The Edge of Nowhere (25 page)

“Or snakes,” Josh added. “We like it when there’re snakes, too.” Then he scooted off the couch and asked anxiously, “Did you see Derric? Is he coming over to play?”

Becca touched his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I saw him for a minute, is all,” she said. “He was pretty much asleep, but I think he’ll be over to play again. Just not yet.”

“Oh,” Josh said, and his voice was small.

“I thought you wanted tacos with Becca,” Debbie said to him. “She’s here now. Don’t you want to eat? What about you, Chloe?”

“Tacos!” they cried at once. They dashed toward the kitchen with a “C’mon, Becca!” which gave Debbie a chance to ask quietly, “How is he, then? I wasn’t sure what to tell Josh.”

Becca said, “He’s still in a coma,” and when Debbie nodded sympathetically, Becca felt a little better about things. But then
serves him right
 . . .
what did he think
came right after that nod, and Becca felt those whispers like a slap against her cheek. She blinked and turned away. But
then
Debbie said, “Poor kid. I’m really sorry to hear that,” and the strangest thing to Becca was that Debbie sounded completely sincere. So she was either lying or
serves him right
referred to someone else. And that, of course, was the problem with whispers.

Then Debbie sighed. She said, “Well, I don’t know how you feel about cold tacos, darlin’, but if you want ’em, we got ’em,” and when Becca approached her on the way into the kitchen, Debbie put her arm around her shoulders and gave her a quick hug.

That hug made Becca want to say something to Debbie about having seen her daughter’s grave, but she knew this was dangerous territory. Still, she felt bad that maybe Debbie was stuck somewhere, waiting to change the fact that her daughter had died when that was the very last thing that would ever be possible for her to do.

She said, “Mrs. Kinsale stopped at the cemetery on the way back to her house. She wanted to put flowers on her husband’s grave. She had the dogs with her. They were running all over the cemetery.”

“Those dogs of hers.” Debbie sounded cautious, but she wasn’t angry. Becca figured it was safe to go on.

She said, “I was chasing them around to catch them. I saw your daughter’s grave.”

The wall
whooshed
into place. Becca’s ears were hit with what felt like a pressure change of
that helmet
 . . . and
she knows.
Then
no no no
came like the wind, the way it blew off the desert into San Diego, that ruthless and dry Santa Ana wind that withered everything in its path.

Becca said, “That’s a really pretty picture of her. The one at her grave.”

Debbie said, “We can heat the tacos in the microwave.”

TWENTY-TWO

S
eth Darrow brooded about his argument with Hayley for almost a week before he finally decided that he had to talk to someone about it. In that time, he did what he always did. He worked his early-morning job at the Star Store, he rehearsed with the trio, and he hung out at South Whidbey Commons. He avoided his parents and the potential for questions about what he was doing to find a tutor for the GED. But none of this took his mind away from Hayley.

“Got to move on, favorite male grandchild,” was what his grandfather would have said. But Seth was finding it completely impossible to do that. So after a week of brooding, he was ready to talk. To someone. About anything.

The best person for this job was his grandfather. Plus, Ralph still had Gus, and Seth was ready to get his dog back. So he drove over to the property on Newman Road.

Ralph was out in the garden up on a stepladder. He was deadheading his massive collection of rhododendrons, dropping the dead flowers onto the soil beneath the enormous shrubs.

Gus had been snoozing on the front porch of the house, but he’d obviously heard the car and recognized it. For as Seth began his descent into the garden, Gus bolted in his direction. He barked and leaped and licked Seth’s cheek.

Ralph said nothing during the reunion between Seth and his dog. They rolled on the lawn together, and they ran in circles, and Seth brought Gus’s ball out of his pocket and he began to throw it.

Ralph said, “You’re undoing his training. That tendency of his to bolt . . . ? It’ll be trouble if you don’t stay consistent with him, Seth.”

“He’s good if there’s a ball involved. Or food. He’ll do anything for food.”

Ralph shook his head. “Leave him for now. Make yourself useful. Move this ladder for me.”

“Where d’you want it?”

“Grandson, where d’you think I want it? In front of the next rhodie, for God’s sake.”

Ralph sounded irritated, but Seth knew he wasn’t. Fighting with the garden was part of his joy. Still, Seth said to him, “Don’t you ever get tired of doing all this?” in reference to the size of the place and its wealth of plants. “I mean, everything here just keeps getting bigger and you keep getting taller ladders and where’s it going to end?”

“With my death, I guess,” Ralph responded. “Tough to outlive a good rhodie.” He shoved his hand into his pocket and brought out a Butterfinger. He broke it in half and handed part over to Seth. “Love these things,” he said. “They get stuck in your teeth and you can enjoy them for the rest of the day.”

They worked on their candy for a few minutes while Gus snuffled around their feet. Ralph gestured over to part of the garden hill where boulders formed a retaining wall and greenery tumbled. He said, “Those wretched old plants over there didn’t bloom all damn summer. I’ve been babying the things for five years now and there’s not a single bud on them. Damned if I know why.”

Seth looked around. “I don’t know why any of this blooms, to tell you the truth.”

“It blooms because I take care of it. I do the same darn thing to that stuff on the wall, but nothing happens. Which is the story of gardening in a nutshell, I guess. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and most of the time you don’t have the slightest idea why.”

Seth reached down and scratched Gus’s ears, but he glanced at his grandfather. He knew Ralph wasn’t really talking about the garden. He said, “Grand, I did everything I could to show Hayley love, and she
still
picked him over me. She disrespected me—”

“Not a verb, grandson. Let’s not make it one just because the rest of the world’s trying to.”

Seth sighed. “She
showed
me disrespect by wanting to be with this guy who’ll
never
care about her like I do. It makes me . . . I need to do something about it and I don’t know what.”

Ralph took another bite of his Butterfinger. He looked not at Seth but at one of the rhodies. He said, “You sure about all that? You have the measure of all other people, Seth?”

“Didn’t say I did. But what I need right now is for Hayley to be on
my
side, Grand, and she’s not.”

“And your side is what?”

“I need her to be okay with what I decided to do. About school, I mean. She
said
she would be when I dropped out. She said she understood how hard it was for me and how music was more important to me and how I wanted to make it with the trio and how
if
I could publish some of my pieces . . .” Seth kicked at the lawn. Gus, at his feet, rose in an instant. He dropped the ball and barked. Seth threw the ball as far as he could. It disappeared over the edge of lawn, heading in the direction of his grandfather’s pond.

“That dog goes in the water and you’ll have a mess on your hands,” Ralph said. He used his tongue to move the Butterfinger around in his mouth, the better to enjoy it. He said, “Go on, then. What’s this girl done to tell you that she’s not on your side?”

“What d’you mean ‘What’s this girl done?’ I just said. She’s with
him
. We’re finished, and when I show up at the hospital, she acts like . . . like whatever. Hell, I do
not
know.”

Ralph nodded. He was wearing a baseball cap with his long gray ponytail sticking out the opening in the back. He took the cap off and made an adjustment to how it fit. Without the cap, his hair was flat against his skull. Seth could see the age in him when he was exposed like this, with deep lines in his forehead and around his eyes.

Ralph said, “That’s just it, Seth.”

“What is?”

“What you said at the end. You don’t know. It’s like that plant on the wall over there. I’ve done what I can do to make that plant bloom and it won’t for now and I’ve got to accept it. Maybe it will bloom someday and maybe it won’t and that’s how it is.”

“Hayley’s
not
a plant.”

Gus came running back into the garden, the ball in his mouth and his paws muddy. He’d been near the edge of the pond, but he hadn’t gone in. There was a mercy in that.

Ralph said, “Grandson, you can’t force love out of Hayley. You can try but, trust me, you’re going to fail.” He picked up the clippers he’d been using on the plant and shoved them into the back pocket of his jeans. He nodded at the ladder and said, “Catch that for me. I think I’m done out here for the day.”

They carried the ladder to the gardening shed, which was tucked behind Ralph’s house close to a grove of alders. It was too tall to fit inside the shed, but an overhang protected it and others from the weather. Seth set it there. Gus investigated it for interesting smells. Ralph spoke again.

“So why’d you really go to that hospital, Seth? You tracking this girl?”

“I didn’t know she was there.” Seth told him about Becca: who she was and how she’d needed to see where the hospital was and what buses to take to get to Coupeville. She’d asked him to take her, and he’d agreed. He hadn’t known that Hayley would be there.

“So what happened to this Becca while everything was going on with Hayley?”

Seth dropped his gaze. “Damn,” was his answer.

“‘Damn’ happened to her?”

“I don’t know what happened. I forgot about her. I felt so wrecked after talking to Hayley that I took off.”

“Hmm.” Ralph took out an old cowboy neckerchief and wiped his hands on it. “Sounds like you were pretty darn miserable.” When Seth nodded, Ralph said, “Got it,” and headed toward the house.

Seth followed. Ralph paused and then did something unexpected. He put his arm around Seth’s shoulders and guided him forward. He said, “Grandson, not everything in life is about you. If you can learn this now when you’re eighteen years, you’ve got one of life’s big lessons mastered.”

“Fine. Okay. I know that, Grand. But I don’t get what that has to do with Hayley.”

Ralph chuckled. Then he did something more unexpected than putting his arm around Seth’s shoulders. He kissed him on the side of his head. He said, “Throw that ball for Gus for half an hour. Wear him down so he’ll give me some peace. Then take yourself over to the Cartwrights’ place and say hi to Hayley’s little sister, Brooke. I expect she’s missing you.”

“She’s twelve years old!”

“I didn’t say to marry her, grandson. I said to say hi. You can manage that.”

SMUGGLERS COVE FARM
and Flowers was a sweep of farmland north of South Whidbey State Park. Decades earlier, it had been carved out of a massive forest. When Seth reached the place, he didn’t turn into the long driveway at first. Instead, he pulled to the side of the road and looked at the farm.

He’d always liked it. To him it was like something out of the nineteenth century, representing an ideal of what a farm should look like, with rolling hills, a pond behind the house, all the red buildings, a tractor parked somewhere, and four cords of wood stacked in a wood shelter.

As far as Seth was concerned, it was perfect. But Hayley had always pointed out that it was perfect to him because he didn’t have to live there and do any of the work. She also thought it was completely ridiculous to have everything on the farm painted the same color of red. “More economical that way, my dad says,” she’d said. “But gosh, you’d think we could at least make the
house
a different color.”

Seth thought the house was fine as it was. He liked the way it sat off the road on a rise of land with the forest trying to creep up behind it. He also liked the fact that the long low chicken house was close to the road and across the side of it
SMUGGLERS COVE FARM AND FLOWERS
had been hand-painted in white a long time ago. The words were fading, and he liked that, too. The fading suggested permanence to Seth, and he liked to know some things would always stay the same.

He turned into the drive, which, like so many driveways on the island, was unpaved. Years and years ago, a hard pack of pebbles had been laid down, but over time the movement of cars and other vehicles over the hard pack had created tracks. Between these tracks and along their edges grew moss in the winter, creeping buttercup in the spring, and wild grasses in the summer. Autumn was a transition period. The rains began, and the ground waited for something to leap from it anew.

Seth jounced in the direction of the house. He passed the field where Mrs. Cartwright’s horses grazed. He glanced over at them, but then he frowned. There were no colts or fillies with the mares, and at this time of year there should have been because part of the farm was used to raise horses.