The Edge of the Shadows (25 page)

FORTY-SIX

I
f she'd learned nothing else in her first year on Whidbey Island, Becca had learned not to leap wildly into action the second she thought she'd figured something out. So when she saw the African girl at Broad Valley Growers, Becca set about making certain that the girl was exactly who she thought she was.

She said nothing to Seth. Although he knew that Derric had a sister somewhere—he'd learned that much on the day Derric came out of his coma the previous year—he didn't know the full story. So when Becca saw the girl among the other kids at Broad Valley Growers, she kept her feelings and her conclusions to herself and somehow got them through the awkwardness of explaining their mission to La Conner: She spoke once again of a strange phone call and Seth's grandfather. She added to this a man called Jeff Corrie, and a woman called Laurel Armstrong. Jeff and Darla Vickland were pleasant, but they knew nothing of any of these people. So after a piece of apple pie, Seth and Becca left, Seth still in the dark but Becca feeling more illumined as the hours passed. Still, Becca knew that certainty had to be established. She figured that Reverend Wagner was the way to establish it.

She couldn't buttonhole him at church again. There was too much risk of Derric finding out and, besides, she just couldn't wait. A little research via the phone told her that Reverend Wagner and his wife also ran a hospice on the island. Pinewood Sanctuary was its name, and it stood across the street from a Bible camp, which itself loomed over a sheltered body of island water called Deer Lake. Like the Bible camp's entry, the lane into Pinewood Sanctuary carved deeply into forest. Unlike the Bible camp, the two buildings that comprised it had been constructed in a sunny meadow.

Becca rode her bike to this place. She found Reverend Wagner in the meadow. At its edge he was building a deer blind. Not for hunting, he hastened to tell her, but for watching and photographing the does and fawns at dawn and dusk when they came into the meadow to feed. He was sweating over his labor. He wasn't gifted in carpentry.

Becca used the AUD box to save herself from any distractions. She said to him, “Want me to do something there?” He was struggling to hold a board in place and nail it simultaneously. She went to aid him, and he pounded a nail in. It bent to one side, and Reverend Wagner swore. Then he excused himself with “Terrible example from a man of God,” and he pulled the nail out. He suggested that they take a break. “I've reached the point of diminishing returns,” was how he put it. He lowered the board to the ground and went to sit on a camp chair. There was another, and he patted its seat for Becca.

She joined him and asked her question. “I'm sort of wondering, Reverend Wagner . . . Did you leave a message with Ralph Darrow about a place called Broad Valley Growers?”

He took a handkerchief from his pocket, removed the baseball cap he was wearing, and wiped down his forehead, his neck, and his balding head. “I did,” he said. “After you and I talked, I realized that Children's Hope has three branches in this area: here, in Friday Harbor, and in La Conner, and I got to thinking that someone in one of the other branches might be helpful, considering all the different possibilities for this young lady you're looking for. So I phoned those branches, and there you have it.”

“That girl I saw at Broad Valley Growers . . . So she
was
Rejoice.”

“Ah. You went out to see her,” he noted with a nod. “Adopted when she was five,” he added. “The family . . . perhaps you saw them, too? All their kids are adopted from various regions in the world. A real melting pot of youngsters and two of the nicest mom and dads you're ever likely to meet.” He glanced at Becca and repeated one point. “Five years old,” he said. “That's when she was adopted. Rejoice Ayoka was the name, actually, not Nyombe as things turned out. But she was the only Rejoice, so I assumed . . .” His words were spoken in a meaningful way.

Becca cringed inwardly because she knew he'd worked out that she'd lied to him. Not only had she chosen Nyombe as a surname for Rejoice, but she'd also claimed that Rejoice was her pen pal in Africa, which was hardly likely since she'd been sitting up in La Conner for years.

Reverend Wagner said kindly, “Is there anything you'd like me to help you with, Becca? Or should I continue to assume that all of this is confidential?”

Becca clasped her hands between her knees to keep herself from clasping them at the minister's chest. “C'n you please . . . ? Oh gosh, this is awkward. But c'n you not say anything about Rejoice? C'n you not say anything about me asking about her?”

He regarded her evenly. “This has to do with Derric Mathieson, doesn't it?”

She swallowed. “It's not a bad thing. It's just that . . . Well, it's something Derric's got on his mind and needs to work out and if you say something . . . Or if I say something . . . I think it might be better for him to decide what happens next on his own, if you know what I mean.”

He thought about this for a moment before he slowly nodded. “I think I do.”

“
Thank
you.”

“Welcome. Now . . . is there anything else I can help you with? Besides this situation with Rejoice?”

There certainly was, Becca thought at once. There was plenty he could help her with. Or at least there was plenty that she needed
someone
to help her with. But Reverend Wagner was not the person who could find her mom.

Reverend Wagner had his gaze fixed on her face. He seemed to watch a playing out of her emotions there, as careful as she was trying to be to keep them at bay. He said, “You know, Becca, it's not a bad thing to rely on other people occasionally. I think you've just seen that with this circumstance involving Rejoice. Now, I know—having three of my own, all grown up now—that most kids like to rely only on themselves. But sometimes putting your faith elsewhere . . . ? That can work, too.”

• • •

REVEREND WAGNER'S WORDS
hadn't fallen on deaf ears. But there wasn't much anyone could do for Becca when it came to Jeff Corrie. On the other hand, there
was
something that someone could do that might make a difference when it came to Becca's mom. That person was Parker Natalia.

The evening after she'd been to talk to Reverend Wagner, she spoke to the Canadian as she and he did the dishes. She kept the water running and her voice low. Ralph was in the living room and although he was banging around with the fire tools and logs as he built his nightly blaze, there was always a chance he'd overhear.

She said to Parker, “I got to ask a favor. D'you remember my cousin Laurel in Nelson?”

He was wiping a plate and he looked like someone whose mind was a million miles away. Becca picked up
like that's all I think about
from him, along with
maybe it's true but how unreasonable
 . . .
Jesus how much more screwed
 . . .
great going asshole
 . . .
another bright idea
only now there's no way without . . .
but none of it made sense to her. She forged ahead. She repeated, “D'you remember my cousin Laurel in Nelson?”

Parker roused himself. “Don't know her, though.”

“Yeah. But here's what I'm wondering. You guys have a newspaper up there, right?”

“Sure.” He dried a plate and put it on the stack he'd already done.

“I want to put an ad inside it.”

“For your cousin?”

“Just her name really big and Seth's phone number.” She couldn't risk Ralph's, not only because her mom might call and Ralph might forget all about it but also because Becca had already lied to him about Laurel Armstrong. But Seth could be relied upon to pass along a message from Becca to Laurel and from Laurel to Becca. It would be brief enough anyway. “Come back to Whidbey,” to which Laurel could then say, “Be there next week.” Or “in two days” or better yet “tomorrow.” But in any case, she'd get the message and she'd return and Becca could then tell her about Connor West and about having been wrong about Jeff Corrie.

“See, I can't do the ad because they're gonna want money, right?” Becca said to Parker. “And I've got money to pay for it, but not . . . like . . . a credit card or anything. But I bet you've got a credit card. So if you arrange for the ad and give them the credit card number or whatever and then I c'n pay you . . .”

He nodded but she could tell he wasn't really listening. She could also tell his spirits were low. She could almost feel the weight of his heart.

She said to him, “What's going on, Parker?”

“With me? I blew it.”

“What?”

“Everything.”

She looked at him, and she breathed in deeply. There were a jumble of words comprising his whispers and then a flash of memory from him that she caught onto just before it faded from sight: Isis pulling a sweater over her head and reaching around to unfasten her bra and a hand—Parker's?—reaching for a bright gold chain that hung between her full breasts. The hand closed around that chain and then . . . nothing. Becca found herself staring at Parker, and he was staring at her. She could feel her cheeks burning with what she'd seen.

She said, “Is this . . . well . . . Isis, maybe?”

Instead of answering directly, he said, “You and Hayley are friends, right?”

“We talk and stuff and usually we have lunch at the same table, but she's more Seth's friend. And Seth's more my friend. If you know what I mean.”

He didn't seem to care one way or the other. All that appeared to matter was the “talking to her” part. He said, “Could you talk to her for me? If I wrote her a note, could you give it to her? She's not talking to me now and I don't blame her because I did something righteously stupid because I didn't think about that freaking iPhone not to mention Facebook and it just seemed easier to deny . . .” He looked so pathetic that Becca had to feel some sympathy for him. From what she could work out from his memory pictures and his words, he'd done the deed with Isis but then lied to Hayley.

She said, “You're seriously dumb, Parker.”

“She came
on
to me. It's not like I wanted—”

“So you fought her off.
Not
.”

“Jesus. Why are women so . . . Look, I know I blew it. I just didn't expect to get accused. I went to see Hayley just to give her a CD and before I knew it, we were talking about Isis and I could tell she was pissed and I didn't know how to handle it. I know I was wrong. I want to apologize and make things right. All's I'm asking is for you to give her that message. You don't need to talk her into—”

A sharp knock on the front door interrupted Parker's words. It was followed at once by someone ringing the door bell. From the living room, Ralph said, “Tarnation. All right,” and grumbled his way over to see who it was.

Dave Mathieson entered. He nodded at Ralph and then his gaze shifted to the kitchen doorway. He saw Becca. He saw Parker standing behind her. He said, “Parker Natalia, right? Let's you and me go somewhere to talk.”

FORTY-SEVEN

P
arker left with the undersheriff, and he didn't return to the house that night. Becca hadn't the first clue where he and Dave Mathieson had gone, but the fact that the undersheriff had shown up in the first place did not make anything look good for Parker. She figured she should worry about this, but her larger worry was getting a message to Laurel, and Parker had been her last best bet to do that.

She had to wait for another chance with him. In the meantime, she decided that she would fulfill his request that she speak to Hayley.

The problem was finding a time to talk to Hayley when Isis wasn't hanging around her. The only stretch of time that Hayley was without the other girl consisted of the moments that she spent on the reception desk in the administration wing of the high school.

Becca buttonholed her there. To do this, she had to cut a class, but there didn't seem to be any help for that. She removed her ear bud in order to be guided by Hayley's whispers.

Hayley looked very pale. She was fair-skinned anyway, but now she seemed drained. Becca approached her, and Hayley raised her head from some homework. She smiled wanly. Becca said, “You busy?”

“Statistics,” Hayley told her and gestured at some sort of graph she was in the midst of creating. “This and the phones,” she added. “It's pretty quiet right now. Makes me want to take a nap.”
Got to stop this
 . . .
he's always there
 . . .
if Mom won't do something
about
 . . .
such a pig
 . . .
impossible
constituted what was in her head.

Becca frowned. It seemed to her that all the progress she'd made with whispers was gone now, defeated by the knowledge of how she'd misinterpreted Jeff Corrie's. She wasn't sure how to get anything back or even if she should make the attempt at all. She said, “Parker asked me—”

No no no no
.

That was clear enough, Becca thought. “—to talk to you,” she concluded.

“Well, you've just talked to me, so consider your obligation fulfilled,” Hayley told her tartly.

Becca squirmed. She didn't like to play the go-between, and she sure didn't like the reason that Parker had made this request of her. But she was in it now, so she decided to plunge onward. She couldn't exactly make things worse between them. She said, “It's just that he feels really bad about what happened and he wanted me to—”

“D'you
know
what happened?” Hayley tossed to one side of the desk the colored pencil she'd been using on the graph. “Did he tell you? Because if he did, the whole idea that he'd ask you to tell me
anything
is outrageous, okay?”

“He knows he blew it. He just wants a chance to talk to you.”

“To lie about something else is what you mean. Well, I don't want to listen. You didn't answer anyway. Do you
know
what he did?”

Becca felt hot around the neckline of her sweater. She said, “Isis.”

“Right. Parker and Isis and then he lied. I'm not putting up with liars, Becca. You c'n tell him that.”

“He's just hoping that you'll give him a chance. Just to
talk
is all. I think he wants to say sorry.”

“Great. He's sorry. Tell him you told me, I listened, and the end is the end however he wants to color it. Look, you have Derric. You c'n be sure of him. That's what I want, too. To be sure of someone. Parker's not that person. He's a liar, it's too bad, and there's an end to it.”

Becca gave fleeting thought to the whole idea of being sure. Nothing, she knew, was ever for sure. She said, “It's just that sometimes people . . . Things happen and they don't really intend them to or they're sorry they did or they weren't thinking straight. And when that happens—”

“When what happens?” another voice said.

Becca swung around although she knew who was talking. Isis Martin was there, carrying with her an enormous placard reading
BATHROOM PASS
. She carelessly tossed this onto one of the chairs in reception and came over to the desk, which she hung upon and said, “What's going on?”

“Parker wants to talk to me,” Hayley told her. “He sent Becca to ask.”

Isis glanced Becca's way, her cool blue eyes appraising. Becca thought she was about to warn Hayley off, but Isis surprised her by saying, “You should talk to him. You
know
it was nothing, him and me.” And to Becca, “Where is he? Outside?”

“I think he's with the sheriff,” Becca said.

“
What
?” This from Isis.

“The sheriff came for him last night and said they needed to talk and they went somewhere together. He usually comes to the house for breakfast—to Mr. Darrow's house?—but he didn't today.”

“He probably took off for Canada,” Hayley said. “He probably got deported.”

“I don't think it had to do with making him go back to Canada,” Becca said. “The sheriff didn't tell him to get his stuff.”

Isis turned to Hayley. “The sheriff's got to be asking him about the fires. What else is there?”

The ring . . . but what would that have to do with . . . know about him anyway? . . . he would have talked to the Canadian police and if he found out something . . . did he plan . . . he would have known that cigarette was . . . so if he had the ring . . . lies lies lies on top of lies
 . . .

The whispers came from them both in great cloudy swirls that turned Becca around and inside out. The only thing she could understand from it all was that Parker had something to do with a ring, which had something to do with Isis or Hayley. How this related to everything else was something that she still didn't know.