The Edge of the Light (26 page)

Becca watched him for a very long time and the question hung between them, unanswered. Finally she said, “I'm so totally sorry.”

He said, “I don't want to believe it, Beck.”

She said, “I don't blame you.”

F
rom the upper bunk bed in Brian Richardson's bedroom, Jenn stared at the constellations on the ceiling. She figured Brian had put them there himself. She discovered at dinner that what Cynthia's younger brother liked best was to talk about the universe. He was very big into astrophysics. He went on about black holes and alternative universes and the expansion of the universe and the potential travel to other galaxies, and Jenn was about to ask him if he was into the whole
Star Wars
thing and which of the films did he like best?—she had to say something to the kid, after all—when his mom said, “Jenn's had enough for now, Brian,” and Cynthia said, “Cease and desist, Bri,” and Brian himself grinned and said to Jenn, “Oh. You got to tell me when I'm s'posed to stop. I've got Asperger's. I can't read social signals so if you sigh or roll your eyes or say something like ‘Thanks, that's interesting,' I won't know what you mean. You won't offend me because I'm used to being told. Sometimes Mom says I'm having an Asperger's moment. It's what I do. Hey are you a lesbian like Cynthia? I think close to sixteen percent of the girls at the high school are lesbians, by the way.”

To her surprise, Jenn laughed along with everyone else. Mrs. Richardson laughed the most until she could only weakly say, “Apsperger's moment! Asperger's moment!”

They were an amazing family, Jenn thought, nothing like hers. After dinner, Cynthia and her brother used the dining room table to do their homework, both of them excused from washing dishes because of the heavy class loads they carried. Cynthia helped Brian with his French. Brian helped Cynthia with her advanced math. Their parents talked quietly in the kitchen while their children worked. There was no music, no television, or anything else that might disturb them.

Particularly there was no brawl on the living room floor engaged in by Petey and Andy. There was no dad lining up his brews for tasting on the same table where Jenn had to work. There was no Mom reading the Bible aloud or setting off to a church meeting or returning from delivering a passenger somewhere in the island taxi. Best of all, there was no reason for Jenn to rustle up a dinner in advance of all this with whatever had been available and picked up yesterday by her mom at Good Cheer Food Bank.

It was so heavenly an environment that Jenn whispered into the darkness, “You still awake, Cynthia?”

“Hmmm. Barely. You doing okay?”

“I guess.” She really wasn't sure. At Cynthia and Mrs. Richardson's insistence, she'd called her mom to say where she would be spending the night. To her mom's reply of a recitation of the fifth commandment, Jenn had tried to explain that she
did
honor and love her parents. To this Kate had quietly answered, “Come home, then, and demonstrate that.” But Jenn knew what such a demonstration would entail, and she couldn't do it. So,
was
she doing okay? Maybe. But again, maybe not.

“Good.” Cynthia turned on her mattress. Jenn felt the quivering of the bunk beds as she did so. As Cynthia had said they would, they'd traded rooms with Brian because she had only a single bed in hers.

“Thanks for letting me stay here,” Jenn said. “Your family . . . Everyone's amazing. Especially your parents. They seem, like, so accepting. I mean not only you but your brother's Asperger's.”

“They've always been the-glass-is-half-full kind of parents,” Cynthia told her. “They wouldn't like it if we decided to take up robbing banks—Brian and I—but as long as we each have a sport and our grades are good, we c'n more or less forge our own way.”

“Wow.
Seriously
perfect.”

“Nothing's perfect,” Cynthia pointed out. “But my mom and dad come close.”

“Wish I could live here forever,” Jenn said, more to herself than to Cynthia.

“You can stay as long as you need to, you know,” Cynthia told her. “They get it. They know most of the kids from the Alliance, so they also know how parents can be.”

Jenn gritted her teeth at this reference to the club, but she didn't go there in conversation. Instead she said, “I
got
to get on that team, Cynthia.” Outside the house, an owl's cry sounded:
whoo whodoo whoo
. Jenn listened for a moment before she added. “It's the only thing I got right now and the only way I'll ever get anywhere.”

“Don't even worry about it,” Cynthia told her.

“I didn't make it last year. I screwed around too long with other stuff.”

“That was last year,” Cynthia said. “This year's different, and you'll be picked the first round. Guaranteed.” A movement below her suggested that Cynthia was getting out of bed. Her shadowy form rose, and she leaned against Jenn's upper bunk as she continued. “You know the drill anyway. For the tryouts.”

“I got cut so fast last year that alls I remember is a bunch of coaches standing around with clipboards.”

“There're five of them,” Cynthia told her. “They're going to decide together who gets on the team. You only need a majority of them to think you're good enough and you're in. You can't really think you won't impress three coaches.”

Cynthia reached out and caressed Jenn's head. Jenn felt the caress like a warmth through her body. “You're just going through a bad time,” the older girl said. “This whole thing with your mom and getting called into Mr. Vansandt's office and everything he asked you . . . ? It's like it put you into a crisis when there's no real crisis at all.” She touched Jenn's cheek with her fingertips. Her voice altered to a murmur as she said, “Just relax about things. School, soccer, training, tryouts, your mom, Mr. Vansandt . . . everything. Really, that's all you ever have to do. Relax and let things take care of themselves.”

“I wish they would.”

“They will. Nothing stays the same. Changes come, changes go, and changes make way for other changes. That's just life.”

“That how it is for you?”

“That's how it is for everyone.”

Cynthia was silent then, but she didn't move back to the lower bunk. She stayed by Jenn's bed and her fingers drifted along Jenn's jaw and then, so delicately, over her ear and down her neck. Jenn got the shivers, but she felt like a cat. She wanted the caresses to go on and on.

Then Cynthia said, “I want to kiss you.”

And Jenn found that she wanted to be kissed.

B
ecca was in her earth science class, having serious trouble staying tuned in to the group's discussion of California's record-breaking drought. At this stage, she had worries aplenty. She worried about the black tar heroin she'd handed over to Seth. She worried about how he was coping with the news that the likeliest user of the drug was his own girlfriend. She also worried about Jenn and how whatever was going on with her was putting dents into her old friendships, especially into her friendship with Squat. She knew there wasn't much she could do about what Jenn was going through, but she hated to see Squat pay such a price for having made a few stupid remarks.

Becca was thinking about this instead of thinking about climate change when the classroom door opened and a message was delivered to the teacher, Mrs. Glass. Without missing a beat in directing the discussion, she read the message, carried it to Becca, handed it over, and complimented one of the female students on a salient point she'd made about the desalinization of ocean water.

Becca opened the note to see it was from Debbie Grieder.
Debbie had called the school with a message that Becca King was to come to the Cliff Motel when her classes were finished for the day.
Important
was part of the message. It was underlined.

She rode her bike there after her last class. She found Debbie in the kitchen with her grandkids, who were working on their grade school homework while she made quesadillas for them. Becca's appearance was an unexpected pleasure for Chloe and Josh. Chloe jumped up and ran to her for a hug while Josh looked past her for Big Brother Derric before he decided she was an acceptable substitute.

“I got a new LEGO,” he informed her, pushing his chair away from the table.

“Grammer found a bowling outfit for Barbie!” Chloe crowed. “Even the shoes, which're sort of funny looking 'cause of her feet but do you want to see? I c'n get her if you want to see.”

“You skedaddle back to that table if you want a quesadilla,” Debbie informed her. “I need to talk to Becca and this is big girl business. You two got that?”

They grumbled but succumbed to their grandmother's orders. Soon enough they were back in their seats, each of them with a quesadilla neatly cut into triangles on a plate before them. Then Debbie nodded in the direction of the kitchen door. This led out to the back of the property, which overlooked the marina. There a handful of boats gently bobbed on the water.

Debbie lit a cigarette that she took from the pocket of her sweatshirt. She seemed to place herself between Becca and the possibility of Becca's being seen from Camano Street, some
twenty yards away. She looked around and then shook her head. All of this made Becca prepare for bad news. It wasn't long in coming.

“Had a visit from a young woman 'round eleven this morning,” Debbie told her. “She was asking about a girl and her mom, wanting to know if they'd stayed with me a while back, like near two years ago. Here at the motel. She said the girl was called Hannah and the mom was called Laurel and this young woman herself . . . ? Said she was a reporter up from the San Diego.”

Becca felt the blood draining from her face. The world spun for a moment, and she wondered if she was going to faint.

Debbie dug her hand into the back pocket of her jeans and brought out a business card, which she handed to Becca. Becca knew what was going to be on it before she looked. She looked anyway and there was Olivia Bolding's name and the name of the paper for which she worked.

“What did you tell her?” Becca assured herself that she'd changed substantially. Even if Olivia Bolding went around describing her to people and even if she'd put her hands on a picture of the former Hannah Armstrong, the girl who'd fit any description the reporter might give was long gone.

“'F course I told her I didn't have the first clue who she was talking about,” Debbie said. “But that's not where I'm heading with this, darlin'. See, she had some computer artist guy in San Diego mess around with a school picture of this Hannah person, and he did one of those things you see when kids are missing for years.”

“You mean an age progression?” Becca didn't see how helpful this would be, since she hadn't been missing long enough to have changed substantially in the eyes of someone who was attempting to make her look like what she was: less than two years older than when she lived in San Diego.

“Yeah.” Debbie paused to pick a bit of tobacco off her tongue. “Only with these pictures, hon . . . ? It wasn't her age that the computer person altered. It was her looks.”

It turned out that Olivia Bolding had been smart enough to ignore the age part entirely. Setting that issue aside, she'd instructed the artist to make Hannah Armstrong thinner than she'd been when she'd fled from San Diego. He'd produced that altered picture, and he'd come up with various hair styles and hair colors on her, Debbie said. Obviously, this Olivia Bolding was dead set on finding her.

“I don't get why she came to the motel,” Becca said, more to herself than to Debbie.

“Makes sense when you think about it. The motel's the first place to stay that you come to on the island. She prob'ly thought this Laurel Armstrong and her daughter might've stayed here.”

Becca was aware that Debbie wasn't saying anything directly about the coincidence that one Becca King had come to the island at relatively the same period of time as when Hannah Armstrong had gone missing. She also wasn't mentioning that Becca King's excuse for being on the island at all was that she was waiting for her mother. But Debbie wasn't an idiot.

“What did you say when you saw the pictures?” Becca asked.

“It's not what I said, darlin'. That's what I wanted to tell you. It's what Chloe said. See, Chloe was there. Not at first, but she came in just when the reporter whipped those pictures out. And you know Chloe. Curiosity killed the cat. She scooted over and had a look and she upped and said, ‘Hey, there's Becca, Grammer!'”

Becca stared at Debbie. She couldn't come up with anything to say. She felt the need to run and she felt it acutely: to run as far and as fast as she could to get away from this place.

Debbie appeared to read this because she said, “Whoa, there, darlin',” and she put her arm around Becca's shoulders. Becca saw the vision immediately and knew she was looking at Olivia Bolding because there was no mistaking the young woman with her California blond-streaked hair. The reporter was handing over the pictures to Debbie and Debbie's gaze went down and what Becca saw through Debbie's eyes was the picture on top of the stack, which was a very good image of what she looked like now, only with far darker hair.

Debbie said, “When Chloe said that, I just laughed. I said ‘Hon, our Becca's your cousin, and she doesn't come from San Diego. This girl in the picture . . . she's someone else.' Then I grabbed her and gave a big kiss on the forehead and said whatever else I could think of 'fore she could make anything more of it. I don't know what the reporter thought, but anyways she left.”

That was it. But that
wasn't
it. For Becca knew that she owed Debbie an explanation, just as she'd owed her an explanation when Jeff Corrie had shown up on Whidbey Island not terribly long after Becca had left her cell phone in the parking lot
of Saratoga Woods. She said, “I didn't do anything bad in San Diego. Neither did my mom. But we had to leave because—”

“You don't need to tell me a thing, darlin'.” Debbie waved her words off like flies in the summer. “But you do need to watch your step now this woman's on the island 'cause I got the impression she wasn't planning to leave any time soon.”

“Where'd she go from here?” Becca asked. “Did she say anything about that?”

“I figure she had to find herself a place to stay. From her looks, I c'n tell you she's not a Cliff Motel kind of girl. Maybe Saratoga Inn or the Inn at Langley? You give those places a wide berth, okay? Till I find out what she's done with herself. And keep your head down because I couldn't tell if she believed me about the cousin thing.
And
when she asked me what my ‘niece' Becca's last name was, I had to tell her.”

To this, Becca wanted to shout
Why why why
? But she knew why. Debbie could hardly have claimed that Becca was her niece and then refused to give the reporter her last name when asked. Why on earth would Debbie Grieder want to hide the last name of her own niece?

The present moment had an urgency to it that Becca felt right to her fingertips. She was the fox, and the hounds were closing in.

• • •

SHE HAD AGREED
to go to Derric's for dinner that night, and she could hardly back out of it, even though what she wanted to do was hide away and lay some emergency plans for
the moment when Olivia Bolding confronted her. She had very little doubt that a confrontation would be soon, especially since the reporter had been clever enough to come up with the idea of photos.

When Derric showed up to take her over to his parents' house, she almost faked illness to get out of going. But his expression told her that tonight was indeed going to be when he took the first step of introducing his parents to Rejoice, even if Rejoice herself was not going to be there. He couldn't just spring her on his mom and dad, he'd told Becca. He had to go at this in his own way.

He went at it in his own way just before dinner. He'd brought out the picture album/scrapbook that his mom had made for him, the one that chronicled his advent into the Mathieson family. It began from the first time Rhonda and Dave had laid eyes on the little Ugandan boy who'd stolen their hearts, and it concluded with Rhonda's arrival at SeaTac Airport with Derric a few years later, when the family had been there in baggage claim with signs and balloons and a gigantic teddy bear and welcoming arms. Luckily, Becca had never seen the album before, so it wasn't an oddball moment when Derric began to show it to her.

Becca had asked him why he wanted to do things this way. She knew that he'd earlier pointed out to his parents an older girl in one of the album's pictures and he'd told them she was the Rejoice he'd written letters to. So, she asked him, wasn't it going to be strange when he pointed out a
different
Rejoice now? They're going to ask you about that, she'd warned him.

He said he'd tell them that when they first asked him about a girl called Rejoice to whom he'd been writing never-sent letters, he thought they'd conclude he was a pervert if he'd pointed out a little girl in the pictures and told them
she
was the Rejoice he'd been writing to. Becca couldn't actually see how this was a better plan than simply bringing Rejoice over from La Conner, but she figured that the best thing for her to do was just go along and see what happened.

They looked at the album in the kitchen, where Rhonda was preparing dinner. When he got to the first picture that had Rejoice in it, he said to Becca, “And this is Rejoice, right here. Pretty small, huh? She used to follow me all over the place. I figured she had a crush on me.”

Rhonda picked up on this, as he intended. She said, “Didn't you tell us that Rejoice was one of the older girls, sweetie?”

Derric hung his head, then looked at his mom sideways. “It was 'cause of those letters I'd been writing to her, Mom. I figured you guys might've thought I was . . . I don't know . . . a pervert or something if you saw I was writing to a five-year-old. Anyway, here's something amazing. She lives—Rejoice lives—up in La Conner.”

“You're kidding!”

“Becca and I met her,” and before his mom could question them about how they'd met a girl from La Conner, Derric went on. “Becca found her when I told her about the letters. So we went up there and met her and her family. To surprise her, you know? You want to meet her sometime?”

“I'd love to,” Rhonda said.

That took care of step one. Derric looked relieved as he put the album away, and Becca was relieved for him. Soon, she hoped, all of the truths would be out on the table and Derric could go on with his life instead of spinning his wheels in guilt.

They were laying the table for dinner when Derric's dad got home from Coupeville, where the sheriff's office was. He called out a hello and tramped up the stairs answering his wife's “Dinner's ready” with “Got to get into some more comfortable clothes.”

They had everything ready and they were seated at the table when Dave Mathieson came into the dining room. He hesitated at the sight of Becca then covered his hesitation with, “I didn't know Derric's main squeeze would be here.” He smiled, but there was something about that smile that made Becca feel uneasy. He didn't give voice to anything, though, because Rhonda immediately told him Derric's story about his fellow orphan from Uganda. “The girl he was writing those letters to,” Rhonda concluded. “Isn't that incredible that she's practically just up the road? And Becca found her, Dave. I think that's twice again incredible.”