The Edge of Nowhere (37 page)

A decent primary list popped onto the screen, everything from “muscle weakness causes” to “muscle weakness symptoms.” Seth worked through this painstakingly. He finally chose “muscle weakness in legs” because of the way Mr. Cartwright had been walking and because of that clutch, which he hadn’t been able to push down, and most of all because he—Seth—could read the four words “muscle weakness in legs” without any trouble. When he clicked on this topic, though, he was horrified to see forty-two pages of sites flash onto the screen.

This, he realized, was going to be a real problem. He glanced at the computer next to him. A young girl sat there, gazing at her Facebook page. He thought about asking for her help, but he just couldn’t do it. She looked twelve years old, and he wasn’t about to admit to some little kid that he couldn’t read well enough to choose a Web site. So he began to fight through them.

There were sites for fatigue and muscle weakness, there were sites for causes of weakness in legs, there was something called “fibromyalgia symptoms,” there was something about musculoskeletal disorders. Seth’s eyes ached with what he was trying to do, and he finally put his cheek in his palm. He stared at the screen and thought about how someone with a brain that didn’t misfire like his would have been able to read through this in twenty seconds flat.

Then his eye saw something that his brain recognized without a struggle. In one of the sites, the first line of an article appeared and in that line were two words Seth didn’t even have to read because he’d been seeing them all his life:
Whidbey Island.

He clicked on this. What he came up with was an article about Lyme disease. He managed to get through it by sounding things out as he’d been taught in elementary school. What he learned was that Washington had the highest occurrence of multiple sclerosis in the country but the lowest incidence of Lyme disease.

Seth thought about this for a moment. He knew that Lyme disease came from deer ticks. He knew that Whidbey Island was jumping with deer. Sometimes it seemed there were more deer than people, and he wondered for a moment how deer had gotten to the island in the first place. Had they swum? he asked himself. Did they just evolve? They sure hadn’t sauntered across the Deception Pass Bridge. Of course, they could have—

Seth slapped his forehead. This was
exactly
what his brain always did. He’d be reading and then one idea would lead to another and before he knew it, he wouldn’t be reading at all any longer. He forced himself back to the matter at hand.

The story was about a man on Whidbey Island who’d been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He’d been treated for MS for years, only to find out he had Lyme disease. Seth read through the symptoms of both diseases. He felt a ball of excitement inside of him.

It all seemed obvious. There had, after all, been nothing wrong with the SUV’s clutch. Whatever was wrong, was wrong with Mr. Cartwright.

Seth knew he had the answer he was seeking. He knew he needed to tell the family about this. He left the computer and headed out of the game room. He was striding to the door of the commons when it opened. The undersheriff of Island County walked in.

THE FIRST THING
Seth thought when he saw Dave Mathieson was that Hayley had called him and turned him in for pushing Derric off the bluff in Saratoga Woods instead of waiting for him to act on her suggestion and make the call himself. As things turned out, though, Dave Mathieson didn’t want to talk to Seth about Derric and Saratoga Woods.

He said to Seth, “You’re just who I’m looking for. Debbie Grieder’s reported her niece missing. Becca King. What do you know about that?”

Seth said, “Becca King?” as he rapidly assessed what he could tell the undersheriff without telling him anything useful. This was the trail of bread crumbs that Becca was terrified of, the one that would ultimately lead her stepfather right to the Dog House to find her.

“Debbie says that you and Becca are friendly,” the undersheriff said. “Just like you and Sean were friendly, as a matter of fact.”

“Hey, I
knew
Sean,” Seth declared. “He taught me to play chess. So put me in jail.”

“Don’t get smart with me. You were seen leaving the motel after Becca’s disappearance.”

“Who supposedly saw me?”

“Don’t worry who saw you. Just know someone did and that person reported you to me. Do you want to tell me about it? We’ve got a missing girl whose belongings were left behind but now are missing, too. For the moment, I’m assuming she’s a runaway. I’m going to continue assuming that unless you give me a reason to assume something else. So, were you at the motel?”

That question told Seth that the undersheriff
didn’t
actually know for sure, no matter what he’d been told. So he replied by saying, “Not since Becca left.”

“So you know she left.”

“You just told me she was a runaway, man,” Seth said. “Look, what’s this about? You think I did something to her? Why would I? Why would I do something to anyone?”

The undersheriff just let Seth’s questions hang there. He just let their implications grow. He watched Seth closely, like a book he was reading. The silence dragged on.

Seth finally said hotly, “I don’t know
anything
about Becca King. I don’t know anything about anyone else. Or any
thing
else for that matter.”

“Oh, I bet you don’t,” UnderSheriff Mathieson replied. “But keep this in mind: I’ll be watching you, Seth.”

AFTER THAT CONFRONTATION
, Seth nearly didn’t go to Smugglers Cove Farm and Flowers. Instead, he nearly went to the Cliff Motel to point out a few choice things to Debbie Grieder. For Debbie might have known a lot about alcoholism from her years in AA, but there were lists of things she either didn’t know or just felt like ignoring.

It was hard to believe, for example, that she hadn’t known Sean had been using drugs from the time he was fifteen years old, right when Reese died. It was also hard to believe that she hadn’t known he’d grown weed on the sunniest part of the bluff, hidden in plain sight among the ocean spray. And how could she not have noticed when he started on speed? Seth might have been ten years younger than Sean Grieder, but even
he
had known when things began to go south in Sean’s life.

Well, he thought, as he coursed north up the highway, there was nothing he could do about Debbie Grieder. There was nothing he could do about Sean. There was practically nothing he could do about Becca King except help her out a little. But there was something he could do with the information he’d just gathered off the Internet.

When Seth pulled into the long driveway of Smugglers Cove Farm and Flowers, he took note of the remains of the wild summer grasses along the edge of it. These were long dead now, but he couldn’t help thinking how the grasses were a magnet for Lyme disease ticks. So were people’s socks, legs, feet, and toes. If people weren’t careful, a tick could be on them for days without their knowledge.

It felt good to Seth to be doing something useful for the Cartwrights. Obviously, they were worried sick about Hayley’s dad, and he had the answer to what was happening to the poor guy. He smiled when he thought about being able to help them. He was still smiling as he drove up to the house and beep-beeped the VW’s horn.

Hayley came out into the rain in a flash. She started waving her hands, and when he got out of the car, the first thing she said was, “Shush! Be quiet! Don’t honk that horn!” before he could even get the door closed. She sounded furious.

Seth said, “Chill, Hayl. I wanted to see how your dad—”

“What about my dad? Nothing’s
wrong
with my dad. That stupid SUV broke down.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you guys about because when I drove it back here, there was nothing wrong with the clutch.”

“So what? So
what
?” Hayley’s face was scarlet, even in the rain.

“So nothing,” Seth said. “Look, can we go inside? Or at least on the porch?”

“No, we can
not
.”

He turned up the collar of his flannel shirt and pulled the rim down on his fedora. He said, “Okay. Whatever. But, Hayley, listen, I was looking on the Internet because of how your dad’s—”

“You leave my dad alone!” Her voice grew louder, and Seth could see that along with the redness of her face, her eyes were teary. It seemed as if the tears made her even angrier, though, because she clenched a fist and said, “What’s the
matter
with you? You act like you’re not going to end up in jail in a few days.”

“Hey, I got no idea who supposedly saw me at the Cliff Motel, but even if I was there—and I’m not saying I was—I got
no
clue why Becca King ran off, okay?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The undersheriff. What else? I just got through being accused of—” Seth eyed her more closely then. He realized they were talking at cross-purposes. He said, “Whoa. Saratoga Woods and Derric. You weren’t just blowing smoke, were you? What you said the other day about turning myself in—”

“What were you doing there that day?”

“Like it’s any of your business?”

“Tell me!”

“Hey! I was taking Gus for a run, okay? What were
you
doing there?”

“What were you wearing? Did you have on your sandals?”

Seth’s jaw dropped. He snapped it closed. “What the
hell
 . . . What’s this all about, Hayley?”

“You’re not wearing them. You’ve stopped wearing them.”

“Uh . . . it’s raining? In case you haven’t noticed?”

“You
always
wear them. Do you still have them? Did you give them away? Did you give them to Dylan Cooper?”

Seth swore then. She was crazy and he was crazier for having come over to this stupid farm. It was over, over,
over
between him and Hayley. But he couldn’t let go, not of Hayley, not of her family, not of the farm, not of anything.

She said, “
Answer
me! Because Becca King was talking about those sandals and that doesn’t even make sense. She knows something. And so do you. And I swear, Seth, if you don’t tell me . . .”

Seth’s head felt like something about to explode. He sank back down on the driver’s seat of Sammy. He put his head in his hands. Her thoughts. His thoughts. Accusations. Truth. A balloon was being inflated in his brain and he couldn’t begin to deal with the pain.

Hayley said, “Yeah, that’s right,” in reaction to this. “You’ve got a lot to think about, don’t you? And the first thing you might want to think about is why you just can’t leave me alone, leave
us
alone, leave our whole family alone. What do you want, anyway? You can’t just walk away from school and forget all about taking the GED and
then
get jealous and
then
hurt someone just because he’s my friend and he kissed me and I kissed him and I
liked
kissing him. Okay? I
liked
it. And then you get the girl Becca King involved in your plan to—”

Seth jumped up. He put his hand over Hayley’s mouth. He cried, “Stop, just stop! I can’t even
think
.”

She whipped her head away from him and said, “You’ve got
that
right. You can’t even think.”

The front door opened. Mrs. Cartwright stepped outside. She hugged herself and called, “You two need to get out of the rain. What are you up to?”

Hayley said, “Nothing.”

Mrs. Cartwright smiled a little cautiously. “It didn’t look like nothing from here. Are you okay, Seth?”

Seth managed to say, “Yeah. I’m okay. I’m good.” Then he remembered why he’d come. “But I’ve been noticing that Mr. Cartwright isn’t doing too good,” and he told Hayley’s mother about Lyme disease, about the man on Whidbey Island who’d been misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and about Lyme disease on the island itself. As he was talking, he heard Hayley hiss his name and he saw Mrs. Cartwright’s hand climb to her throat and rest there. He couldn’t stop, though, till he got it all out, because forget about Hayley, this wasn’t about her. This was about one thing that he could do right. He explained how Mr. Cartwright might not have noticed a tick on his body. He explained how he—Seth—found ticks on Gus occasionally. He went on to say that Lyme disease could make someone pretty sick and it needed to be dealt with and—