The Edge of the Shadows (2 page)

TWO

H
ayley Cartwright looked around for her sister Brooke, who'd claimed that she was leaving the family's booth at Bayview Farmers' Market just long enough to do her business in the rest room. Total lie. She'd been gone thirty minutes, leaving Hayley and her mom to run the booth all by themselves when it was, minimally, a three-person job. Brooke did the bagging and the weighing of veggies, Hayley wrapped the flowers and boxed the jewelry, and their mom took the money and made change. But with Brooke gone, Hayley was left dancing from one side of the booth to the other and trying to keep her eye on everything but especially upon the jewelry, which was fashioned from sea glass, difficult to make, and her main source of personal income.

Not that people actually shoplifted from the Cartwrights, at least not people who knew them. Taking even a dime from the Cartwrights was close to the same as emptying the family's pitiful bank account, and everyone on the south end of Whidbey Island who knew the family also knew that. So most of the time people lined up patiently to pay for the flowers and veggies that the Cartwrights grew at Smugglers Cove Farm and Flowers. They chatted to each other in the warm early September sun, petted the myriad dogs who accompanied the market-goers among the colorful stalls, and listened to the music weekly supplied by one or another of the local marimba bands.

This day, though, a girl unknown to Hayley had been pawing through her necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and hair pieces for at least ten minutes. She'd also been trying them on. She was very pretty, with a swimmer's broad shoulders and shapely arms and legs that were on full display beneath her tank top and shorts. She wore her hair in an odd Cleopatra style—if Cleopatra had been extremely blonde—and her bangs dipped almost into her eyes, which were so cornflower blue that only colored contact lenses could have achieved the hue.

She saw Hayley watching her as she was putting a third necklace around her ivory-skinned throat. She'd already donned four of the bracelets, and she was reaching for one of the more complicated pairs of earrings quite as if there was nothing strange about decking herself out like a jewelry tree.

Seeing Hayley observing her, she said, “I c'n
never
decide a single thing when I'm by myself. It's absolute murder if I'm trying on clothes. My grandam is here somewhere”—here she looked around the crowded market distractedly—“and I guess I could ask her, but she's got the most
wretched
taste, which you'd more or less have to expect from someone who carves up trees for a living.
Not
that there's anything wrong with carving up trees, mind you. I'm Isis Martin, by the way. Egyptian. I mean the
name
is, not me. Isis was the goddess of something. I can
never
remember what but I truly hope she was the goddess of hot desire because I've got a seriously delicious boyfriend back home.
Any
way, what're these made of and which do you think looks best on me?” During all this, she'd put on a fourth necklace, odd because she was already wearing her own, a gold chain with elongated links that disappeared into her tank top and must have cost a fortune. She was peering into the stand-up mirror that Hayley provided, and she paused in her inspection of Hayley's necklaces to put on lipstick that she excavated from a basket-weave purse.

Hayley liked the purse but was afraid to say this, for fear of setting the girl off again. So she said, “It's sea glass. I make them. I mean, I make all the jewelry.”

“
Sea
glass?” Isis said. “You mean ‘sea' like from the ocean? So do you get it from . . . like . . . I mean, are you a diver? I tried to learn to dive. My boyfriend before my current boyfriend? He and his family were into diving in a major way and they took me to the tip of Baja for spring vacation one time? They tried to help me learn to dive, which was a total joke because I am so, like, totally claustrophobic.”

“I find it on the beach,” Hayley told her when Isis took a breath. She looked over the other girl's head to see if Brooke was anywhere in view. No such luck, which meant she had to get back to bagging and weighing. She glanced over her shoulder. The line of patient shoppers was extending and her mom was beginning to bag and weigh. She looked harried. She cast Hayley a supplicating glance.

“On the beach? Way cool,” Isis said. She reached for a fifth necklace. “I love the beach. Maybe I could go with you sometime? I've got a car. Well, my parents had to give me
something
to come up here, after all. I wouldn't be any good at looking for sea glass, though. I'm blind as a whatever without my contacts and I generally don't wear them at the beach because of the sand and how it can blow into your eyes if you know what I mean.”

“It's over past Port Townsend,” Hayley told her. “The time to find it is winter, after a storm, more or less.”

“What's past Port Townsend?” Isis peered at her reflection, then laughed. “Oh, I bet you mean the beach where you get the glass. God, I'm a flake. I c'n never remember what I'm talking about. Where's Port Townsend? Should I go there? D'they have any decent shops?” She handed Hayley a sixth necklace, one that she hadn't tried on. She picked one of the bracelets already on her arm along with a pair of earrings she'd not inspected and a barrette that matched nothing at all. “I think this'll do it. Did you tell me your name? I can't remember. I am
such
a ditz.”

She began disentangling the rest of the necklaces she'd donned as Hayley said that her name was Hayley Cartwright and, yes, Port Townsend had some really cool shops, if you could afford them. Hayley herself couldn't, but she didn't add that. She just wrote up the sale of the necklace, bracelet, earrings, and barrette, and she helped the other girl remove from herself everything else she'd donned. She told Isis the price, and the girl dug a thick wallet out of her woven purse. It was crammed with all sorts of things: newspaper clippings, folded notes with scribbles all over them, coffee reward cards, pictures, and cash. A great deal of cash. Isis pulled out a wad of it and distractedly handed it over.

She said, “Could you . . . ? Just take what you need.” Then she laughed. “I mean take what I owe you!” And she fixed the new necklace around her neck and scooped up some of her hair behind the barrette. She did this latter action with a lot of skill. She might be bird-brained, Hayley thought, but when it came to her appearance, she knew what she was doing.

Hayley counted out the appropriate amount of money and handed the rest back. Isis was admiring the barrette in her hair. The sea glass around her neck, as it turned out, was an inspired choice. It exactly matched the color of her eyes.

Isis took the rest of the money and crammed it into her wallet. She had a section of pictures inside this that was three fingers thick. She said, “Oh, you've
got
to look at him,” and flipped open to the first. “
Is
he totally hot or what?” She showed Hayley a picture of a boy whose hair stood out from his head in a way that made him look like a cartoon character recently electrocuted.

“Uh . . . he's . . . ?” Absolutely nothing came into Hayley's mind.

Isis laughed in delight. “He doesn't really
look
like this. He just did that to piss his parents off.” She shoved the wallet back into her purse. “Hey, d'you want to get a lump-whatever? I can't remember what it's called but there's a lady over there selling them and they look totally like something I shouldn't be eating in a million years. Which, of course, is why I fully intend to buy two or three.
What
are they called?”

Hayley laughed in spite of herself. There was something beguiling about Isis Martin. She said, “Lumpia?”

“That's it. I can tell I need you to help me navigate these mysterious island waters. I've been here since June. Did I tell you that? Me and my brother . . .” She rolled her eyes expressively, and at first Hayley thought this was in reference to her brother until Isis made the correction with, “My brother and
I
. Grandam goes berserk when I say ‘me' as the subject of a sentence, so sometimes I do it on purpose. She thinks I don't know it should be
I
. Well, I'm a congenital idiot, but I
do
know
me
is an objective case pronoun, for heaven's sake. So d'you want a lumpia or two or six?”

Hayley said, “Sorry. I can't leave . . .” She waved around her. “The booth, you know. My sister's supposed to be here, but she's disappeared.”

“Siblings. What a trial. Well, maybe another time?”

“You go on, Hayley.” It was Hayley's mom speaking. She'd been on the edge of the conversation all along. “I can handle things here. Brooke'll be back.”

“It's okay. I don't—”

“You go, sweetheart,” her mom said firmly.

Hayley knew what that meant. Here was an opportunity to be “just a kid,” and her mom wanted her to have that opportunity.

• • •

BROOKE FINALLY SHOWED
up when they were disassembling their booth and getting ready to drop the unsold veggies at the nearby food bank, a feature of the island that most visitors to Whidbey didn't know about. Tourists to the island came to soak up the atmosphere: the razor-edged bluffs rising up from beaches studded with sea shells and jumbled with driftwood, the pristine waters where a crab pot brought up fifteen Dungeness within two hours, the deep forests with shadowy hiking trails, the picturesque villages with their clapboard, seaside charm. As to the homeless population and the needy families . . . To visitors, they remained unseen. But people who lived on the island didn't have to look far to find people in need, because many of them were neighbors, and when Brooke groused about how “totally dumb it is to be giving our food away when we should be selling it somewhere and making some money,” their mom cast a look into the rearview mirror and said to her, “There are actually people worse off than we are, sweetheart.”

Brooke's response of “Yeah?
Name
'em,” was out of character. But a lot of her remarks had been out of character lately. Their mom called this a stage that Brooke was going through. “The middle school years. You remember,” she said to Hayley as if Hayley had also been a Mouth with Attitude when she'd been thirteen. Hayley, on the other hand, pretty much believed that Brooke's attitude had nothing to do with middle school at all. It had, instead, everything to do with the Big Topic that no one in their family would ever discuss.

Their dad, Bill Cartwright, was falling apart. It was a slow process that had begun in his ankles and had now worked its way up his legs so that they didn't do what his brain asked them to do any longer. Time was when their dad would have been with them at the farmers' market, working the booth. Time was when he would have shared the labor at Smugglers Cove Farm and Flowers, too. Hayley's mom would have been raising the horses that she no longer raised and growing the flowers while he raised goats and worked in the huge vegetable beds as the girls took care of the chickens. But that time had passed, and now what went on at the farm was whatever the women could manage, minus the littlest Cartwright woman, Cassidy, who was only competent at collecting eggs. What couldn't be managed by the women simply no longer occurred on the farm, but no one mentioned anything about this or anything about doing
something
that might help them out. It was, Hayley thought, an extremely dishonest way to live.

They were heading north on the highway on the route home, when Julie Cartwright asked Hayley about “the chatty girl who bought the jewelry.” Who was she? A day-tripper from over town? A vacationer? Someone from school? A new girl friend, perhaps? She didn't look familiar.

Hayley heard the hopefulness in her mom's voice. It had two prongs. The first was to change the topic of conversation in order to alter Brooke's mood. The second was to direct Hayley toward getting a normal life. She told her mom that the girl was Isis Martin—

“What kind of weirdo name is that?” Brooke demanded.

—and she'd been on the island since June. She lived with her grandmother and her brother and . . . Hayley realized that despite all of Isis's chatting, those were actually the only two facts she knew aside from her having a boyfriend. Isis had bought four lumpias and, cleverly, had decided that she could only eat two of the pastry-like stuffed delicacies. She'd handed the other two over to Hayley, saying, “Do me a fave and snarf these, okay.” It had been breezily done. Hayley had found herself liking the girl for doing it.

After eating and when Hayley had said she needed to get back to the market stall, Isis had scribbled down her smart phone number and handed it over. She'd said, “Hey, maybe me and you c'n be friends. Call me. Or text me. Or I'll call you. We can hang. I mean, if you c'n put up with me.” She'd excavated in her straw purse for an enormous pair of sunglasses with rhinestones along the ear pieces, saying, “Aren't these the trippiest ever? I got them in Portland. Hey, give me
your
number, too. I mean, if I haven't totally put you off with my babbling. It's ADD. If I take my meds, I'm more or less focused, but when I forget . . . ? I'm a verbal shotgun.”

Hayley had given the other girl her phone number, although her cell phone was as basic as they got, so there would be no texting. She also told her the family phone number to which Isis had said, “Wow, a land line!” as if having this was akin to having kerosene lamps.

“Anyway,” Hayley said to her mother, “she was sort of ditzy, but in a good way.”

“How lovely,” Julie Cartwright said.

THREE

W
hen they arrived at Smugglers Cove Farm and Flowers and trundled up the long driveway toward the collection of barn-red buildings, they found Hayley's dad on the front porch along with Cassidy. They were on the swing looking out at the farmyard. Cassidy had a death grip on one of the barn kittens. Bill Cartwright had a similar grip on the chain from which the swing did its swinging.

He struggled to his feet, and everyone did their usual thing of pretending not to notice. This was becoming progressively more difficult since he had begun using a walker. He worked his way to the edge of the porch as his women clambered out of the car. He called out, “Hayley, would you get that young man out of the vegetables? He wouldn't take no for an answer,” which made Hayley look in the direction of the vegetable beds stretching out gloriously with the beginning of the autumn harvest.

She saw Seth Darrow's 1965 VW before she saw him. The restored bug was parked to one side of the barn. Seth himself was crouched at the near end of the sweet potatoes. He had to be dealing with the watering system, she decided. They'd been having trouble with it all summer and he must have stopped by the farm, had a conversation with her dad during which the watering system had come up. It would be just like Seth to set off to deal with it.

“I tried to tell him I'd be getting to it tomorrow,” Hayley's dad said.

“Oh, you know Seth,” her mom said airily. “Brooke, go ask him if he'd like a tuna sandwich please.”

“No way.
I
want a tuna sandwich.” Brooke tramped up the front walk, blasted across the porch, said, “You know, you're going to kill that stupid cat,” to Cassidy, and entered the house with a bang of the screened door.

Julie Cartwright said with a sigh, “I thought if she saw the dog, it might distract her.”
Away from food
was what she didn't add. Brooke was putting on weight—far more than was natural—but it was another subject they didn't talk about.

The dog in question was Seth's golden Lab, Gus. He was snuffling around the squash.

“I'll go,” Hayley said.

“Tell Seth I'll have a sandwich ready for him,” her mom told her, which was code for “let him finish what he's doing.” This surprised Hayley. They generally didn't accept help from outsiders and, despite Seth being her former boyfriend, he wasn't a member of the family.

Deep into his repair of the watering system, Seth hadn't heard the rest of the Cartwright family arrive. He didn't even look up till Gus came loping along the pathway between the beds once Hayley entered through the tall gate in the fence that protected the area from the island's marauding deer and rabbits.

He was dressed for work, Hayley saw. Instead of his usual garb of baggy jeans, sandals, socks, T-shirt, and black fedora, he wore his carpenter's overalls, heavy work boots, and a baseball cap from which his long hair pony-tailed out of the one-size-fits-all opening at the back. Had he not been garbed like this, Hayley would have known he'd just come from work anyway, for his ear gauges were flecked with sawdust and his hands were newly nicked from construction.

He said, “Hey,” and paused to raise the baseball cap slightly. “Came by to give you some news and your dad said . . .” He nodded to the work he was doing.

She said, “Thanks, Seth. Mom's making you a sandwich for afterwards.” She bent to pet Gus, who was bumping around her legs to get her attention.

“Coolness,” he replied. Then, “Gus, cut that out.”

“It's okay,” Hayley said. “And . . . thanks, Seth. He can't really get out here. I mean, he
can
but not to do anything hard.”

“Yeah. I could tell.” He squinted up at her, seemed to evaluate what might happen if he said what he wanted to say next, then said it anyway. “I wish you guys could catch a break, Hayl.”

“You and me both.” She watched him for a minute. He was working with wrenches, pliers, and wires, and she had no clue what he was doing. She said, “So why'd you stop by? You said you had news?”

“I passed the GED.”

She felt her face brighten. “That's
great
, Seth.”

“My tutor's totally relieved, let me tell you. The whole math thing was touch-and-go. And she still thinks I can't read worth beans, which is more or less true. But my mom'll be doing a naked celebration dance in the moonlight. I'm gonna sell tickets. That's not the best part, though.”

“No?” It seemed to Hayley that there couldn't be better news. Seth had dropped out of school in his junior year, had avoided studying for the GED throughout what would have been his senior year. Only in the last six months had he pulled himself together. The fact that he'd surmounted both his fear of failure and his catalogue of learning disabilities to take the equivalency test and pass would be a very big deal to his entire family.

Seth said, “Triple Threat is playing at Djangofest this year.” He was trying to sound casual about it, but Triple Threat was his gypsy jazz trio, Djangofest was a five-day international festival celebrating the intricate music of French guitarist Django Reinhardt, and to be invited to play at one of the many venues around the village of Langley during the festival had long been one of Seth Darrow's dreams.

Hayley said, “Oh my God! Seth, that's amazing! Have you told your parents? Your grandpa? Where're you going to be playing?”

“My mom and dad know but that's all. Aside from the guys in the trio, 'course. We didn't score a good time—Wednesday afternoon at five at the high school and who's gonna show up then but—”

“
I'm
showing up. And so's your family. And so's Becca and Jenn and—”

“Well, yeah. S'pose.” He sounded indifferent, but Hayley could tell he was pleased. He said, “Anyways . . . This is looking pretty good now.” He was referring to the repair he'd made. He heaved himself to his feet and brushed off his hands. This put him eye-to-eye with Hayley, as well as closer than she was comfortable with. They were friends now, not what they'd once been. It had to be this way, and while she knew that he knew it, she sometimes felt from him a longing for more.

She took a step back. She covered this by looking toward the house where her dad was at the edge of the porch watching them. She frowned at his posture, at how he had to cling to the walker to stay upright now, at how he heaved one leg and then another just to move a few feet.

Seth seemed to read what she was thinking. He said, “Not good, huh?”

“How can I?”

“What?”

She gestured to the farm around them: the huge fields, the paddocks empty of horses and goats, the long low chicken barn down by the road. “You know,” she told him.

He followed her arm's semicircle, gazing at the sights and considering what they actually meant. He said, “You decide where you're applying yet, Hayley?”

Hayley knew where he was heading. But she had no intention of applying for universities. No one in her family knew about this. Neither did Seth. She wanted to keep things that way until it was too late to do anything about it.

She said, “I'm pretty close,” which was a total lie.

“Where's it gonna be?”

“Don't know. Like I said, I'm close but not there yet.”

But Seth was no fool. He heard something in her voice and he said, “Don't play that game, Hayl. You got the smarts. So use 'em.”

She looked at him. “It's not as easy as that and you know it, Seth Darrow.”