The Edge of the Water

  “I need to get close enough for a better picture,” Annie said. “That transmitter? It’s going to tell me a lot. And I need a sample. Skin’s okay but blood’s a lot better.”

  Becca realized, hearing this, that she was listening to a discussion that had been ongoing between them. Transmitter told her that Annie was talking about the seal. Skin and blood made her sit up and take notice.

  “You’ll get close enough,” Chad was replying. “No worries about that. We’ll use inflatables and the net.”

  “I don’t want to hurt her. I’d be strung up by the seal spotters. Not to mention the Langleyites, or whatever they call themselves.”

  “She won’t be hurt. Just contained. And how long will it take? Ten minutes? Fifteen?”

  “It all depends how hungry she is. And if she likes the bait.”

  “Oh, she’ll like it,” he said.

  • • •

  BECCA WENT STRAIGHT to Heart’s Desire. It wasn’t a workday for her, but that didn’t matter. She had to put Ivar into the picture of Annie Taylor and Chad Pederson’s plan for the seal.

  At first Ivar didn’t believe she’d even seen Nera. His first response was, “She popped up off Glendale yesterday. Figure she’ll be near Clinton now. Hanging by the ferry. That where you saw her?” He was in the kitchen of the farmhouse, where he’d reduced the neat countertops, the stove, and the sink to a form of rubble in pursuit of making a Bundt cake, which was sitting on top of one burner. He was wielding a spray bottle of Simple Green, dousing everything in sight with puddles of the cleaner and smearing a towel through it. Becca winced and took the stuff and the towel from him.

  She said, “Langley Marina. It was the first open-water dive. She was there.”

  Ivar said, “No way. That’d be some other seal, Becks. If it was Nera, one of the seal spotters down at Sandy Point would’ve put it on the Web.”

  “It was a black seal, Ivar,” Becca told him, and when she went on to include the information about Annie Taylor and Chad Pederson and their plans, Ivar’s eyes widened behind his thick glasses. When she was finished talking, he headed out of the kitchen and made for the stairs.

  • • •

  BECCA FOLLOWED. SHE’D never been beyond the farmhouse kitchen. Now she found herself in an old-fashioned living room where a double-wide doorway led to an entryway and the unused front door. The stairs were in the entryway.

  Becca wasn’t sure about heading up the stairs, but she could hear Ivar thrashing around. He was muttering to himself as well, so she decided to go for it.

  There were three bedrooms above, along with a bathroom where a doorway opened onto old tiles and a claw-footed tub. Ivar’s room overlooked Useless Bay, and since there was a fine telescope at the window, Becca thought at first he’d gone to his room to search for the seal. But it turned out his search was at a computer on the opposite side of the room, and when she approached, she saw that he was on the seal spotters’ Web site and his whispers spoke of can’t really be . . . should have seen . . . has to be mistaken, which Becca knew for certain she was not.

  Ivar read the screen, shoving his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. He cast a look at her and said, “You sure of this, Becks?”

  “Course,” she said. “And Chad must’ve seen her, too, Ivar, ’cause like I said, he and Annie were talking about how to contain her. That has to be Nera, right? I mean, they wouldn’t be talking about another seal, I don’t think.”

  “That seal come close to you?”

  Becca shook her head. “She spooked Jenn, though.”

  “Jenn’s okay?”

  “Sure. Yeah.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me? I’m okay. Well, obviously.”

  “I mean did she spook you.”

  Spooked wasn’t exactly the word, but Becca wasn’t sure how to explain to Ivar what had happened when Nera came close to her. So she said, “She looked at me, is all.”

  How it started from Ivar’s whispers told Becca there were things about Nera that Ivar knew that he wasn’t saying. Probably to anyone. He said sharply, “What d’you mean?”

  Becca went at it carefully. There was knowledge here, inside Ivar’s head, and she wanted to glean it. She said, “I mean, she looked at me . . . sort of the way a person does. You know how it is? They pass you on a street and they don’t know who you are but they want to acknowledge you? That’s how it was. Does that make sense? Sounds sort of dumb, I guess.”

  “No, it don’t, Becks,” Ivar said, but what he thought was What should I . . . time comes when someone’s responsibility is . . . why now why now is what I would . . . which was interrupted by his words. “Thing’s moving along.”

  “What things?” Becca asked. He’d turned back to the computer and was reading what the seal spotters had posted. She had to repeat her question and to say his name before he replied.

  “That scientist, Becks. She’s not going to stop till she gets what she wants. That being the case, we got to stop her ourselves.”

  • • •

  THE WHY OF it was what Ivar didn’t explain. At least not adequately, Becca thought. She understood why using nets and inflatables and bait to trap the seal was an idea leading right to trouble. What she didn’t understand was the equal weight Ivar seemed to give to the thought of Annie Taylor’s getting a close picture of the transmitter Nera was wearing, along with a sample of her DNA.

  His explanation was not to explain. He said, “Some things’re not meant to be understood. That seal’s one of them,” and that was the end of it. He went on to ramble a bit about nature: penguins marching into the heart of Antarctica to lay their eggs and baby elephants dying of sorrow. But all the time he was talking, his head was also whispering believe . . . believe . . . got to make her believe, which made Becca press him more than she might have done otherwise.

  She said, “But it’s not bad to try to figure things out, is it? Like figuring out why Nera comes back here every year. How c’n that be bad?”

  “Where it leads is bad,” Ivar insisted. “How it leads there is bad.” He rapped his fingers on his desk and seemed to be struggling with a decision of some kind because what went with the fingers rapping on the desk was it’s time and go ahead, suggesting more was coming.

  Becca waited. What to tell . . . how . . . if she knew everything . . . trust is always the key and this is beyond gave her a lot of patience in the wait.

  Ivar finally said, “Sometimes people think they can tame and understand nature, Becks. I was one of those people once. Just like Annie Taylor now. That was me. A long time ago.”

  “A scientist?” she asked.

  He laughed. “I talk like a scientist? No, I was someone who wanted to know things that weren’t none of my business. I wanted to know that seal instead of just accepting that seal. Nera’s private but I didn’t know that. I got too close, and she broke my arm trying to get away ’cause I grabbed her.”

  “Oh my gosh,” Becca said. “That’s how it happened? So if Annie Taylor gets near her—”

  “That seal’s going to defend herself and someone’s going to get hurt.”

  “Like that guy . . . Like Eddie Beddoe keeps saying.”

  The air seemed to crack. She’d only said his name, but everything in the room became instantly different. Each object was supercharged with emotion and the emotion came from Ivar although he tried to hide it. Now it comes . . . so close to what I should have . . . indicated there was history here. Ivar made this clear when he said to Becca, “Well, Eddie Beddoe’s a bad spot for me.” Married to her and he won’t . . . told Becca the source of the trouble.

  “Sharla, huh?”

  “He lost her and now she’s here in my house and in his mind one and one equals two. I don’t disabuse him of that notion and I probably should. Him and me? We squared off more ’n once about Sharla. Years ago, this w
as. He’d hurt her bad.” He seemed to read something on Becca’s face because he went on quickly with, “Heart hurt, Becks. He didn’t hit her or nothing. All’s I know is she took off for a while—off island somewheres—when they lived down in Possession Point. When she came back, she didn’t want nothing to do with him. He came around here once and I drove him off with a shovel. I won’t have no one bothering Sharla.”

  The way he said her name . . . Becca knew there was also heart hurt right in Ivar Thorndyke’s bedroom. But the topic of Sharla brought to mind what Becca had found inside the trunk in Ivar’s chicken coop: those tiny OshKosh overalls. So she said carefully, “Sharla seems really sad, don’t you think?”

  “Oh she’s sad all right,” Ivar agreed.

  “’Bout Eddie maybe?”

  “I do not know.”

  “They have any kids, her and Eddie?” Becca asked because those overalls and what they meant certainly could point to a very big reason for someone’s sorrow.

  But Ivar said, “Sharla and Eddie? Nope.”

  So Becca asked, “Sharla and someone else?” And when Ivar looked at her sharply, she went on quickly with, “I was just thinking of reasons she might be sad. Like she had a kid and something happened to it. Like it . . . I don’t know . . . like it drowned or something?”

  “No kids,” Ivar said. “And the only one who almost drowned was Eddie.”

  “When he lost the boat, right?”

  “That’d be about it. When Nera”—he made quotes in the air when he said the seal’s name with a scoff—“sank his boat and he swam to shore. Course it would’ve helped if he’d known how to handle that boat in the first place, but that’s Eddie for you. Always in a hurry to have more than he has and in an equal hurry to be someone he isn’t. And when he fails—which he always does—he starts the blaming. Surprises me that he went for Nera instead of Sharla. But Sharla wasn’t with him on the boat that night, so ’less she got out there and fiddled with it somehow, Eddie couldn’t exactly point the finger at her.”

  Becca heard this detail and could see its importance in the overall Eddie-and-Sharla story. But the most peculiar part of it was still those little OshKosh overalls. Someone wasn’t telling the truth.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Becca made good time into Langley. She was proud of how expert she’d become upon her bike. The added benefit to having a mode of transportation was that she had no spare weight upon her any longer. She knew that when she picked up Jenn McDaniels’s whisper of FatBroad or when Jenn referred to her as Fattie, it simply was no longer the case. In fact, the only part of her that remained as it had been when she’d first arrived on the island was the amount of makeup she continued to wear and the phony thick-framed glasses that she put on daily. Other than that, she was totally different. The many pounds she’d lost, along with the glasses and the makeup and the hideous clothes, went some distance to assuring her that Jeff Corrie would probably not know who she was if he showed up on the island another time and looked right at her.

  She passed through the village. Her destination was Diana Kinsale’s house. She arrived there to see Diana in the dog run. Her five dogs were bounding around the front lawn. Diana herself was shoveling poop into a bucket.

  It was a fine day, the only truly nice day they’d had in all of March, which, Becca was discovering, was about three months long in the Pacific Northwest. It was endless rain, and when it wasn’t rain, it was gray skies or fog or bursts of wind. Everything was becoming green and lush. But there were times when green and lush did not make up for sunlight.

  Diana’s dogs barked joyously when they saw Becca coast into the driveway. They bounded over and surrounded her. Oscar, the poodle, remained at a distance as usual, the sloppy enthusiasm of his pals far beneath his dignity. But he submitted himself to Becca’s caress of his thatch of soft head hair. He padded after her as she went to the kennel.

  “Need help?” she asked Diana Kinsale.

  Diana paused, leaning against her shovel. “Some things,” she said, “are far beyond friendship, and asking a friend to help shovel dog poop is one of them.”

  Becca warmed to Diana’s use of friend. She looked at the wood shavings that covered the ground inside the waist-high chain-link fence. She said, “Five dogs make a lot of poop.”

  “Next time, believe me, I plan to have only field mice as pets.” Diana went back to shoveling the poop. She said, “What brings you out this way?”

  Becca began with the seal, with Annie Taylor, with diving. She segued from diving to Ivar and from Ivar to Sharla. Diana had lived on the island for thirty years. If Ivar had been lying about Sharla, Diana was probably going to know it.

  “Children?” Diana said to her at the end of her story. “No. She’s never had children as far as I know. I suppose she could have had a child as a teenager. But she would have lived up in Oak Harbor then, and if she did have a baby, she must have given it up for adoption. If that’s what happened, though, she’s never told me. Why, Becca? What’s going on?”

  “She seems sad, is all,” Becca said.

  Diana raised an eyebrow at her. Becca understood what that raised eyebrow meant. Diana knew there was more to the story.

  So Becca told her about the OshKosh overalls: three pairs along with some little T-shirts and shoes. Diana’s response was a sensible, “Are you sure the trunk was Sharla’s? If it was in the chicken coop, it seems more likely that it’d be Ivar’s. Or that he shares it with Sharla. And Ivar has a daughter. Steph. She lives in Virginia.”

  “Nope,” Becca said. “It was all Sharla’s stuff inside the trunk. Pictures and clothes and things.”

  “That’s interesting, then, isn’t it?”

  “And what I was wondering is . . . well, have you felt anything when you’ve been with her,” which was as close as Becca was going to venture to talking about Diana’s own talent for touch and what happened when she put her hand upon another person.

  “I’ve felt a lot of sadness,” Diana said. “What you’ve seen in her yourself. But I’ve always had the idea that Sharla has much to be sad about.”

  “’Cause she was married to Eddie Beddoe?”

  “That started things, yes. But I suspect a lot of other things added to it.”

  • • •

  WHAT THOSE THINGS were, though . . . ? It was a case of Diana saying all she would say on the subject. That she knew more was a fact beyond doubt to Becca. That her belief was that Becca King was intended to discover things on her own was also beyond doubt, however. Becca was considering this and what she was meant to do about it when she reached the Cliff Motel as she pedaled into Langley. There, however, further considerations were driven from her mind as she rounded the corner from Camano Street and caught a glimpse of the empty lot next to the motel’s parking area.

  Derric and Josh were having some Big Brother/Little Brother time there. They were building some kind of hideaway in the farthest corner, using reclaimed materials along with a lot of hammering and the sound of rap blasting from somewhere.

  Here was something else she’d been avoiding, Becca thought. She didn’t think she had the courage to face Derric at the moment, but she knew she owed him some information. He would hate her even more at the end of it, but since things were finished between them, she didn’t see how they could get any more finished.

  So she left her bike at the edge of the lot and crossed the newly greened grass that was coming up. Josh saw her first and yelled, “Hey, Becca! Lookit this place! It’s gonna be cool.”

  She waved at him gamely. Derric, who was pounding a nail into a board, gave her a glance but nothing else. She nearly turned on her heel and beat a retreat when she caught the coldness in his eyes. But she forced herself forward and after dutifully admiring the structure whose many beauties Josh pointed out to her, she said to the little boy, “D’you mind if I talk to Derric for a second?”

&nbs
p; Josh looked from her to his Big Brother. He said, “But not for long, huh? ’Cause we have work to do.”

  Becca said, “Not for long.”

  Josh said, “’Kay, then,” and returned to his pounding.

  Derric didn’t look exactly thrilled to have to talk to her, and Becca couldn’t blame him. She’d messed up badly by producing the hidden letters to his sister. Hers was the primary action that had concluded with the letters being lost, and she could understand why forgiveness for that move wasn’t going to be in the cards.

  She eased the AUD box earphone from her ear and said to him, “I checked with Good Cheer.”

  Oh yeah big frigging deal wish I’d never flitted through his mind as his face settled into an expression that told her he knew pretty much what was coming.

  She said, “Stuff in the trash goes up to Coupeville. But the same day it goes up there, trucks take it off island to another site.”

  He said, “Like this is some big discovery, Becca? I already knew that. My mom found it out.” Stupid lame all the trouble she causes . . . if I’d never . . . she’d never been . . . go away go away or I swear what I’ll do is . . .

  “Please just listen,” Becca broke into his thoughts. “Seth and I . . . We went up to Coupeville right after we talked to you. I mean, the next day because obviously we couldn’t go that night ’cause they wouldn’t’ve been open.”

  “So?”

  “So they told us where everything went, to a site in Burlington. We went there, too. But in Burlington they said trash and junk and stuff ends up there from all over the island, from Camano Island, from the towns nearby, too. And even that’s not the final place for it. See it goes to eastern Washington—”