The Edge of Nowhere (44 page)

“That you were there and you know something and it’s time to cough it up,” Seth told him.

Dylan approached. He and Seth were matched for size, but with his friends present—no matter their condition—the odds weren’t good. He got in Seth’s face and sneered, “And what about
you
?” as his two friends rose to their feet. “
You
bein’ there and
him
bein’ there an’ you such a fug of a loser an’ him such a fug of a winner . . .”

Seth put a hand on Dylan’s chest to keep him at a distance. He said, “When it comes to losers, dude . . .”

Dylan’s friends were up and circling the two boys in an instant.

Becca said, “Come on, Seth. If these guys know anything—”

“Nope,” Seth said. “Dylan’s going to talk. Because if he doesn’t, I’m going to punch his lights.”

“Uh . . . Seth?” Becca said, for one of the boys had spied a fallen branch and had decided to arm himself with it.

Seth gave it a glance. He looked at Becca. “He couldn’t hit a dead turkey with that,” he said.

The boy took this as a challenge and swung, but Seth was quick. One move and the branch was his. He twisted it and its wielder was on the ground. Seth threw the branch to one side and said, “Come on. You guys are way too strung out to fight. We can go that way but even Becca here’s going to be able to take you on. So you want to answer me or you want to throw punches?”

Dylan wanted punches. He landed one, but in his condition it was a glancing blow. One blow from Seth and he was on the ground. Seth sighed. “Guys,” he said. “Get real.”

“Fug. Loser.”

“Fat ’n’ ugly.”

“Yeah, dude. And all the rest,” Seth said. “So what happened in the woods or do I have to sit on your face to hear it?”

“
Nothin’
happened in the woods, okay?” Dylan said. He was on the ground still, but his concern now wasn’t Seth so much as the roach he’d dropped. “Didn’t know that dude was there. What’s
with
you? We heard the fuggall noise. That’s
it
. Next thing we know the cops’re there. Like we’re goin’ to want to talk to
them
?”

Becca listened hard to this and to everything else, but there was nothing more. Particularly there was nothing in the air among the boys to suggest that Dylan was lying. He was a piece of work, but it seemed that he was telling the truth. And if his condition now was anything like the condition he might have been in at the erratic in Saratoga Woods, he wouldn’t have been able to push anyone anywhere, least of all Derric Mathieson, who probably outweighed him by forty pounds and definitely outsmarted him by forty IQ points.

She said to Seth, “That’s it, then.”

“You think?” he said.

She nodded. “Let’s go.”

ALL THE WAY
to the car, Becca thought furiously. She wanted answers and she wanted them
now
. But the whole idea of having answers handed to her took her back to the words that Diana Kinsale had spoken to her when they’d returned from their look at Jenn McDaniels’s house: The point of struggling through the questions was to recognize the answers when you finally had them. She’d struggled through her questions about Jenn McDaniels and Jenn’s dislike of her, and the answers had lain in that place where Jenn lived, in its grinding poverty and its sense of hopelessness. Here, now, she was faced with more questions, and while Dylan Cooper hadn’t provided the answers, she had a feeling they were staring her in the face.

She said nothing as they made their way back to Seth’s VW. She felt that they had a partial picture of what had happened that day in Saratoga Woods but how to finish it? She’d thought talking to Dylan would do it. She’d been wrong. So she had to seek another way.

She leaned against the VW when they reached it. Seth climbed inside and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. She pictured Saratoga Woods once again, much as she had pictured it for Diana earlier. So many people had been there. But how many of them could have taken the trail that Derric was on when he fell? It was by itself. It was far to one side of the meadow, tucked out of sight. True, it connected to other trails high up in the woods, but there were far easier ways to get to them, both from the parking lot and from within the forest itself. So for Derric to have been there . . . for anyone to have been there . . . there was going to be a significant reason, and it wasn’t going to have to do with a day hike. For a day hike just didn’t make sense. Not that trail. Not where it was. Not how you got to it.

She leaned into the VW and spoke to Seth. “I think we’ve got to do it all again.”

“What? Talk to those losers? Not hardly.”

“No. I mean go into Saratoga Woods. Seth, I think we need to relive that day because we’re missing something and it’s right in front of us.”

“What makes you think that?” he asked her.

“Because answers always are,” she told him.

FORTY

T
hey needed Gus. If they were going to replay the day as it had occurred for the two of them, Gus had been part of it. Seth wasn’t sure how his grandfather was going to take his request for the return of the dog, though. So he left Becca at a place near the highway called Bayview Corner, a congregation of restored and repurposed buildings.

He didn’t give her time to argue. Instead, he shoved open the car door and led her to a bigger-than-life chessboard fashioned out of a lawn between a group of clapboard shops and a gardening center. He pointed to a spot on the chessboard and said, “Knight to king’s bishop six. Wait there. I’ll be back with the dog.”

She sank to the ground, where she leaned against one of the chessman. She said, “Don’t need my help?”

“Not for this,” he told her.

He cruised along and thought about what he would say to his grandfather. They’d parted well the last time they’d seen each other at Skajit Farmers’ Supply, but Ralph’s intention had been to speak with Hayley. Seth didn’t want his grandfather to think he was showing up to pump him for information about that encounter.

He needn’t have worried about where to begin his conversation with Ralph, however. As he turned to drive up the hill to Ralph’s house, an oxidized red Mazda was coming toward him down the slope. He pulled to the side and saw, to his chagrin, that Mrs. Prince of the $2,100 bill at the Star Store was just leaving. She waved at him merrily and grinned and Seth waved back gamely. He wondered how Ralph had reacted to the news that his grandson had managed to screw up running the Star Store’s cash register. He could easily imagine Mrs. Prince’s words: “Ralph, I hate to ask, but can that boy even count?”

Seth drove the rest of the way up the hill. When he descended to the house, he found Ralph standing at the kitchen counter with Gus sitting under the table. Ralph was leafing through a recipe book, a six-pack of beer on the counter next to him and Gus watching his every move, hoping food was going to be involved eventually.

The dog yelped a greeting when he caught sight of Seth. He began to rise. Ralph said, “Cave, Gus,” as the Labrador started to come out from beneath the table, tail wagging furiously. Gus hesitated, his brown eyes going from Ralph to Seth to Ralph again. Ralph repeated, “Cave,” and the dog retreated back under the table, where he hunkered.

“Pretty cool,” Seth said. “Can I say hi to him?”

“Course you can. He’s your dog.”

Seth bent under the table and put his cheek on Gus’s head. The tail swept the floor faster.

Ralph slapped the recipe book closed. “Fran Prince tells me they got you on the cash register at the Star Store, favorite male grandchild.”

Seth groaned. “I saw her leaving just now. I didn’t think she’d stop by and tell you, though. She must think I’m a dolt.”

Ralph frowned. “Why?”

“I charged her twenty-one hundred dollars for her order. She didn’t tell you?”

“Nope.”

“What was she doing here, then?”

Ralph nodded toward the six-pack of beer. “She brought me that. Fixed her back door yesterday and damn fool woman thought she needed to give me a thank-you for it.”

Seth said, “Oh.” He wondered what his life might be like if he
stopped
jumping to conclusions the moment he saw someone doing something. “Anyway, I was only on the register for about twenty minutes. They wouldn’t put me on it permanently. That’d just about drive them out of business.”

Ralph didn’t answer at first. Instead, he stowed the beer in the refrigerator one bottle at a time, and Seth could tell by his expression that he was thinking hard. He finally said, “Enough of this. You come with me, Seth.”

Seth thought, Uh-oh, but he followed his grandfather into the living room. Ralph went to a cabinet with open shelves crammed with books, framed photos, and keepsakes. He took from these shelves one of the pictures and a small wooden box.

He said, “You look at these.”

Seth said, “Grand, I just came by to ask—”

“Oh hell, boy, I know you’re here for a reason. I didn’t fall off the truck this morning. But you and I have business to finish up and finishing that business begins with you looking at these.”

Seth knew what they were, of course. The box was his first effort in wood, a crude container made in a summer craft class when he was between third and fourth grade. The picture was of him standing on the deck of the forest tree house, grinning proudly, a few years ago.

Ralph said, “There’s knowing what you have in here”—he indicated his head—“and there’s also having the sense to use it. You’re a fine musician and an equally fine craftsman, Seth, and I’m damned if I’m going to watch you wishing your way into a state of failure because you think the rest of the world wants you to be something else. The world doesn’t
care
who you are, grandson.
You’re
the one who’s supposed to care about that.”

He removed the box and photo from Seth’s hands and replaced them. He went back to the kitchen where he leaned against the counter, arms crossed, facing Seth who followed him. “So what’s up?” he asked.

Seth sighed. He looked back into the living room, at the box replaced upon the shelf. He looked at that picture, too. He said, “I haven’t done one single thing to get a tutor for the GED.”

“Now that’s a real problem, isn’t it?”

“Considering I promised Mom and Dad . . . yeah, it’s a real problem.”

“Figured out why yet?”

“Why I don’t have a tutor?” Seth leaned against the counter, matching his grandfather’s posture. “I
want
to say because the whole GED thing is a load of crap. I’m a guitarist, and I’m a
good
guitarist. What difference does it make if I take the GED?”

“That’s what you want to say, eh?” Ralph said. “Is the truth something different?”

Seth blew out a breath. “I’m starting to think so.”

“And?”

“I’m scared I won’t pass.
And
I don’t want some tutor seeing how lame I am.”

“Lame? For God’s sake. Consider that tree house.”

“So I built a tree house,” Seth said. “So what? I couldn’t have done it without you standing there telling me where to pound the nails.”

“That’s just the point, grandson. That’s how you learned. I set you loose in this forest now and tell you to find a spot and build another tree house, you think you could do it?”

“Now I could. Sure.” Seth looked at his boots but what he saw was his grandfather’s point. He had to
start
somewhere in order to
finish
somewhere else. What he didn’t see, though, was how this applied to a test that would serve him nothing in his life.

Ralph said, “I’m not going to disagree with you about whether that damn test is important or just one hell of a waste of time. That’s not really the issue.”

“What
is
the issue then?”

“It’s keeping the bargain you struck with your parents. You don’t do that, you’re going to keep feeling the way you’ve been feeling. I’ve been watching you thrash around for months now, Seth, and I got to tell you that until you finish doing what you promised to do, you’re going to keep thrashing. And all the Hayleys in the world—”

“It’s not
about
Hayley, Grand.”

“
All
the Hayleys in the world,” Ralph persisted, “are not going to make up for what you haven’t done to take care of business.”

Ralph pushed away from the counter, then. He shoved his fists into the small of his back, and as Seth watched him do this, it came to him that his grandfather wasn’t a young man any longer. He wasn’t going to live forever. He saw then that it was all about time and time was passing. His own time would pass as well.

Ralph said, “This whole damn test? This tutor? Passing, failing, whatever? This is something you owe yourself. You promised your parents, true. But you keep the promises you make for yourself.”

“I guess so.” Seth looked from his grandfather to Gus. The Lab was still patiently waiting beneath the table. Seth said, “Grand, c’n I have my dog back?”

“Course you can, favorite male grandchild,” Ralph replied. “He’s your dog.”

Seth pushed away from the counter as well. He said, “Come, Gus,” and the dog got to his feet. Seth said, “Grand, there’s one other thing.”