’t looking forward to. But he was tired of breaking his promises to himself and to others, so he said, “I wanted to talk to Ms. Primavera about getting a tutor for the GED.”

Ms. Ward smiled. “What an excellent idea.” She got to her feet and went to the counselor’s office, which was behind her own with A–L
in block letters above the door. In a moment, she was back, telling him to go on in because Ms. Primavera would be delighted to see him.

He doubted the delighted part, but he ducked behind Ms. Ward’s desk. Tatiana Primavera was working on something, and Seth could see she didn’t look very well. Her nose was red, and there were two boxes of Kleenex on her desk. Seth said to her, “Oh hey, I c’n come back later. You feeling bad? A cold or something?”

She said, “Allergies,” with a faint smile.

Seth thought this was baloney. It was hardly the time of year for allergies. But he also thought, Whatever, chick, and he told her what he needed and wanted. First was a tutor. Second was passing the GED.

She seemed to rouse herself at this. “Good for you. What’re your plans?”

He said, “Same as before. Professional guitar. But I want to take care of this thing first.”

“Still playing gypsy jazz, though, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Course,” he said. “With the trio. But I’ll probably do something on the side, too, at least for a while. I’m good at carpentry, so I figure I’ll work part-time with a contractor.”

She looked at him earnestly. “And you’re okay with that, Seth? I know that lots of island people have jobs that support the art they do, but I remember how intent you were on the guitar and nothing else.”

“Still am,” he said. “But I figure I need to be realistic, too. It’s time.”

“SETH? SETH!”

He knew who it was. He’d been close to a clean getaway from the school, but the pep rally had altered the schedule for the day and now Hayley had seen him. She had also seen Gus, and she was saying, “You’ve got Gus back? Great,” as she crossed the parking lot to the VW.

Seth felt awkward around her because he hadn’t seen her since the morning she’d come by the Star Store asking him to help Becca. He still wasn’t sure why she’d done that, considering how the last couple of their encounters had gone before that early-morning visit.

She stopped on Gus’s side of the car. The window was down, and she let the Labrador slobber on her in his usual enthusiastic greeting. She said hi to Seth and he said hi to her and then there seemed to be nothing else to say at all until Hayley asked him if he’d heard about Derric.

He said, “Yeah. You hear about Gus?”

“You mean about Gus knocking Derric off the path?” And when he nodded, she said, “Yeah.” She looked to the edge of the parking lot, where the maple trees were finally shedding the rest of their russet leaves. She said, “I’m sorry for what I thought . . . about you pushing Derric.”

He shifted his weight. “S’okay. It’s not like you turned me in or anything. And anyway, I’m sorry for what I thought, too.”

“About what?”

“You and Derric hooking up.”

“He’s always been my friend, Seth. We were kissing and I know that hurt your feelings, but that was all we did. Just that one time.”

“I get it now.”

Both of them hung their heads, examining their feet and the damp ground they stood on. It seemed to Seth that they’d said all they had to say to each other, so he reached for the handle of his door. At the same moment, Hayley said, “That day at the farm when you came over to tell my mom about Lyme disease . . . ?”

He said, “Yeah?”

“That’s when I knew you hadn’t hurt Derric. See, I’ve been worried about . . . about
stuff
in my life and none of it has to do with you. You just took the heat for it.”

Seth thought about this and said, “Your dad.”

She looked at him across the top of the old VW. She swallowed hard. “Seth, I can’t be anyone’s girlfriend right now. There’s too much going on at home. It’s just too hard.” She brushed her hair off her face in that gesture she had that Seth had always loved seeing, but when she did it now, he felt the pain of it, in a place beneath his heart. She said, “I thought my life was going to be so simple. I’d graduate here, go to U-dub on a scholarship. Then I’d go into the Peace Corps for a few years. Then I’d go to grad school. Only it’s not working out that way. And you know . . . it hurts.”

“I get that,” Seth said.

“So I can’t be your girlfriend or anyone else’s. I don’t even want to be. It’s not you. It’s me. It’s how things are right now.”

Seth thought about this: about how things were for all of them. He said, “What about being someone’s friend, Hayl?”

“Sure. I can be someone’s friend. I can be
your
friend.”

“I’m okay with that,” he told her. “But c’n I ask you something?” And when she nodded, “What were you doing in the woods that day? Why’d you hide the truck?”

She didn’t answer at first, and Seth knew she was trying to decide how much more to tell him. She finally replied with, “I thought Mrs. Kinsale could help make my dad better. We met in the woods to talk about that.”

“Why’d you think she could make him better?”

“It was just . . . It was something I thought, something about who she is and how she is. But I was wrong. The things she does for people . . . they don’t work that way. She explained that to me.”

Seth wondered about all this. He thought Hayley probably meant that Diana Kinsale practiced alternative medicine because there were practitioners of all sorts of things around the island: from eastern medicine to dowsing for lost articles. He’d never taken Mrs. Kinsale for one of these individuals, but he was learning fast that there was a lot he didn’t know about people he saw every day.

He said, “I’m sorry, then. I wish she could’ve helped him.”

“So do I. But no one can.”

“What’s that mean?”

Tears came to her eyes, but she didn’t shed them. “You know, Seth. You
know
. It’s why I can’t be anyone’s girlfriend, why I’m not going away to college, why there’s no Peace Corps in my future. He’s going to die. It’ll take a while but he’s going to die. We all know it but we don’t mention it. It’s just the way things are.”

“But he only seems a little clumsy,” Seth said.

“Clumsy is how it begins.” She brushed at her eyes and added quickly, “I’ve got to go now. I’ve got to pick up Brooke.”

He nodded and she hurried away. As he watched her go, Seth thought about how you never really knew anyone, not even the people you thought you knew. He also thought how you never learned a single thing about them as long as you only stayed in your head trying to understand what was inside theirs.

FORTY-FIVE

B
ecca locked her bike at the information kiosk on the edge of the meadow. Saratoga Woods rose up the hillside in an army of silent Douglas firs, but Becca knew she wasn’t going to be alone in the forest. Diana Kinsale’s truck was in the parking lot. She didn’t want to be seen on this particular mission, however. So once she had the bike locked, she quickly took the sealed plastic bag and its contents from her backpack.

Across the meadow, she climbed Meadow Loop Trail. The day was cool but bright, and the trail was dappled with sunlight. It hardly seemed the place any longer where Derric had had such a terrible fall.

At the bottom of Derric’s little trail, Becca looked right and left and listened hard to make sure she’d be able to get up to the teepee of trees in secrecy. There was still no sound other than the cry of the blue Steller’s jays above her, so she picked her way up the steep hillside.

Derric’s hideaway was as before: dry and secure. Becca worked her way to the back and wedged the package into the spot where she’d found it. As she did so, she wished that things were different for Derric. She wished he would tell his parents the truth. But she knew this was
his
truth to tell and not hers. She had her own secrets, and perhaps it was this that they recognized in each other, the thing that felt like a bond between them.

After she had put the package safely into its place, she crawled back out. She waited again, listening for noises that would indicate someone coming along the trail. But Derric had chosen his hiding spot well: The Meadow Loop Trail was rarely used.