The Edge of the Water by Elizabeth George
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.
SEVEN
Derric 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 w
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.
EIGHT
They were heading onto the main island highway when the question struck Becca. “How d’they even know it’s the same seal?” she asked Seth.
Seth said, “Huh?” and cranked the VW’s heating higher.
“You said those people watch for a seal every year and this year it’s early. How d’they know it’s even the same seal?”
He gave her a look as he shifted to fourth gear and turned the windshield wipers on against a soft rain that had begun to fall. A few more degrees and it would be snow. Becca hoped that wouldn’t happen. Seth said, “I always forget.”
“What?”
“That you’re not a local and you’re not a tourist either. Local, you’d know. Tourist, you would’ve seen a postcard.”
“Of what?”
“The seal. She’s totally black. Nera’s what she’s called. Anyway, she’s been showing up the same time every year for . . . I dunno how long. This year she’s early so they’re all freaking out.”
“Because?”
“Because they got a festival for her and if she shows up early, she might leave early and then what happens to their festival where she’s usually swimming around looking for handouts or whatever? I say put someone in a frigging seal costume and have him swim around Langley marina barking, but who’s asking me?”
Becca thought about this in the light of everything that had passed that day. She said, “Seth, there was this guy . . . Eddie somebody? . . . I can’t remember his last name. Diana Kinsale knew him and he was down at Sandy Point shooting a rifle at the water. Diana said he was shooting at a seal.”
“Sounds like Eddie Beddoe,” Seth said. “He’s as bizarro as the rest of ’em. There’s all sorts of people just totally whacked out about that seal, Beck. Ask me why and I do . . . not . . . know.” He glanced at her then and said, “Something for you in the back-seat. Star Store throwaways. I tho
Seth worked in the Star Store early every morning. It was how Becca had come to meet him in the first place. Now, she squirmed around in her seat and saw the grocery bag. She said, “Seth! Hey. Thanks,” as she grabbed for it. Food past its sell-by date comprised the bag’s contents, along with a few items that she knew Seth had paid for on his own. She said to him, “I’ll pay you back.”
He gave her a wink. “No problemmo. You’re my entertainment.”
She made a face at him. He laughed and reached over and ruffled her hair. It reminded her of how much older he was: nineteen years old to her fifteen. But still her good friend, her best friend if it came down to it.
Some distance along the highway, Seth made the turn onto Newman Road. This cut northwest and ultimately looped into the commercial town of Freeland, but a good distance before that, he pulled to the side and stopped the car in a quarter-moon turnout. Some twenty yards farther along the road from this was a trail into the forest that Becca needed to hike. She grabbed her backpack and the bag of Star Store goodies and opened the door.
She said, “Thanks. I owe you big-time like always,” but was surprised when he got out as well. He scored a flashlight from his glove compartment first. He said, “I’ll collect someday. Come on.”
“You don’t have to—”
“No problemmo,” he said again. “’Sides, I want to make sure you’re not wrecking the place.”
The place was a tree house in the woods, a structure that Seth himself had built. It sat in the interlocking branching of two great hemlocks, deep within a forest on a huge tract of land that Seth’s grandfather owned and on which he, too, lived. But Ralph Darrow had no idea that Becca had been in residence on his property since November. Seth had helped her keep things this way.