Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water (4 page)

B
ecca wasn’t surprised. Diana Kinsale, she had discovered, had a way of knowing things about both people and animals that kept her in the loop of what was going on around the island. She also, however, had no whispers that Becca could ever hear unless Diana
intended
her to hear them, and from the first this had made the older woman not only a curiosity but also someone Becca wanted to understand.

She said to her, “Was it Oscar?”

“Telling me he was expecting someone?” Diana removed her baseball cap and ruffled up her hair before replacing the cap on her head. “No. The others. They didn’t have quite the enthusiasm for ball chasing that they usually do. And, of course, Oscar never chases balls, so he was inscrutable on the topic of expecting anyone.”

The dogs milled around them, snuffling the sand and, alternately, the pockets of Becca’s jacket. “I told them I didn’t have treats,” she said to Diana.

“Hope springs eternal,” Diana replied. “How are you? You look . . . Something’s on your mind. No trouble at Debbie’s I hope?”

Becca kept her expression as neutral as she could in the face of being reminded of the lie she’d told her friend. Diana believed that Becca was still living at a place called the Cliff Motel where, when she’d first come to the island, she’d worked for its owner Debbie Grieder in exchange for room and board. But she’d fled the motel for the woods just before Thanksgiving and so far she’d kept Debbie Grieder in the dark by telling her she was living with Diana. It was a deceptive dance that she knew she couldn’t keep up forever. But for now it was the best she could do.

She said, “Debbie’s great,” which wasn’t a lie. “So are the grandkids,” which was also the truth.

Diana eyed her and said, “So . . . ?”

A sharp
crack
split the air around them and all of the dogs—including Oscar—began to bark. Diana swung toward the sound. Becca did the same. What they saw was a man with a rifle standing atop one of the stone walls that were used to separate the cottages from the beach. He was aiming his rifle not in their direction but at the water. He shot again. The dogs made an uproar.

Diana muttered, “Damn fool man,” and began to stride in his direction. She said, “Dogs! No bark! Stay!” and to Becca, “You wait here.” Then she started shouting, “Eddie! Eddie Beddoe! Stop that right now!” But if he heard her, he didn’t acknowledge it. Instead he shot into the water another time.

He was pausing to reload when he apparently heard Diana’s approach. He swung toward her, rifle ready.

At that Becca forgot Diana’s admonition to stay where she was and took off down the beach in aid of her friend. Becca’s movement prompted the dogs to set off, too. They loped past Diana and surrounded the man.

He’d jumped off the wall. He was hefty and tall, and he looked like someone that no one would want to tangle with. Despite the frigid weather, he wore only a T-shirt and blue jeans. He didn’t even have on shoes, and he wasn’t acting bothered by the cold. What he was bothered by was his mind, Becca thought.
Kill her . . . want . . . die now . . . die . . . die
seemed to break in the air around him like ice hit by a hammer.

She said Diana’s name in warning. Diana motioned for her to stay where she was. She said, “Dogs, dogs, quiet now, dogs,” and she approached the man. She said to him not unkindly, “Now you listen to me, Eddie. Put that rifle down before you hurt someone.”

“I got something to hurt.” He raised the rifle toward the water again.

“Don’t be silly. Out there? What’re you aiming at? A piece of driftwood? You need to get back home.”

“She’s out there,” he said with a jerk of his head in the direction of the water. “She’s back already, and this time I mean to—”

“No one’s out there,” Diana told him. “No one’s back. And if you accidentally hit someone on the beach, there’ll be hell to pay. You know that.”

“I’m in hell already,” was his reply. But he lowered the rifle at last, and Diana closed the distance between them. She took the gun, unloaded it, and pocketed the cartridges. She handed the rifle back empty and ventured closer to the man.

“Eddie,” she said. “Eddie.” She sounded sad but gentle. She raised her hand and rested it on his shoulder.

Becca watched, alert. She was ready to launch herself at the man if he made a false move, and she could tell by their raised hackles that the dogs were ready as well. But he made no further move toward anyone. He seemed strangely depleted, just at the touch of Diana’s hand. His body gave a shudder. His spine seemed to relax. Whatever form of madness had possessed him was gone, if only for the moment.

Then he looked at Becca with eyes like gray skies and what came to her was
kill her when I can that’s what
as if he’d spoken the words aloud.

She said, “Diana,” in a shaky voice.

Diana said, “Hush now,” and it came to Becca that, so gently spoken, the words were not directed at her.

• • •

THEY WAITED TILL
Eddie Beddoe had departed before they too left the beach. It wasn’t until his truck belched exhaust smoke all the way from Sandy Point to Wilkinson Road above it that Diana said, “All dogs come,” to her animals and added with a smile at Becca, “All girls, too.”

She didn’t say anything about their encounter with the man as they walked back to her house above the water. Instead she talked of other things: mostly the bulbs she’d planted last autumn in anticipation of spring and what the winter was doing to her perennials. It wasn’t until they were inside the house, having fed four of the dogs outside and Oscar inside in the mudroom, that Diana was willing to talk about what had happened on the beach below them. She put water on for her afternoon cup of tea, held out a mug to Becca with a questioning look on her face, and put three scoops of her favorite Assam into a pot to steep. Then she said to Becca, “I expect you wonder what that was about.”

“I thought he was going to shoot you.”

Diana indicated the nook in her brightly painted kitchen: yellow, red, orange, and green. She was not a woman afraid of bold color. She set a plate of Girl Scout cookies on the purple table, and she joined Becca there with the teapot and the mugs.

“He’s trying to kill a seal,” she said.

“Isn’t that against the law?”

“It is, but he doesn’t think about that. He thinks only about shooting what he can’t bear to face.”

“Which is what?”

“The same as most people. The consequences of his own actions. He lost his boat in the water. He blames a seal. It’s as simple as that. Well, as simple as any form of madness can ever be. Truth is that he went out in one of those bad windstorms we get in the winter. He was no match for it and he’d also forgotten to put in the boat’s transom plugs. He might have been drinking as well, but he’d never say that. In any case, the boat went down and he was lucky to make it to shore. It happened just out there”—she indicated the beach from which they’d walked—“and I think the truth is that he’d like to be thought of as a victim and not the instigator of his own misfortune. Well, most people would prefer that, wouldn’t they? It’s human nature.”

“A seal,” Becca murmured. “Well, I guess that’s better than blaming on another person.”

Diana lifted her mug and gazed over it at Becca. She cocked her head one way and then another, as if to say “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

“What?” Becca asked her.

Diana smiled. “Nothing.”

“No way. There’s something. I c’n tell. Come
on
.”

Diana chuckled, running her hand through her choppy gray hair another time. “It’s just that, if you ask me, there are seals and there are seals. Not a single one bears shooting at and some . . . well, some are creatures that a man like Eddie ought to avoid at all costs.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re far too important to die prematurely. Or to be wounded. Or even, Becca, to be brought to land.”

• • •

BUT THAT WAS
all Diana would say on the subject of the seal. When Becca pressed her, her reply was, “Really, my dear, there’s nothing else.” She added more tea to her mug and said, “You and I haven’t seen each other in a while, so this is a welcome visit. But something tells me you’ve come for a reason.”

Had she? Becca asked herself. There had been comfort in hanging around Diana Kinsale from the moment she’d met her on the night of her arrival on the island. So why did she need comfort now?

“I guess things are iffy with Derric,” she admitted. Diana said nothing, merely watching her brightly for more information. There wasn’t much that Becca could tell her that wouldn’t accidentally spill the truth about her place of hiding, so she settled on saying, “Relationships are tough.”

“Is Derric your first boyfriend? I mean your first real boyfriend, with all the trimmings.”

“I guess. And he . . . he wants some things that I can’t really give him.” Becca grimaced as she realized how that sounded. “It’s not sex. Well, I mean it’s always sex, huh? But that’s not what I’m talking about. We haven’t done it. I’m just . . . I don’t think I’m ready for that and that’s what I told him and he’s not pressuring me about it. He’s not like that. I mean, he
is
but he isn’t.” She paused to think how she could put things. She decided on, “Sometimes we’re a couple and sometimes we’re not. I think right now . . . maybe we’re not.”

“That must be painful,” Diana said. “I know how important he is to you.”

Derric was more than important. He was close to everything. Becca loved him and she wanted him, yes. But there were times when she also felt that she
was
him and that he was her. It was as if they occasionally exchanged souls. So when times were rough, her soul went missing. Becca knew that, at heart, Derric felt the same way. What do you do when another person is also your soul? she wondered. When the soul gets angry with the body that houses it, what comes next?

“Sitting with the pain,” Diana murmured. “Lord, I remember how that is.”

“The worst,” Becca said.

“Especially when the only way through it is . . . through it.” Diana put her hand on Becca’s arm across the purple table. For a moment she said nothing and yet despite her saying nothing, Becca felt enormously comforted by her touch.

Still Becca said, “Sometimes I wish stuff between people didn’t have to be so tough. Sometimes I wish life didn’t have to be so tough.”

“I hear you on that,” Diana replied.

Something in her tone made Becca look at her hard. There was always an undercurrent with Diana, a suggestion that things weren’t as peaceful as they seemed to be. But Diana never said word one about what those things were, and since Becca couldn’t hear her thoughts when Diana didn’t want them to be heard, she had no clue what elements in Diana Kinsale’s life might not be what she wanted. Becca knew that Diana was a longtime widow with no children, but that was it. Anything more, Diana never revealed.

Yet something from the first had told Becca that she and Diana shared numerous qualities of character. So still she came to see Diana when she was able, drawn to her in much the same way as she was drawn to Derric. She had a feeling they’d been fated to meet. She just didn’t know why.

Diana released her arm with a pat. “I didn’t see your bike outside. Did you come on foot?” When Becca nodded, Diana got to her feet. “Let me drive you back to the motel.”

There was no way to get around this one. When Becca said that a ride into town wasn’t necessary and that the exercise would do her good, Diana pointed out that it was dark outside, the day had been freezing cold and was getting colder, and Becca’s declaration that she would rather walk or jog just wasn’t going to cut it. So Becca ended up saying she’d be grateful for the lift into town, and all along she hoped Diana didn’t intend to stop by the motel and have a friendly chat with Debbie Grieder, which would put her in a very bad spot.

As things turned out, she didn’t have to worry. Diana plucked a list off the bulletin board in her mudroom on their way out and said she had to pick up a few things at the Star Store in Langley anyway. So it was all good, and in a few moments, they were trundling on their way in Diana’s pickup, along the rolling route that was Sandy Point Road. They had no further conversation since the Dixie Chicks were singing at nearly full volume and Diana was singing along with them.

At the Cliff Motel, Diana stopped at the edge of the parking lot. She said, “Give my best to Debbie,” and Becca promised that she would. She made a pretense of walking in the direction of her old room, but once Diana had turned the corner and headed into town, she ducked through a line of rhododendrons that formed a boundary between the motel’s parking lot and a vacant lot next to it, and she quickly crossed this and hurried in the same direction that Diana herself had taken. She needed to get to the closest stop for the island bus. It was, unfortunately, not far from the Star Store.

The distance wasn’t great. It took her along a street called Cascade that followed the top of the bluff on which the small village of Langley sat. Beneath this was an old marina with a bulwark protecting a few boats docked there from the roiling waters of Saratoga Passage. In the distance, the lights from the city of Everett blinked on the mainland. Closer at hand, the lights along Cascade Street cast pools of illumination on the first of the old island cottages that defined the little town.