The Edge of Nowhere (15 page)

Just as Becca reached the parking lot of the Cliff Motel, a helicopter roared overhead. It was flying low, and she could tell it was heading in the direction of Saratoga Woods. She wanted to think this was just another one of those coincidences she’d been considering a couple of moments earlier, but she had a feeling that it had to do with the ambulance, Derric, and Derric’s condition. She thought of that blood that had been seeping from his head. It was serious and she knew it. But she also knew that he was still alive or they wouldn’t have needed a helicopter to get him out of there.

BECCA KNEW SHE
had to tell Debbie she was back. Debbie hadn’t liked her going to the woods with Seth. All her whispers had pretty much indicated bad stuff could happen, and it had. But this was something she didn’t want Debbie to know, so she had to be careful. She tried to compose herself by taking a few deep breaths. Then she went inside.

She found them all in the kitchen. Debbie and the kids were at the table, and each of them had a paper in front of them. On the paper they had each drawn a pumpkin. On the pumpkins they were making designs.

Chloe cried out, “Becca’s here!” and Josh said, “We’re making plans. Check mine, Becca,” and she saw that they were planning how they were going to carve pumpkins in advance of cutting them into jack-o’-lanterns at the end of October. “We get ’em up on Third Street, and we’ll get you one, too,” Chloe said. “Grammer said we c’n buy extra big ones this year. Josh wants one as big as this table, but Grammer says they all got to be the same size.”

“They’re from someone’s garden,” Josh confided. “So they’re not perfect or anything.”

“Which means they’re cheap,” Debbie said. She got up from the table and said, “Which one of you guys wants a quesadilla?”

Becca felt the tentacles of Debbie’s suspicion slithering toward her. She heard the whispers that accompanied them:
all scratched up . . . brambles in your socks . . . where you been . . . up at the erratic, huh? . . . let me see your eyes . . . done to you
? Becca was scared of the suspicion and worried about the whispers and, more than anything, afraid because of the loss of that cell phone. All of this piled into her and made her hungrier than she’d ever been before.

She told Debbie she’d like a quesadilla very much and could she cut up the cheese for it or something? Debbie said no, just sit down and make a design for a jack-o’-lantern, darlin’, because eventually they were going to have a pumpkin carving contest and the winner would be decided by Tatiana Primavera. Debbie started the quesadillas and for a moment Becca thought all was okay. But then as she had them heating on the stove, Debbie turned to Becca and said, “Seth bring you home, darlin’? I didn’t hear that old Vee-Dub.”

Becca said, “I walked from Useless Bay Coffee. Someone’s playing guitar outside there,” and she hoped from this that Debbie would conclude that Seth was still there listening to the music.

Debbie looked at her closely.
Becca turned her head away and pulled some paper toward her. She studied it as if she was trying to decide on a design. But what she knew was that the topic of Seth Darrow wasn’t finished between her and Debbie Grieder.

PART TWO

Saratoga Woods

TWELVE

W
hen Seth Darrow watched Becca King run off toward the parking lot of Saratoga Woods, he didn’t know what to think. Luckily, though, he knew what to do. He took Gus to Sammy, he put the dog inside, and he gave him a bowl of water. Had the car not been there, Gus would have been trouble. As it was, he’d stay right there in the passenger seat till Judgment Day waiting for Seth. He needed training to be free on the forest trails. When it came to the car, he was perfect.

Seth returned to the meadow then. Mrs. Kinsale was just coming across with her dogs. Seth met her halfway and told her what he knew: Derric Mathieson was hurt in the woods. He also told her an ambulance was on its way.

“Where is he?” she asked him.

“Didn’t see him. All’s I know is he fell up on Meadow Loop trail and it’s bad.”

Diana Kinsale didn’t ask him how he knew this, although she looked at him sharply. “I’ll go back,” she said. “Send the paramedics when they get here.” She ran to her truck and stowed her dogs in the back. She headed to the trail at the far end of the meadow.

A few minutes later the sounds of sirens in the distance grew louder as the ambulance approached. Because of the sirens and how insistently they shrieked, other people began to emerge from Saratoga Woods. Kids came down from above where an old landing strip had long overgrown a developer’s dream of houses for rich people in possession of airplanes to fly them to the island for weekends. The local dopers stumbled down from a boulder the size of a house, an erratic buried deep in the forest and marking the Ice Age that had deposited it there from Alberta, Canada. Hikers came over from Putney Woods, connected to these woods by a winding trail that passed through acres of salal, ferns, brambles, and firs.

Among them was Jenn McDaniels, who blasted out of the woods at a run. She was sweaty from the top of her head to her ankles, and she was dressed for her training for the island triathlon. She ran and she biked in the woods, and Seth knew this. But she usually did this much closer to her home, which was at the far south end of the island. So why she was here didn’t make sense to him, nor did it make sense to see the girl who emerged from yet another trail, off to the right, at a run.

This was Hayley Cartwright. This was Hayley who lived nowhere near these woods. This was Hayley whose family farm truck was not in the parking lot at all, so what, Seth wondered, was she doing here?

Seth didn’t have a chance to ask her a thing although he looked at her and she looked away and the color in her face told him that she had more secrets from him than she’d had the day they’d broken up. They didn’t say a word to each other because Jenn ran up first and said, “What’s going on?” and the stoners sauntered over behind her.

He said to Jenn, “Someone fell in the woods.” Deliberately, he did not tell her who.

“Heavy, man,” came from among the dopers.

Someone snickered and Seth glanced their way. They were lit up like candles on a birthday cake, stifling grins and looking fully finished. He said to Jenn, “Ambulance is coming,” which, of course, was obvious from the approaching noise. He added, “Mrs. Kinsale’s up there. I’m waiting to tell them where to go.”

“You the local traffic cop?” one of the dopers asked.

“
I’m
way impressed,” another said.

“Shut up, Dylan,” Jenn snapped at the latter boy. “Go back to your cage.”

“Oh, baby, I’m scared.”

“Come
on
, you guys,” Hayley said. She was, Seth noted, not looking at him. The rawness of their breakup was still fresh and bloody. Six weeks past, and she’d cheated on him. He should have expected it, but he hadn’t. He should have had brains to see it wouldn’t ever have worked between them once he dropped out of school, but he had none.

The ambulance swung off Saratoga Road. Seth approached it as it sent up gravel and dust in the parking lot. One of the paramedics got out, and Seth told him the situation tersely. He pointed across the meadow to the trailhead, which was dimly visible from where they stood. The paramedic nodded, got back inside the ambulance, and they drove it straight across the meadow. They pulled to a halt right at the edge of the forest and took off at a run with a box of gear and a stretcher.

JENN FOLLOWED THEM
, curiosity getting the better of her. Some of the people who’d emerged from the woods trailed after her. The dopers remained. So did Seth because, Hayley hadn’t moved, and he wanted to talk to her. There was something strange about her being in Saratoga Woods by herself, and although Seth knew this wasn’t his business, he also had a way to get her to talk, and he intended to use it.

He said, “So, Hayley, you still hooking up with—”

“Stop it.” She’d been watching the ambulance and the people running after it. She turned back to Seth. He thought stupidly how pretty she was, how she’d always been pretty, and how the nicest thing about Hayley Cartwright was that she didn’t know she was pretty. She said, “Okay, Seth?
Stop
it. Okay?”

He said, “Hey, just a friendly question. Isn’t that what you wanted: you and me just being
friends
?”

“You don’t know how to be anyone’s friend,” she told him.

“Oh, that stings, chick,” Dylan Cooper said. He and his buddies had moved into a tight little enclave of whispered conversation.

“Shut up,” Hayley said. “Why don’t you go smoke another joint.”

“I will if you will,” Dylan told her.

“Can it,” Seth snapped.

He took Hayley’s arm. They moved away from the others. He said, “What’re you doing here alone, Hayley?”

She said, “What’re
you
doing here alone?”

“I’m not alone. Gus’s in the car.”

“Well, pardon me for not having a dog to walk.”

“How’d
you
get here, anyway? Where’s the truck? You come over from Keller Road or something?” Not that it was any of his business, but something was going on. Hayley Cartwright was a cautious girl. She never went into the woods alone.

She said, “Look, if you have to know, the truck’s down at the Metcalf Woods entrance. I came that way. Are you satisfied?”

“The
Metcalf
entrance?” Seth wanted to add, “You mean the one with the big No Parking sign? The one that tells you to take your vehicle over to Keller Road if you want to go into those woods? The one that makes it
easy
to hide your truck from anyone passing by? Is that the entrance we’re talking about, Hayl?” But he didn’t say that because he felt queasy at the thought of Hayley hiding even more from him than she’d hidden already. So he repeated, “The Metcalf entrance? Why’d you park there?”

She said, “Gee, Seth, as if it matters right now,” which was also her way of saying “as if it’s your business.”

He wanted to argue, but a sheriff’s department car pulled into the parking lot then. At this, the collection of dopers beat a very quick retreat back into the woods. A deputy got out, observing their flight. He pulled some sunglasses from the breast pocket of his shirt, and he squinted over in the direction of the ambulance before he put the glasses on. He walked to where Seth and Hayley were standing.

He said to Hayley, “You make the call?”

Hayley said, “What call?”

The deputy said to Hayley, “Empty your pockets. Let me see your bag.”