SW01 - The Edge of Nowhere

by Elizabeth George

  He washed his hands and set to work. Becca did the same and joined him at the counter. Side by side, they made sandwiches for a few minutes in silence till he brushed up against her and she sensed an aching hole within him. Something had been torn away from this boy, and she said without thinking, “Other stuff’ll cover it up eventually and finally you won’t even know it’s there.”

  He stopped what he was doing and said, “What the heck?”

  She said quickly, “Oh. Mustard. Sometimes I put too much on but if I cover it up with mayo and other stuff I forget it’s there. Know what I mean?”

  He didn’t look like a believer. “Who are you?”

  She said, “Becca King.” And it came to her that saying the name this third time to a stranger was claiming a new identity. That didn’t feel good.

  He said, “Becca King. Okay. I’m Seth Darrow.”

  She said, “Seth Darrow. Okay.”

  He waited a moment, for a reaction from her. When she didn’t give one, he said, “You’re not from around here, are you? If you were, you’d know.”

  “What?”

  “My last name. What it means.”

  Becca felt Seth relax next to her. It seemed she’d passed some sort of test. He said her name again and asked her if it was short for Rebecca and she said it was. He asked why she was called Becca and not Becky like most girls, but to answer this was going to mean constructing a history of lies. She didn’t want to do that, knowing she had to stick to the main story, so she said she didn’t know and she told him that she’d only got to the island yesterday. She said she was supposed to stay with Carol Quinn, over on Blue Lady Lane and—

  “Wow, triple bummer.” Seth’s tone told her he knew that Carol Quinn was dead and as if to assure her of that, he went on to say, “Small town. Everyone knows what’s going on.”

  “Yeah, triple bummer,” Becca agreed. “She was my mom’s friend, since they were kids.” She let him fill in the rest of the information the way people tended to do when you told them something.

  She ate her sandwich. She made quick work of it. Seth left her and went over to a cold cabinet where he took out a plastic bottle of orange juice. He brought it to her and said, “It’s on me,” when she took some coins out of her jacket pocket.

  He handed her another sandwich, this one wrapped in plastic. He said, “For later. Just in case.” Then he took a napkin and a pencil from the deli counter and he began to draw upon it.

  Becca saw that he was making a map. It was simple enough, just two streets with two others running perpendicular to them. “First and Second,” he said, pointing. “Anthes and Park.”

  Near Second and Anthes, he said, there was a public bathroom where she could do . . . well, whatever she needed to do. It would be open. It was near the bank and behind a yellow cottage, which was the visitors’ center. He drew an X-marks-the-spot and then he drew another, this one on the corner of Second and Park.

  He said. “You go to this place at one o’clock, okay? Little white house there, but don’t go inside or knock on the door. It’s an AA meeting and they won’t want you listening.”

  “Okay,” Becca said slowly, drawing out the word and waiting for more information. Did he think she was an alcoholic?

  “Just wait outside at the picnic table,” he went on. “There’s a lady? Debbie Grieder? She goes to the meetings. She’ll help you out.”

  “Why?” What sort of place was this? The last thing Becca was used to was people who handed over sandwiches and pointed out other people who would help you out.

  “It’s just who she is,” Seth said. “She’s okay. You won’t need to ask her to help you, even.”

  “How will I know who she is?”

  “You won’t need to,” he told her. “She’ll know you.”

  * * *

  FIVE

  Seth walked outside with her. He took another look at the bike.

  “It’s not really that bad,” he said, “but you got to know how to ride a ten-speed. A mountain bike would be better here, but a ten-speed will work if you’re in decent shape. You know how to ride one?”

  Becca didn’t know there was any particular way to ride a ten-speed. All she knew was that you shifted when the pedaling got too tough, and that was what she told him. He said that she had to rely on her legs to tell her when to switch gears and if she didn’t do it right, she’d wear the gears out. She said that her legs weren’t telling her anything but to get off the bike and push it. He smiled and said, “Look, I can show you. Not now, because I’ve got to get back to work. But I’m here every morning. You have the map?”

  She said, “Nope. You’ve got it,” and he looked at his hand. He said, “Oh. Right,” and he pushed the map in her direction. “Remember. Debbie Grieder,” he told her. “Wait at the picnic table. Okay?”

  Becca nodded, mounted her bike, and took off. She knew he was watching but it didn’t matter, because she also could tell that Seth Darrow was going to be a friend.

  SHE FOUND THE public bathroom. She was able to clean herself up in the place. She looked more horrible than she’d ever looked in her life, though, and she understood at once why Seth had suggested she check out the public facilities.

  It wasn’t just that she’d slept with the dogs. That was bad enough, and it contributed to her rank smell. But it was also how Laurel had altered her appearance so that she looked gross, so unlike her normal self that should Jeff Corrie pass her on the street, he’d never notice her.

  Aside from the ugly color, her hair was also a chopped-up mess, hanging just beneath her ears. She was wearing more makeup than she’d ever worn in her life, sort of like a marginal goth, and at the moment it was streaking on her face, the eyeliner looking like sooty tears and the mascara creating semi-circular smudges.

  Becca removed the phony glasses and looked around. There was soap and water, so she washed her face. If she was going to meet this woman called Debbie, she didn’t want to give her the wrong impression.

  When she left the restroom, she still smelled like a dog but at least she didn’t look like one. She went out into the open air, dug out her cell phone, and made her next call to Laurel. She was feeling much better all around. She knew this had a lot to do with having eaten the sandwich provided by Seth Darrow and having found the restroom. These two circumstances were the kind of thing that made a person believe in possibilities.

  Becca’s contentment did not last long, though. Once again the cell phone told her that Laurel was out of range.

  Well, she thought reasonably, her mother would have stopped somewhere for the night. She and Laurel had gone over the route together, the highways she would take to get to Nelson, B.C., so she’d have paused somewhere in the Cascades. Some small town or a motel in the middle of nowhere. She could even be on the other side of the mountains by now but in an area without a cell tower. A few more hours would take care of the problem. Since she was fed and warm and somewhat clean now, Becca knew that she could wait.

  In the open air, the morning was cold and damp. With time to kill until she was meant to find this woman called Debbie, Becca decided to warm up by riding her bike and practicing with the gears, as Seth had told her to do. She’d explore as well, she told herself. There didn’t appear to be a lot to explore in the village, so that wouldn’t take long, but it was something to do.

  Langley, she discovered, couldn’t have been less like San Diego, with its housing developments all painted beige with red tiled roofs. Here there was nothing but seaside cottages, with clapboard and shingle siding on them and with roofs that were often green with moss. There were trees everywhere, trees gone wild, trees gone completely beserk, and their leaves were just beginning to turn in what would eventually become a panoply of red, orange, yellow, and gold.

  Becca found that her initial impression of the village had been correct: It was a town in miniature. She discovered a squat brick city hall–cum–police station, a library with a purple front door, a pizza parlor, several restau
rants, an abandoned old tavern called the Dog House, and—this being Washington—four coffeehouses competing with each other.

  Becca ended up at the place she’d always felt the safest: the public library. She gazed in the windows and thought she might wait till it opened so she could find a spot to remain until it was close to one o’clock. She’d read a book, she decided, and she’d be perfectly at ease among whatever whispers were in the air since library whispers had always been soothing to her as people’s minds drifted into the worlds of what they were reading.

  IT WAS TWELVE-THIRTY when she left the library and consulted her Seth-drawn map. She saw that the place she was looking for was right up Second Street, and since the library stood at the corner of Second Street, she wasn’t going to get lost trying to find the spot. It was, of course, all uphill. By the time she found the small white cottage that Seth had described, she was breathing like a steam engine.

  The cottage was the smallest she’d seen so far, and no one had bothered to plant a garden out in front. Instead its yard was beaten down and being used as a parking lot by the people who were inside at the AA meeting. But a weathered picnic table and benches stood to one side of the paint-peeling front door. Becca dismounted her bike and rolled it over to this. She sat to wait.

  It wasn’t long before the meeting concluded, and the front door opened. A swarm of people came out. They lit cigarettes and talked and laughed, and not a single one of them glanced Becca’s way. Becca watched all of them and waited.

  She fixed the earphone of the AUD box into her ear. It seemed the polite thing to do, giving people their privacy as her grandmother would have advised her.

  The crowd slowly dispersed, not a single one of them approaching Becca. They called out good-byes to each other, making promises to “call you later, okay?” Too soon there was simply no one left in the parking lot. Just Becca accompanied by her ten-speed bike, her backpack, and her saddlebags, along with an ancient SUV that looked abandoned at one side of the parking lot.

  She was thinking that Seth Darrow had been wrong. She was thinking about what she would do next. Then the front door opened a final time, and a woman came outside. She lit a cigarette. She was motherly looking, somewhat overweight but not obese, with squishy bosoms of the sort that children get lost in when they’re hugged. She had short hair growing out gray from a dye job and the kind of bad skin that comes from decades of smoking. She also had a terrible jagged scar that worked its way across her forehead, and seriously stained teeth. But she was dressed neatly in jeans, tennis shoes, an Oxford shirt, and a bulky sweater, and when her eyes locked with Becca’s, the distinct scent of baby powder seemed to fill the air.

  Things happened as Seth Darrow had said they would. The woman walked directly over to Becca. She said to her, “I’m Debbie Grieder. And you look like a girl who needs a hug,” and before Becca could answer one way or the other and before she could even decide if that was the kind of girl she was, Debbie drew her up from the bench and into her arms. The feeling for Becca was utter comfort.

  “What’s your name, darlin’?” Debbie said.

  “Becca King. A kid downtown told me to find you.”

  “That so?” Debbie didn’t ask which kid, so Becca wondered if going to Debbie Grieder for help was a regular things for the kids of Langley.

  Debbie rubbed the horrible scar on her forehead. As if it advised her what to do next, she nodded and told Becca to come with her. She strode over to the SUV. Half of it was Bondo-repaired and half of it was rust. She said, “Get in, darlin’. I’m giving you a ride.”

  Becca said, “Uh . . . I’ve got a bike and some stuff,” and she pointed out the ten-speed.

  “No problem,” Debbie said. “Bring it on over here. It’ll fit.”

  She waited while Becca scooped up her belongings and wheeled the bicycle over to the SUV. She stowed the ten-speed inside. Then she told Becca to climb aboard, and she did the same.

  The SUV smelled like a car inside of which two million cigarettes had been smoked. Debbie added another one to the overall stench, although she rolled down the window when she did so. This didn’t help much, since the ashtray was stuffed with butts and there were even some on the floor of the truck.

  Debbie put on music, the way people tend to do when they don’t want to be alone with their thoughts and they don’t want to talk about anything serious. It was hard rock. But just as abruptly as she’d switched it on, Debbie switched it off and said to Becca, “So where can I take you, darlin’?”

  Becca didn’t know what to say. She realized that while Seth had told her Debbie would help her, he hadn’t said how this help was supposed to come, what it would look like, or whether she was supposed to ask for it herself.

  Debbie was studying her with the sort of look mothers direct to their children. She said, “You don’t have a place to stay, huh? Couch surfing, are you? You run away from home?”

  Becca’s fingers went for the AUD box at this, and she turned it off. If there were going to be whispers, she needed to know what they were.

  . . . Come on now, girl . . .

  Becca could feel how important her answer was going to be. She could sense Debbie’s need for truth. But she couldn’t tell Debbie the full truth, so she told a form of it, which was the best she could do.

  “I’m meeting my mom here,” Becca said. “She dropped me off, but she’ll be back later.”

  “Today?”

  “I don’t know exactly when . . . I’m just supposed to wait for her.”

  Having said this, Becca did wait, although what she waited for was Debbie’s reaction. She added, “I guess I’m looking for a place to stay,” she added. “Till she gets here.”

  “How old are you, darlin’?” Debbie asked her.

  Becca thought about lying, but rejected the idea. “I’ll be fifteen in February.”

  “And your mom just dropped you in the middle of Langley?”

  “Just to wait,” Becca said. “She’ll be back.”

  “Fourteen years old?”

  “Almost fifteen,” Becca said.

  Debbie looked long and hard at her, but her face was altering. It was softening for some reason and she said, “Almost fifteen years old.” She put the SUV into gear and added in a contemplative voice, “Well, how about that.”

  Becca didn’t know what Debbie meant, but the way she looked at it, she would probably find out.

  * * *

  SIX

  Debbie drove them to the edge of town, to an old motel called the Cliff that Becca had actually passed without noticing on her way into Langley earlier that morning. It wasn’t much to look at, just a string of ten rooms with old-fashioned rusty metal porch chairs in front of them and dismal flowerbeds, most of them empty. The front of the motel was planted with Japanese maples, though, and these added lovely color to the place.

  At first Becca thought that Debbie had driven her here to help her get a motel room. This worried her because while she had the money to pay for a motel room, she didn’t have the money to pay for it very long. But then Debbie said, “This is where I live,” and Becca altered her thinking to consider that Debbie was one of those poor people who had to live in motels because they’d lost every possession they had. But then Debbie got out of the SUV and led her toward the motel office, the only part of the business that had a second floor. She walked directly through the office and into the living room of an apartment behind it.

  The old furniture inside reminded Becca of her great-grandmother’s house. It was that unappealing early-American style, done in maple with tufted cushions. These were leaking stuffing at some of their seams. There was a coffee table in front of a sofa, littered with copies of National Geographic and Travel +Leisure that gaped open and had pages torn from them. Some of these pages were on the floor, and others had been used to make collages. These hung on the walls as decoration along with pictures of children and adults. Members of Debbie’s family, Becca reasoned.

  As Debbie contin
ued into a kitchen, Becca said, “Are these your kids?”

  Debbie said, “Kids and grandkids,” over her shoulder, and she added, “I’m starving. Let’s have something to eat before I have to pick up the Indians.”

  In the kitchen, Debbie took hot dogs from a refrigerator and dumped them into a pan of water on the stove. She took buns and opened them into a baking pan and slapped this onto the stovetop as well. She lit another cigarette, took a hit off it, and coughed. Her cough was deep and chesty.

  As the water heated, Debbie said to her, “You can stay here and wait for your mom.”

  Becca said, “Gosh. That’s . . . I don’t have a lot of money.”

  Debbie waved her off. “We’ll work something out.” Cigarette hanging from her mouth, she went back to the refrigerator and began to hand things over to Becca, who put them on the edge of an extremely cluttered table: mustard, ketchup, relish, chopped onion inside a Baggie, shredded cheddar cheese, cold chili in a can. Debbie continued talking. “I’m lucky to have the place,” she said, in a voice that told Becca important information was on its way. “I didn’t build it, but my dad did. I didn’t inherit it, thank God, which would have meant the ex would have had a stake in it. My dad’s still alive, up in Oak Harbor in one of those retirement communities. I’m running the place for him. We split the profits.”

  Becca nodded and wondered what kind of profits there could be. The motel seemed fairly decrepit. With only the ten rooms, no one here was getting rich off the takings from tourists.

  “Anyway,” Debbie said, flicking ash from her cigarette into the sink, “me and the grandbabies live here. They’re in first and third grade—Chloe and Josh—and they’re real good kids. You’ll like them.”

  Debbie didn’t say where the kids’ mom and dad were, and Becca didn’t ask. For when Debbie had said the names of the children, what Becca had also heard was no suffering for sins, and she figured that the kids’ parents were the people who had probably done the sinning.