Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water (5 page)

Along this street, an unusual number of cars were parked. As Becca walked along them, she began to smile, for there was a car she recognized—a 1965 restored VW bug—and its presence meant that she might not have to wait for the bus for the long journey to her hiding place after all. For somewhere in town was the only person who knew exactly where she was staying, and Becca had a fairly good idea where she would find him.

T
he place was called South Whidbey Commons. It stood on Second Street, which broke to the west off Cascade and ultimately climbed a route to the woods outside of town. Unfortunately, South Whidbey Commons was also directly next door to Diana Kinsale’s destination, the Star Store, but Becca had a feeling that if she ducked inside the place, she’d be able to locate Seth Darrow quickly enough.

Seth was a regular at South Whidbey Commons, an ancient cottage that had been transformed into a community gathering place. A front garden there offered tables and chairs, flower beds and planters, and some whimsical art pieces for the summertime customers who bought coffee, tea, and baked goods inside, while the rooms of the cottage itself provided a bookstore, an art gallery, and a game room featuring secondhand PCs. The gallery could be transformed into a meeting space, too, which members of the community sometimes used. And when Becca entered the place on this late afternoon, the gallery was crammed with arguing people.

She felt a little dizzy with the assault of noise. It combined not only whatever was going on in the gallery, but also the whispers of the dozens of people present in the rest of the building. The result for Becca was a bit like having a wall of bright colors directly shoved just inches from her eyeballs, only in this case the colors came in the form of words like
better work this year . . . more time for tourists . . . an ass for sure . . . into her pants she’s so majorly hot . . . wouldn’t know a doer . . . if her period’s late like she’s saying . . . be grateful for . . .
and a great deal more. As quickly as she could, she grabbed the earphone of the AUD box from her jacket pocket and fastened it into her ear for relief. That left her with what was being said aloud, and as she gazed around the place in a search for Seth Darrow, she couldn’t help hearing it as most of it was shouted by one party or another in the gallery.

Inside the room, someone had set up a white board. There, a man with Coke-bottle glasses and thatchlike hair bursting from beneath a baseball cap was listing things. Seemingly unrelated items were being offered by the gathered crowd. He jotted “feeding from pier” alongside “boat tours,” which in turn had an arrow pointing to “picture opportunities” as well as “beach possibilities.” Along one edge ran “protection from orcas?” while at the bottom was “is early bad?” Not a single word made any sense to Becca, and she was about to turn away from the group when she saw among them Jenn McDaniels.

Jenn was sitting with a red-haired young woman who was taking notes in what looked like a state of high excitement. Becca looked beyond them and saw that the walls of the room held dozens of pictures of seals. She frowned at these, at the people, at the shouting, at the statements still being listed on the white board.

Seals and Langley appeared to have a very strange relationship, she thought. Some people apparently wanted to keep them at a safe distance from possible encounters with human beings while others wanted to feed them from the marina’s pier. But everyone wanted to argue about them, especially about an unusual-looking black one whose picture was just being flashed on the white board in lieu of a screen. The writing already on the white board was making it tough to discern the details, though.

Thus someone shouted, “Erase all that crap, Thorndyke. We can’t see what we’re looking at.”

Thorndyke was the man with the Coke-bottle glasses. He shouted back, “Now just hold on a minute,” but a chorus of protests met his words.

That was when Jenn McDaniels caught sight of Becca. The girl’s eyes narrowed and her upper lip rose. Her expression said she smelled something bad.

Right, Becca thought. It’s you.

Jenn’s middle finger lifted in an unmistakable message. Becca turned from the sight of her. She turned also from the chaos going on inside the room. Seth had to be here, she figured, if his car was here. He met his GED tutor in the far back room, and he practiced with his trio there too.

She edged along the spillover from the meeting, and she had good luck before she got ten feet. She saw Seth coming toward her from the back of the cottage, outfitted in his usual garb of flannel shirt, baggy black denims, thick-soled all-weather sandals, and fedora. He had on brightly colored homemade socks and he carried his guitar case. This told her that either practice was finished or the trio had given up in the face of the noise.

Seth winced and fingered one of his ear gauges as shouts of “No way!” “This means something and it’s bad!” “Oh just sit the hell down!” came from the meeting room. Then he saw Becca and gave one of his Seth nods: a lifting of the chin and nothing else.

He reached her, said, “Man, I am out of here. What about you?” and he shouldered his way to the door, saying, “Later,” to some people, and “Nah, it’s cool,” to someone who leaned toward him and spoke from one of the tables.

Becca followed him outside where the wind had risen and the growing evening seemed colder than ever. She said, “What’s going on in there?”

He said, “Meeting of the seal spotters.”

“The who?”

“Bunch of people from up and down the island who watch for a bizarro seal every year.” He indicated the people inside the Commons by flicking his thumb in their direction. “Lemme tell you, Beck, the way they’re acting, you’d think the freaking Apocalypse was going on. This seal shows up a few months early and it means everything from global warming to an announcement of the Second Coming of Jesus.” He shoved his fedora back on his head, then, and gave her a look. “What’re you doing here anyway?” And with a look around, “Shit, Beck, are you supposed to be floating around town like this?”

“He’s still in San Diego,” she said. “I checked the Internet. They’re finally asking about his partner. ‘Where’s Connor and why hasn’t he picked up his mail since last September?’ Duh. If Jeff Corrie leaves town now, they’re after him.”

“You
think
,” Seth said. “How’re you getting home, then?” And when she looked at him hopefully, he laughed and said, “Right. Come on.”

“Yes! That’s why I love you,” she said. “You c’n read my mind.”

“As if,” he told her.

D
erric Mathieson was just coming out of the Langley Clinic when Becca King and Seth Darrow passed its parking lot. He was hobbling in his walking cast to his mom’s old Forester, and as soon as he saw them, Derric wanted to punch someone’s lights.

Two things stopped him from going after Darrow. First, his mom was right behind him locking up the clinic for the evening. Second and aside from his healing leg, what the hell good would it do? Yeah, he’d deck Darrow. And yeah, he’d feel a nanosecond of satisfaction at the sound of Darrow hitting the ground. But then he’d have his mom to contend with, and he’d also have gotten not one step closer to resolving
anything
with Becca.

The
mom
part of the deal would be bad. Rhonda Mathieson was the greatest person to have as a mom about 80 percent of the time. She was in his corner, on his side, at his back, and whatever else. She’d been that way since she’d first locked eyes on him in a Kampala orphanage when he was six years old. It had taken her and his dad two years to get everything together to adopt him, and in that time she’d never let him forget that she intended to be his mom, no matter what. She’d flown to Uganda for extended visits, she’d written to him practically every day, she’d phoned the orphanage at huge expense. She was major.

But the other 20 percent of Rhonda . . . ? That was the problem. He was African. She was not. He’d been abandoned by the death of his parents when he was five years old. She had not. She didn’t get how it felt sometimes to be black on an island peopled almost exclusively by whites. She also didn’t get the dead space inside of him. She sensed something, sure, but she didn’t get it. To make up for not getting it, she
hovered.
Every tiny mood shift on his part was under her microscope. She held her breath if he frowned. She stood at his bedroom door and offered him ice cream, cookies, pizza, neck rubs, and trips over town to the mall if she thought he was blue. She just wanted so
much
for him to be happy, content, at peace, and all the rest. But he couldn’t be. There were reasons for this, but the last thing he could do was to tell her what they were.

The Becca part of the deal was actually worse than his mom, though. She’d been a huge part of his thoughts for months, ever since he’d opened his eyes from a coma in early November, found her gazing at him earnestly, and felt her hand clutching at his. He’d known
before
that moment that there was something about this girl that he’d found compelling from the second he’d seen her on the ferry with her bicycle, her backpack, and her saddlebags. He also knew that they were the weirdest couple imaginable. But from the first that hadn’t mattered. All that had mattered was getting close to her. He wanted her, sure. Five seconds into kissing her the first time had been enough to tell him that. Even the sound of her voice on the phone had told him that. But more than sex was involved in his relationship with Becca. It was a connection he’d had with no one else.

That connection
meant
things. He wanted it to grow. The way he saw it, the growing came from truth and honesty. She knew the secrets of his soul, and he was cool with that. But they’d been together from mid-November and
still
he knew virtually nothing about her. He’d told himself that he’d
get
to know her. His mom and dad had said the same thing. “Everyone’s different, sweetie. Don’t
push
at her so much,” was how his mom put it. “Play it cool, son,” was his dad’s advice.

But how the hell could he do that with Seth Darrow hanging around? He didn’t know. He did
not
know.

“A guy can be my best friend, for God’s sake,” was what Becca said when he brought up Darrow.

“This isn’t about being friends with some guy and you know it,” was Derric’s reply.

“Then what
is
it about? D’you think we’re hooking up or something? Don’t you trust
me
? Is that what this is?”

“It’s that you don’t trust me,” Derric told her.

But that remark was the slippery slope. It led to what he wanted from her in order to balance the scales between them. She knew the darkest part of him, the secret he had kept from the world. He didn’t know the darkest part of her. And since December he didn’t even know where the hell she was living. No one knew that except one person. Darrow, of course.

When he saw them heading up Second Street, then, Derric knew that Seth Darrow would be taking her home. They’d be in his VW, laughing and talking, and when they got to wherever they were going, no doubt they’d laugh and talk some more. Derric gritted his teeth. When his mom said, “Isn’t that Becca?” and drew in a breath to call out a hello, he said, “Come on,” in what he knew was a surly voice. He felt her glance at him.

At least Rhonda waited till they got home before she started in. They lived due west of Langley, near Goss Lake, not directly on it among the fir trees that sheltered it but rather on a nearby road that took the lake’s name. It was dark as pitch when they pulled into the driveway. The sheriff’s car wasn’t there, so Dave Mathieson was still at work. This was going to give Rhonda time to do a little delving, Derric thought. He steeled himself for the worst.

It wasn’t long in coming. She said, “You didn’t want to say hi to Becca.”

Duh
, he thought.

“Want to talk about that?”

He shook his head.

“You two on the outs?”

He gave a shrug.

“I know she means a lot to you.”

Uh, yeah. She meant pretty much everything but what the hell did that matter? He said, “It’s okay, Mom.”

“Hey, I c’n see it’s not okay. Did something happen between you?”

“Nope.”

“Derric, come on. It helps to talk things out. I’m concerned. You haven’t been yourself—”

My self is someone you don’t even know, he thought. “I said it’s
okay
. Everything’s okay. Everything’s just dandy.”

“You haven’t been yourself for weeks now, and I know it has something to do with Becca.”

“Lay off, Mom.”

“Laying off is the easier thing to do. I’m not into easy. Is this about sex?”

“Crap! What the hell—”

“Because it usually is, between kids your age.”

“Mom . . .”

“And sex alters relationships big-time, Derric. It can’t help altering things. Now I can see something’s gone wrong for the two of you so . . . Have you been intimate with her?”

“What the hell do I have to tell you to get you—”

“You have condoms, don’t you? You know you can always get them from me, yes?”

“Mom! Stop it.
Stop
it.” He shoved open the car door and then leaped out, stumbling when the cast on his leg got hung up with an empty grocery bag. “Let it go, for God’s sake,” he snapped at her. “Just for one time in my life,
please
let it go.”

“Derric, you’re young. When these things happen, they feel wretched, but they always pass. You’re going to see that—”

He slammed the door on her. He knew he’d pay for that move later, but at the moment he just needed to get away.

• • •

HE WENT TO
his room. His leg was aching, as it sometimes did at the end of the day, and he looked down on it morosely, wondering when the stupid cast would finally come off. He’d been just two weeks away from getting his driver’s license when he’d fallen down the bluff in the woods and the thought of the freedom that a driver’s license would have provided him in a moment like this made him hate the world.

He threw his backpack on the floor and his body on the bed. He wrestled his cell phone from the pocket of his jeans and checked for voice mails and texts. None of the former. Two of the latter. He felt more eager than he wanted to feel. She didn’t have a cell phone but she could have borrowed one to text him.

She hadn’t. The first text was his mom, earlier in the day.
Pizza 2nite?
He hadn’t seen it, and once she’d caught sight of Becca, she’d obviously forgotten she’d made the offer.

The second was from Court. He was puzzled by
Court
for a moment till he read the message.
Want 2 hang? Clyde 2morrow?
It had to be from Courtney Baker.

Derric looked at the message, his lips forming an O. The Clyde was the local cinema in Langley, and . . . What was Courtney doing? Inviting him out? Derric thought about that one. They had French class together, she’d asked him about homework in the hall just today, and while they were talking she’d smiled and touched her hair in that way girls did when they wanted to communicate something. Only . . . He hadn’t known what she wanted to communicate. Amusement? Interest? What?

He wanted to text her back.
Yeah, babe, let’s do it. We’ll sit in the dark and watch a film. Or you watch the film and I’ll watch you. I’ll check out your boobs and figure out how to cop a feel. You’re the cure for the sickness inside me.
Only this wasn’t true, and he damn well knew it. He’d think about how to get a hand on her boobs and maybe that would distract him for a while. But it wouldn’t solve a single thing.

Someone tapped on his door. He shoved the cell phone into his pocket. He said, “Yeah,” and the door opened. Dave Mathieson stuck his head into the room.

He looked sheepish. Obviously, Rhonda had given him his instructions about talking to their son. He said, “Everything okay, Der?” and he rubbed his hands through his salt-and-pepper hair. He tilted his head in the direction of the kitchen from which dinner noises were emanating. “Your mom . . . You know how she gets.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“And . . . anything?”

“And . . . nothing. She thinks something’s going on with me. Nothing is.”

Dave eyed him with an expression that spoke of having two older children and having had the experience of seeing them through adolescence and into adulthood. They were the children of his first marriage, though. Derric was the only child of his second. “You’re important to her. You know that, don’t you? If she worries about you, it’s because—”

“—she’s a physician’s assistant and she’s seen a lot of things. I know it, Dad. But there’s nothing going on. I just need . . . I don’t know. I don’t
know.
”

Dave was silent for a moment in the doorway. He finally said, “Can you give me something to work with, son?”

“I absolutely can’t,” was Derric’s reply.