The Edge of Nowhere (45 page)

“What’s that, Seth?”

“You always call me ‘favorite male grandchild,’ and I like that. I do. But fact is, I’m your only male grandchild.”

Ralph looked at him, blue eyes sparkling. He smiled. Then he laughed out loud. “Details,” he said. “Mere details, Seth.”

FORTY-ONE

“I
don’t know why we have to start with the motel.” Seth was idling the VW at the stop sign that marked the end of Sixth Street across from the Cliff Motel. “What’s the point? Nothing happened here. It was all in the woods.”

Frigging . . . hates me . . . total bull . . . like Sean . . .
told Becca he probably didn’t want to see Debbie Grieder, and she couldn’t blame him. But she said it was just a feeling she had. They needed to walk back through that day in order to see it from another angle, and the Cliff Motel was where the day had begun. In the backseat as she spoke, Gus whined and thumped his tail.

Seth said, “At least
that
part’s the same. He whined all the way. He wanted a run.” He proceeded through the intersection and signaled for the turn into the motel’s parking lot. “How’re we going to do this without running into Mrs. Grieder?”

“It’s one o’clock,” Becca said. “She’s still at her meeting. The kids are in school. We’ll be okay.”

Seth pulled in and parked. He said, “Tell me we don’t have to dig up all those bulbs and replant them.”

Becca laughed as she opened the car door. Before she could answer, though, Gus had shot through the opening. He’d seen a squirrel and he was barking like mad.

Seth said, “
Excellent
way to begin.” He dashed after the Lab, yelling “Gus! Stay!” He disappeared around the side of the building.

At that, the office door opened and Debbie Grieder stepped outside at the same moment as Becca noticed what she hadn’t seen before, which was Debbie’s SUV tucked along the side of the motel. Chloe came storming out right behind her shouting, “Is that Gus?” She ran off in the direction of the barking while Debbie stopped short at the sight of Becca.

Thin . . . like Sean . . . oh God
fractured the air but along with Gus’s barking and Chloe’s cries, Becca heard nothing more because Josh, too, came out of the motel, only in his case he stumbled and a hot water bottle that was strapped to his head by means of a scarf came loose, fell to the ground, and spilled, splashing water over his slippers.

Becca went to him. She said, “Hey Josh, what
happened
to you?”

“Earache,” he said. “Grammer says it’s an infection so I get to stay home and so does Chloe. How come you left?”

Debbie said sharply, “Go back inside, Josh. The cold will make your ear hurt worse.”

He looked from beneath his eyebrows at his grandmother. He said, “’Kay,” which told Becca that he truly
didn’t
feel well, so quickly cooperative was he.

Becca got to her feet. Debbie observed her with
lost so much weight . . . what that means
the flittering message in her whispers. For Laurel, Becca thought, it would have been cause for celebration. For Debbie it meant something different. Debbie looked from Becca to the VW to the side of the building where Gus’s barking was coming from. As she did this, Seth came around the building with Chloe and Gus, but he slowed down at the sight of Debbie and he hustled the dog back into the car.

Debbie said to Becca, “So it’s ended just like I warned you. I told you to keep clear from him. I told you it would lead to nothing good. Who’re you running from? His dealer?”

Becca blinked in surprise.
His dealer
meant only one thing in this context. She said, “Seth’s been helping me.”

“I’m sure that’s what he wants you to think. That’s what they always say. Meantime, what’s really going on is that
you’re
helping him. The only question is how. Want to tell me?”

“It’s not whatever you’re thinking. Without Seth, I’d be—”

“Without Seth you’d be here in room four-four-four. Without him, you’d be in school. Without him I wouldn’t be sick with worrying about where you are and what’s happened to you.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“Why’d you run off then? You must have known I’d worry.”

Becca thought hard about what she could tell Debbie: what was safe and what was also true. She said, “Remember at the start when I needed a place to stay and a way to get into school and you helped me? And I was so grateful and you never asked me a single question? Well see, there were things I
couldn’t
tell you or anyone else, like where my mom is because I don’t know or why she left me here, which I
do
know but can’t explain because it wouldn’t make sense. I mean, part of it would but a big part wouldn’t. See, she told me to find a friend of hers only the friend had just died when I got there and I couldn’t get my mom on her cell phone to tell her that. So I ended up going to the AA building where I met you but when the police came here that night, I had to run away because—”

“Wait. Wait.” Debbie scratched her badly scarred forehead. She dug in her pocket and brought out her cigarettes. Before she lit one, she said, “
What
police came here? When?”

“The undersheriff came when I was outside with Josh and Chloe. That time I showed them the orcas? I couldn’t let him take me away, Debbie. Especially not in front of them.”

“Are you talking about Dave Mathieson?”

Becca nodded. “I figured someone must’ve reported me. He was looking for me anyway because of my cell phone and where I had to leave it. I figured that if he found out that my mom had left me on the island—”

Debbie blew out a lungful of smoke. She said, “You thought Sheriff Mathieson was here at the motel because of
you
?” and she put a hand to her forehead. Then she said to Chloe, “Darlin’, you go inside and see if Josh’s all right.”

“But I want to play with Gus and Becca,” Chloe protested.

“I’ll come back and play later,” Becca told her. “I promise.”

The little girl shuffled to the door, albeit reluctantly. When it had closed behind her, Debbie said, “Becca . . . the undersheriff wasn’t here for you that night. He’s got . . . He does some other business at the motel from time to time with someone else. That’s all.”

Becca frowned. “What business?”

Seth coughed loudly. Debbie glanced his way.
Knew it . . . life is . . .
went between them, and from that look they shared and out of Debbie’s whispers came a fleeting memory of something Becca had seen: Tatiana Primavera’s fingers on the undersheriff’s arm in the commons that day. The undersheriff’s fingers interlocking with hers. So quick had the gesture been, it would have meant nothing by itself. But like so many other occurrences on this island, it did not stand alone.

Becca said, “Oh.”

Debbie said to her, “It was never about you, that night. Later on he came back, when I reported you missing. But that night? You were the farthest thing from his mind. So where did you go?”

“I went to find Seth. He helped me. Like before.”

“‘Like before?’”

“He was the one who told me to find you at that meeting up Second Street where I met you. He said if I went and waited there, you’d find me. He told me you’d help me. He said you always help people.”

“Seth said that?” When Becca nodded, Debbie looked at Seth and kept looking at him while she said, “He didn’t hurt you? He didn’t bother you? He didn’t . . . give you anything? Or encourage you to . . . do something?”

“Like what?”

Debbie looked back at Becca, studying her. She said, “Like drugs. Like weed. Like pills. Like meth. Like anything. He didn’t give you anything?”

Becca shook her head. Then she added, “Except camping equipment and some food.”

Debbie murmured, “God.” Then she said, “He’s been taking care of you? He’s given you a place to stay?”

“Yeah. I mean, he’s my friend.”

Debbie seemed to droop with all the information she’d been given. She was like a woman who’d been loaded up with bricks to carry upon her shoulders.
Sponsor . . . wrong . . . what sort of fourth
were a few of her whispers but they seemed to combine with others about
Sean . . . years of his life . . . what’s it really
, and even these were clogging the air with others that seemed to come from Seth because they dealt with
time for people to stop thinking . . . how stuff looks . . . Sean but not me . . .
until Becca could bear no more. She fumbled for the AUD box, brought it out, plugged it into her ear.

Debbie said, “The kids have missed you, Becca.”

“I’ll come back and see them.”

“What about school?”

“I’ve been keeping up with the work, sort of. I’ll be going back.”

“Want to tell me when?”

“Really soon. I hope.”

“What’s this all about, then? D’you want to tell me? Either one of you?”

Becca shot a glance at Seth who made a gesture of lifting his hands and dropping them, telling Becca it was all up to her. Becca said to Debbie, “I’ll tell you, only not right now. Right now Seth and I have to go to Saratoga Woods. We had to stop here first because that’s what happened the day that Derric fell.”

“Everything started that damn day, didn’t it?” Debbie said.

Becca considered this. She saw it was only partly true. “Most things,” she agreed, but then she added, “Not everything, though. That’s how I figure it.”

WHEN THEY PULLED
into the parking lot at Saratoga Woods, there were no cars present and no bicycles locked against the information board. They got out of the car with the dog. Seth said, “Gus, sit,” and that was exactly what the Labrador did. He licked his chops, though, and looked toward the woods. He gazed meaningfully at Seth.

“Impressive sit,” Becca told Seth.

“Only as long as there’re no rabbits or squirrels in sight.” Seth bent to the dog and rubbed his head as he clipped on the leash. They headed across the meadow with Gus trotting along beside them.

Becca pointed south where a distant trailhead opened into the towering Douglas firs. “Derric was up that trail, but I didn’t get to him from there. I came out that way after I found him, though.”

“Yeah. I remember. That’s Meadow Loop,” Seth said. “You c’n get onto it from Coral Root Link. You want to go that way first?”

“Let’s retrace everything, just like it was. Except I don’t think we need to let Gus run off.”

“Glad of that,” Seth declared. “I can’t promise he’d come back. He’s not
that
well trained.”

They headed for the main trail, directly in front of them at the end of a path through the last of the season’s rustling meadow grasses. Seth gave the dog more leash so that Gus could sniff the nectar of a thousand other dogs, and they made their way onto the trail into the woods.

It was hushed among the trees, which made Becca think of how many sounds she’d heard on that day when Derric had fallen. There had been whispers coming at her from all directions, as well as scent and the barking. She remembered how everything had seemed to stop suddenly except the barking of the dogs, which went on and on.

Seth said to her as if reading her mind, “What I remember is that Gus heard dogs barking. He took off. I went straight after him up Indian Pipe Trail.”

So that was what they did, following the trail on the damp ground with the scent of decomposing vegetation rich in the air. When they came to the first junction, Seth paused and said, “Yeah. I remember I was happy he hadn’t gone onto Wintergreen. It was muddy in that direction, and there weren’t any paw prints. So I figured he stayed on Indian Pipe until Twin Flowers Trail, and that’s what I did, too.”

“This is where I got lost,” Becca said. “You disappeared and I heard the dogs. I turned left somewhere but I didn’t know the forest, so I ended up on a trail that went way up and through some private land. That’s where I ran into Diana Kinsale. Gus was with her, and she gave me a leash to use, but he still got away.”

“Private land?” Seth repeated. “That sounds like the Coral Root Link. It connects this woods over to Putney Woods. To Metcalf Woods, too. If Gus was with Mrs. Kinsale on that trail, we need to head that way.”

Seth led her to the left onto the secondary trail and they began to climb. The ascent was immediate and narrow, carving an edge into a hillside covered with shrubbery and trees. The only sounds came from Gus’s snuffling along the sides of the path and from a woodpecker
rat-tat-tatting
against a dead tree trunk.

Some distance along the trail, another veered off and the area looked familiar. Becca saw a flat-topped rock backed by a thick wall of ferns from which spiderwebs stretched like Halloween decorations. She remembered sitting on a stump here, she recalled the sounds of dogs coming closer. She said to Seth, “This is where I met up with Diana Kinsale and the dogs. Then Gus took off on that trail”—she pointed to it—“and I went after him.”

Seth pointed to a small sign onto which M.L.T. had been carved. “Meadow Loop Trail,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Becca followed him. It was all coming back to her now, but what came back most strongly was how it felt, not what she saw. She remembered the moment when the scent that she associated with Derric had disappeared, as if cut off peremptorily by a slap in the face. She remembered the feeling of all at once being set adrift in a place that she didn’t know and couldn’t understand. She remembered the solitude and emptiness of it.