To the Edge

by Anna del Mar

I rose and took a tentative step in his direction. “Um...are you okay?”

  He stopped me with a hand in the air. “Fine.”

  He stumbled over to the spigot on the side of the porch and, after rinsing his mouth and taking a drink, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. The Noah I knew despised drama and theatrics. The guy I remembered would never admit to anything but perfect health. This Noah was obviously sick.

  Tires crunched on the ground. I turned around to see Mark Walker coming over the hill, riding the golf cart he’d rented for the day, the island’s most common form of transportation. A taxi followed, the only one on Avalon, a yellow Chevy dating to the dark ages.

  Noah rumbled. “Is that him?”

  “That’s him,” I said, “but don’t worry, he’s fired.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  I glanced at Noah’s somber face. What did he mean by that? Why would he care what I did with my life? And why would he want to pretend he cared after all these years?

  The golf cart skidded to a stop on the gravel by the front porch. Mark Walker’s longish curls blew in the breeze as he parked in a puddle. His stare shifted between me, Noah and the house. He hesitated. He seemed...what? Uneasy?

  “I brought doughnuts.” He flashed an equine smile and waved a brightly colored bag in the air. His not so brawny brain must have been stuck on the slow setting, because it took a moment before his high forehead crumpled and he looked totally confused. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why are you out here? Is that smoke I smell in the air?”

  “Genius,” Noah grumbled. “Positively fucking brilliant.”

  “Who are you?” Mark’s gaze shifted from Noah to me. “Are we upgrading to a threesome?”

  “Motherfucker.” Noah launched himself over the railing, clutched Mark by the collar and ripped him out of the golf cart. “I don’t know what the hell you’re up to, but you need to get the hell out of Clara’s way.”

  I rushed down the stairs. “Noah!”

  Mark struggled in Noah’s clutch. “What the fuck is your problem, man?”

  “You’re my problem.” Noah tightened his grip. “You could’ve killed her.”

  “Noah, please.” I didn’t know quite what to do. “Let him go.”

  “She’s a big girl.” Mark sneered. “If she wants cuffs, I’m happy to string her up.”

  Noah snarled. “You left her unattended in locked cuffs. If that wasn’t stupid enough, you started a fucking fire.”

  “A fire?” Mark looked to me. “What fire?”

  “Safe, sane and consensual.” Noah shook him like a dirty rag. “What part of this counts as safe?”

  Mark made a fatal mistake. He threw a punch, which Noah blocked easily. His fist collided with Mark’s jaw and sent Mark staggering backward.

  Mark stumbled on his feet and rubbed his cheek. An incredulous glare bloomed on his face. “What the hell was that for?”

  “That’s for not caring for your partner’s welfare above your own needs,” Noah spat. “Stay away from Clara. Do you hear me?”

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” Mark pretended he was going to walk away and then lunged for Noah.

  Noah was waiting, eager. He thwarted the attack with a fist to the stomach. Mark doubled over and wheezed. He recovered, staggered and tried to come at Noah again. The difference between the two men was glaring. Mark fumbled around like a fool and a clown. Noah’s stance was alert and commanding. His blows were controlled, expert and precise. I got the sense he could’ve killed Mark if he’d wanted to. Instead, the grim resolve on his face showed that he’d channeled his rage into a semblance of restraint to teach Mark a lesson with his fists.

  “This one is because you’re a public danger.” Noah landed a hook that spun Mark around. “This one’s because you’re a fucking moron.” He struck again. “And this one...”

  I tackled Noah, wrapping my arms around his waist and holding him back as best I could. It was like trying to hold on to a bucking bronco. His body felt solid between my arms. A rush of unnatural heat burned through me and scalded my skin. The contact jolted me to the core. I let go. My body buzzed as if it had been hit by a live wire.

  Mark tripped over his own two feet and collapsed on the ground. Noah whirled on me. For a moment, I feared the violence gleaming in his stare. But then our gazes met and the fury in his eyes evaporated. When I next knew, the world had disappeared and I was crushed against his chest. His lips landed on my mouth.

  The kiss launched me into another dimension. The return of his tongue to my mouth blasted me out of my wits. In his arms, I lost the will to live, die, fight and move on. Time meant nothing. The years didn’t matter. There was no past, no future, only the present, searing Noah’s name on my soul, reviving his scalding brand.

  The heat. It jolted through my veins, pooled in my lower belly and made my sex blossom like a gigantic flower. The contact sucked the breath out of me, destroyed my thoughts and scattered my will in every direction. In that moment, we were young again and I was drenched and eager for him, pulsing in a desperate wait to be filled by the strength of his cock.

  And then...disconnect. His mouth was gone and I was empty and adrift in a storming sea.

  “Be safe,” he mumbled as he let go of me. “Sorry, for everything.” The light dimmed in his eyes as he turned and marched a crooked line toward the trees. Before I could react, he got lost in the scrub.

  I watched him go, speechless. What had just happened? I wept between my legs. Had I invented the encounter and the kiss out of the macabre combination of my dreams and nightmares? And where the hell was he going?

  I stood there, rooted to the earth, under a leaden sky, scouring the forest that had swallowed Noah, sobbing inside because although I didn’t understand any of this, I knew for sure he wasn’t coming back.

  Mark’s groan startled me out of the profound grief.

  “Who’s he?” He pushed up from the soggy ground and staggered on his feet. “I want his name. I’m gonna sue that son of a bitch.”

  “You’re not suing anybody.” I marched up to the porch, picked up his duffel and hurled it at his feet. “And by the way, we’re done here.” I climbed the stairs again, locked the front door and, after picking up my bag, marched to the taxi, ignoring Mark’s mystified stare.

  “What did I do wrong?” he said. “And where are you going?”

  “I’m leaving,” I said. “And you need to get out of here right away.”

  I jumped in the cab and shut the door. I fished my cell out of my purse and looked at the time. If we hurried, I could make the next ferry. The knot between my shoulders tightened. My hands were shaking. In fact, my entire body was shivering with shock.

  “You okay?”

  The driver’s gaze met my eyes in the rearview mirror. Martha Crockett, the matriarch of an extensive network of Crocketts on the island, had known me since I was a little girl. She’d been around on Avalon for as long as I could remember. The owner and main employee of Avalon Taxi Inc., she’d welcomed me to the ferry landing earlier today and driven me out to the house.

  Practicing her singular brand of friendly nosiness, she’d asked why I’d come to Avalon during the ride to the house. I told her my cover story: I’d come to show the historic house to an interior designer who’d be arriving shortly. Martha had been excited about the possibility of the house being restored and becoming a beehive of Luz activity again. It was the wrong assumption, of course, but I hadn’t had the heart to dissuade her from it.

  “That was quite the little squall back there,” she said in her Hoit Toider’s brogue as she drove slowly down the dirt road. “I didn’t think he’d be any good.”

  “Who?”

  “Your interior designer.” She flashed me a gap-toothed smile. “Common rabble. He had no class, no
Luz class, get what I mean?”

  “Yeah.” I knew what she meant. “Could you please send one of your sons to board the bathroom window on the first floor? There was an accident and the bathroom caught fire.”

  “Sure,” she said, negotiating the road’s moon-sized craters. “Do you want Henry to fix up the damage?”

  “That would be awesome.”

  “Should we wait for the insurance adjuster?”

  “No, go ahead and start the repairs.” I couldn’t afford the risk of a stranger sticking his nose in my business, asking questions and creating a commotion. “Send me the bill, will you?”

  “No problem.” Martha checked me out in the rearview mirror again. “If you don’t mind me asking, was that Noah Blake I spotted back there?”

  “You remember Noah?” I asked. “You recognized him from all those years ago?”

  “I remember him all right. You used to like him quite a lot.” Her suggestive grin grated on my taut nerves. “Plus, he lives here now. I was so surprised to see him out and about.”

  Nobody had been more surprised to see Noah than me. “Wait.” My mind was still reeling from the encounter. “Why were you surprised?”

  “Because of his condition, of course.” Martha didn’t give me any time to ask what she meant by that. “What was Noah doing at your house?”

  “Oh.” I looked for a quick out. “He saw the smoke and came to help.”

  “That’s a hell of a way to help, if you ask me.” Martha whistled. “I haven’t seen Noah out in the open in...a year and half, methinks.”

  “Really?” My antennae perked up. “You mean he’s been on Avalon that long?”

  “I reckon he’s been here for two years or so,” Martha said. “Nice guy. Good tipper. Always like them good tippers. Cute too. He’d make a good woman honest if there were any good women about to be had. It’s a shame about his problem.”

  “What problem?”

  “Don’t you know?” Wisps of gray hair quivered in the air as she gave her head a sorrowful shake. “Word is, he came back hurt from Iraq. Got better, they said, except for the PTSD. It keeps him inside. Some form of arachnophobia, they say.”

  “Arachnophobia?” I had to scratch my head on that one. “He’s scared of spiders?”

  “No, not that one then, some other phobia, you know, where he can’t get out of the house, even if he tries.”

  “You mean agoraphobia?”

  “Sounds about right.” She clicked on the wipers, which whined and staggered, streaking layers of dirt across the windshield. “I haven’t seen Noah step beyond his deck since...let me think. Since that time when he traveled to the mainland. His friend came and got him. It was a sad thing. His mother, I think—no—his foster mother died.”

  Bess was dead? My heart squeezed. Bess had been Noah’s last living relative, the wife of his deceased uncle, the woman who’d taken him in after his parents’ deaths. He’d adored her and she’d adored him.

  “It’s bad,” Martha volunteered. “Noah hires me to bring in his groceries and stuff every week. He’s homebound, but he’s got skills, you know. He works from home.”

  I tried not to ask, but curiosity got the best of me. “What does he do?”

  “Something with computers,” she said. “Thanks to him, the whole island got an Internet upgrade. He gets packages from everywhere in the world. Oh, and he has sophisticated tastes. Wine. Fine foods. Nothing but the best for Noah. Nice guy. Shame he’s so sick, like he is.”

  The day was a humid mess, but my throat felt arid as the Sahara. “How do you know all this?”

  “I’m not the island’s only cab for nothing.” Martha flashed a knowing smirk. “Plus, Noah’s got friends who visit sometimes, fellow graduates from the Naval Academy.”

  “The Naval Academy?”

  “Yeah, didn’t you keep in touch with Noah after that summer?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Well then, you don’t know. Noah is a decorated ex-SEAL, our very own Avalon hero. But he got hurt in Iraq or wherever, and it made him out of sorts as he is.”

  “He never, ever leaves the island?”

  “Never,” Martha said. “Well, except that one time when that lady died. Poor Noah. He had to take something to do that. Was sick like a dog for a whole week after he came back. Hasn’t left the house since.”

  I tried to process everything I’d learned. Noah said he’d sent me a letter. Felix had told me Noah had flunked out, but it wasn’t true. Not only had Noah graduated from the Naval Academy, he had also completed the long, grueling training required to become a Navy SEAL and fought in Iraq and probably Afghanistan too. He suffered from a severe case of PTSD. He was confined to his house on Avalon and hadn’t left it for the past two years, except to go to Bess’s funeral. And to come help when the house caught on fire.

  I felt sick, really sick to my stomach.

  True, Noah had blindsided me with his sudden appearance and disappearance. I hated him. Or maybe I was upset because I’d had no closure from him. But he’d just rescued me from disaster, not to mention saved the old house from burning. Truth be told, I’d been so mad at him for something that happened a long time ago, I hadn’t even thanked him.

  He probably thought I’d turned into a regular tramp. Finding me dressed like that in the cage... Acid roiled in my belly. Why should I care what he thought of me after all these years?

  Coming to Avalon had been a mistake. I needed to leave. But as we drove down the ridge, over the bridge and across the tidal basin, my heart ached and my brain spun at maximum capacity. I stared at the cell in my hand. I had to find out. I brought up my contacts and dialed Felix.

  “Clara.” He sounded upbeat when he answered. “What’s up, cousin? Are you coming to see me this month?”

  “I was there last week, remember?” I said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like shit,” he said. “Rehab sucks. But I’m twenty days sober. They think I’m shitting gold over here.”

  “Glad to hear that.” I cleared my throat. “Felix, this is important, I have a question for you and I need you to tell me the truth.”

  “Uh-oh.” He sounded scared.

  I lowered my voice and covered my mouth with my hand, trying to thwart Martha’s finely tuned ears. “Fifteen years ago, right before your senior year, we all went to Avalon for the summer, remember?”

  “Did we now?”

  “Felix, the truth please,” I said. “Noah Blake came out with you. You guys stayed out at the bunkhouse.”

  “Well, what if he did?”

  “The thing is, I recently found out you didn’t tell me the truth about what happened to Noah. You said he dropped out from the Naval Academy, but he didn’t. He graduated, became a SEAL, and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

  Felix’s tone was noncommittal. “Really?”

  “I need to know,” I said. “And please don’t lie to me again. Did Noah give you a letter for me before he left?”

  “A letter?” He stammered. “No, no letter.”

  “Are you sure?” I said. “Think hard, Felix. What’s the point of going through rehab if you can’t cope with the truth?”

  “Shit, Clara. You’re worse than the fucking shrinks in here.”

  “Just tell me, please.”

  “Your mother is paying for my rehab.”

  “Just as she’d agreed to pay for your college back then.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So Noah gave you a letter for me.” I didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out. “And Mother took it from you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Felix sounded contrite. “She said I had to hand it over. You know how she is. Refusal wasn’t an option. She was worried you’d grown attached to a poor kid from the projects who didn’t have a di
me to his name. I’m pretty sure your mother’s security detail dragged Noah off the island and made sure he didn’t come back.”

  I swallowed a gulp of acid bile. Of course my mother wouldn’t want any losers attached to her stable of purebred winners. And to think I hadn’t even suspected her back then. Love is just a hormonal reaction. What a fool I’d been. What a naive freaking idiot. As my mother liked to say, I might have been conceived in the optimum clinical environment of a petri dish, but my brain was a failed experiment.

  I tried to work through the anger. When I was seventeen years old, I didn’t have a clear idea of who my mother was. But after many hours of therapy, these days, I had the full picture. Beyond Mother’s public persona, my therapist, Dr. Dodd, had helped me see her as a control-obsessed, emotionally detached narcissist. At the ripe old age of thirty-two, I was finally in the process of learning how to deal with my mother while rejecting her controlling behaviors. I’d tried really hard, but right now, as I sat in the back of the cab, realizing what she’d done, I wanted to wring her neck.

  I took a deep breath. “Thanks for telling me the truth, Felix.”

  I clicked off my cell and dropped it in my purse. I stared at the gulls circling over the fishermen’s quays and ran my fingers over my lips, where the heat of Noah’s kiss lingered on my flesh. The letter. Noah had told the truth.

  I’d treated him badly. No question about it. I’d been a bitch to him, but unlike my mother, this bitch had a conscience and a heart. A new thought began to form in my mind. Bad idea. Don’t do it, Clara. Walk away.

  “Martha?” I said. “Can you drive me to Noah’s house?”

  “I could,” she said, “but I always have to call before I go. He dislikes strangers.”

  I hated to play this card, but I did anyway. “Am I a stranger on Avalon?”

  “Of course not,” Martha said. “You’re a Luz, and you belong on Avalon as much as I do. But I have to warn you, Noah bought the old cottage from the Marshalls. Remember the Marshalls? Well, she died and he moved into town. Noah’s redone the cottage, bit by bit, with his own two hands. You could miss the ferry if I drive you all the way out there.”