Becca skimmed this story. The relevant bits fairly leaped out at her: Possession Point, Jenn McDaniels, a trailer, a suitcase with a note inside, a girl who couldn’t or wouldn’t talk, the Langley Clinic, and a thousand questions.
• • •
DEBBIE GRIEDER KNEW nothing more than what was in the story. If Becca was curious, she pointed out, Rhonda Mathieson would know the details, since the girl had been taken to the Langley clinic and Rhonda would have seen to her. Fact was, Derric could probably fill her in on more information. He was just outside with Josh and if Becca asked him—
“Oh, it’s okay,” Becca said. The last thing she wanted was to have to ask Derric.
Debbie eyed her and said, “Sorta went south? You ’n’ Derric?”
Becca shrugged. “Guess so. I blew it. Maybe we both did. I dunno. Whatever.”
Kids was Debbie Grieder’s whispered response to this. Becca couldn’t blame her for that inner tone of amusement and resignation. It was all pretty dumb and it would sound dumber if she told Debbie how lame she’d been. Debbie said, “True love never goes smooth, girl,” but Becca found that she couldn’t agree. If love was true, it was natural, she thought. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to be?
In any case, she couldn’t stay at the motel with Debbie, not even sleeping on her couch. It was bad enough seeing Derric at school. Seeing him out of school would be excruciating.
There was nothing for it but to go to work. At least she could earn a little money so when she found a place she would be able to pay her way. Soon after she’d consumed her oatmeal cookie, she took off for Heart’s Desire. Two bus rides deposited her where she’d left her bike hidden among some trees. Then a fast pedal along Double Bluff Road and a right at the stop sign put her on the final climb up the bluff to where the farm stood.
When she arrived, it was to the sound of dogs’ rapturous barking and to the sight of Diana Kinsale’s pickup truck. She saw four of Diana’s dogs bounding around the yard that surrounded the house while Oscar watched from the porch where he’d positioned himself near the mudroom door.
Becca went through the kitchen, where a pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove was filling the air with a heady fragrance. She lifted the pot’s lid for a better smell of it, and her mind went to thoughts of coming home after school to the scent of her mom’s baked beans. Her throat got tight for a second, and she cleared it mightily.
Nope, nope, nope, she told herself. She wouldn’t go there. Things were already tough enough.
She went into the mudroom for a quick hello and found Diana in the haircutting chair. Diana’s hair was wet and her shoulders were covered by a plastic cape. Sharla was standing behind her. They both were looking into the mirror, and they seemed to be considering what sort of haircut Diana needed. When Becca entered, Diana gazed long and hard at her face then held out her hand. Becca took it, and Diana’s careworn hand was warm to the touch. It moved quickly to grasp Becca’s arm, and the feeling was what it always had been: a soft heat and the sensation of being unburdened. She said to Becca, “You stay right where you are and supervise what Sharla’s intending to do to me. I think I need you here for courage. Okay with you, Sharla?”
“No problem,” Sharla said. “She’s next anyway, and don’t you protest, Miss Becca, ’cause I see you winding up to do so. You’re getting too shaggy, and there’s no way I intend to let a haircut by Sharla Mann end up looking like a dog groomer did it.”
Sharla set her hands on Diana’s shoulders and positioned the chair to its best height. When she did this, however, things altered in the mudroom. Becca felt a slight jolt from Diana’s hand, which was still on her arm, and her vision altered to gray and to black and for an instant she thought she was fainting.
Before she could exclaim in some way, though, a picture distinctly flashed into her mind. It was clear like a photograph, and then it altered to become like a film. But it was jerky, the way a film is when the moviemaker wants the finished product to seem like something seen through a person’s eyes.
Flowered curtains covering a window through which daylight showed. A couch with sagging cushions. A kitchen in which a chair bore a tall stack of blankets and a scarf tossed atop them. And then, just like someone’s family videos, the jerky image of a toddler unsteady on its feet but walking forward.
Becca took a breath that rasped loudly. Diana removed her hand from Becca’s arm, saying, “You all right, my dear?” and at her words Becca’s vision altered again and she was back in the mudroom. Diana was watching her closely, and Sharla was fingering Diana’s hair the way a stylist does just before using the scissors. Around them all, the mudroom was the mudroom, but Diana’s face told Becca that Diana knew.
Somehow she’d taken another step. She didn’t understand the journey, and she had no clue about the destination. But she was growing closer to it, whatever it was and whyever it existed.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Get the gear yet? comprised the note that Becca passed to Jenn during Western Civ class the next day. Jenn made a face that indicated she still hadn’t done so, and Becca figured the mysterious girl at Possession Point might be why. So her next note to Jenn was What’s with this Cilla chick? I saw it in the paper, to which Jenn mouthed Tell you later.
Later happened after school, since immediately at the end of Western Civ, Jenn got accosted by Squat Cooper who wanted to know “Look, d’you want my help or not ’cause if you do, you got to do your part,” to which Jenn said, “Hey. Chill, dude. It’s not like I’m not trying.” And later only happened at all because Becca followed Jenn onto the school bus.
She plopped down on the seat next to Jenn and said, “Well?”
Jenn said, “Geez, you’re the persistent one, aren’t you?” But then she told the story of the girl she’d found hiding beneath Annie’s trailer: how they’d taken her to the clinic, how they’d tried to get her inside the McDaniels house, how she’d acted like someone being dragged to the guillotine and only settled down when they deposited her in Annie’s trailer. She’d been really sick and she’d stayed really sick and the only good thing about the entire enterprise of having her on the property was that Annie hadn’t been able to get away long enough to try to trap Nera.
Bet ol’ Chad is hurting for her what a joke came with this story, and along with the tale of Annie being trapped on the property, Becca figured out that the longing looks Chad had been casting on Annie Taylor’s body had led to something. But before she could ask Jenn about this, antibiotics should have helped slipped out among the whispers, and Becca wasn’t surprised when Jenn went on to say that the antibiotics given to the girl didn’t seem to be making a dent in her illness.
“She had this old roller suitcase with her,” Jenn said, “and it looked like it had been dragged from Canada, I swear. There were clothes inside and a bunch of old rotting fruit and some Clif bars and a note. That’s how we knew she could hear but not talk. All she does is make noises.”
“What kind?”
“Like . . . I dunno, Becca. You have to see for yourself. If she’s awake. She might not be ’cause, like I say, she’s sick.”
Noises, Becca thought. She frowned and wondered and looked out the window as the farmland on either side of the road they were on morphed to deep forest where shadows lay thickly on the ground. Not being able to talk didn’t equate to not being able to think, Becca figured. Chances were good that the girl would have whispers.
• • •
THE AFTERNOON WAS gray upon gray. The sky and the water were the color of stainless steel, with a cloud cover high above that spoke of rain and choppy waves below that slapped against the piles of driftwood on the shore.
Annie opened the trailer door at Jenn’s knock. She said, “Thank God. I’ve been in jail all day. I need a freaking break. Your mom’s been gone for hours with the taxi, and your dad’s . . . I have no idea what happened to him. Testing beer probabl
y. Under the table. Passed out. Whatever.”
“Hey,” Jenn said sharply.
“Sorry,” Annie said. “Like I said, I need a break. You good to stay?” She said hi to Becca and ushered them inside. She said, “She’s not any better and I keep telling your mom she needs to go to the hospital. I told your dad, too. But nothing’s happened.” Chad could but . . . not enough time and I need to made a background to this.
The trailer, Becca saw, was cluttered with Annie’s belongings, and it looked as if she’d been trying to work. There were documents on the table, filing folders on the floor, her laptop was running, and papers with diagrams and scribbles on them were scattered on the banquette.
Jenn looked around and said to Annie, “So, where is she? I thought she was sleeping on the couch.”
“In the bedroom. Since she wasn’t getting better, I thought if I put her in the bedroom . . . It’s warmer there, and when she’s out here, she just stares. It’s unnerving. I’ve called Rhonda Mathieson and she’s been here twice but all she says is, ‘These things take time.’ Like I’ve got time to waste?”
She strode to the couch and picked up her jacket, which lay upon it. “So you’re on duty now. I’m out of here for a while,” she told Jenn. “Nice to see you, Becca,” she added.
Becca nodded and offered a wry smile. But the smile was more to cover her astonishment at what she saw. The limp curtains hanging over the window above the couch were the curtains she had seen in her vision. So was the couch. So was the route along which the toddler had walked.
• • •
BECCA THOUGHT THAT Jenn would lead the way to the girl Cilla once Annie left them alone in the trailer. But instead she made a dive for the marine biologist’s laptop. She said, “Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah,” and she began typing frantically on its keyboard. Transmitter picture and those numbers explained what she was doing, but Becca asked her all the same.
“Squat says that the transmitter on Nera’ll have numbers on it and if we c’n get them, we c’n find out more about her. Like maybe where she’s from and why she never shed it or something.”
Becca wasn’t sure how this got them anywhere—like close to Eddie Beddoe’s boat—so she went in the direction of the bedroom, where she could see the form of someone lying beneath the covers, her face toward the wall. Becca murmured, “Hey. Hi. You awake, Cilla?” and the figure turned. She fixed great dark eyes on Becca’s face. She gave a start of fear. Becca said, “S’okay. I’m a friend of Jenn’s,” which didn’t seem to reassure the girl, so she added, “She lives in the big gray house? Her family’s helping take care of you?”
The girl whined, a long low sound akin to a dog waiting to be fed. She scrabbled her fingers on the pillowcase beneath her head. She showed her teeth briefly. She backed away.
Becca listened hard. In the otherwise silent room, she heard the sound of Jenn’s typing on the laptop’s keyboard and she heard Cilla’s breathing, which was strained and uneven. But that was all. Not a single whisper was coming from the girl. She was wide awake, but there was nothing recognizable escaping from her head.
She should have been dead for this to be the case, Becca thought. Everyone on the planet had whispers. Unless . . . There was one person on Whidbey Island who had absolute control over her own whispers.
They needed Diana Kinsale to look at Cilla. If anyone could read her, it would be Diana.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Jenn didn’t get why Becca wanted Diana Kinsale to visit Cilla. But on the other hand, she didn’t much care about it. She’d gotten what she needed from the pictures stored on Annie’s laptop, and once she had them she was willing to agree to just about anything so that she could get back across the property to her own house where there was a phone. She had to call Squat with the information. She’d found a perfect shot of the transmitter and she’d scored the numbers on it. But she’d also found among the papers scattered on the banquette notes in Annie’s writing telling her that the marine biologist was one step ahead of them. The transmitter’s numbers were there. So was a phone number. So was Monterey Bay with two exclamation points. Obviously, they had to find out what it all meant.
So when Becca mentioned Diana Kinsale and could they come back so Diana could try to talk to Cilla, Jenn said, “Whatever. S’okay with me. We finished here or what?” and she tried not to shove Becca out of the trailer ahead of her. She did point out that Becca was one hell of a long way from town and how did she intend to get home now that she’d come all the distance to Possession Point. Becca’s answer was, “C’n I use your phone?” which was fine by Jenn, since that got them out of the trailer and one step closer to where she herself wanted to be. She would have vastly preferred Becca never to see the inside of her house, but she didn’t see any option but to allow her the use of their phone.
Becca used it to call Seth Darrow. She explained where she was. She struck a deal. If she started walking, would he be willing . . . ? Thanks, Seth. I owe you. He said something. Becca laughed.
Jenn felt a little stab at all this. Jealousy? she asked herself. Of what? No way.
Becca was heading out to start hiking up Possession Point Road when Jenn’s dad tromped up onto the porch. His “Hey, hey, hey,” at the sight of Becca told Jenn he was tipsy from home brew testing. But he wasn’t actually drunk, and what Jenn thought was maybe he’d be tagged by Becca as just the oddball friendly type. He sure as hell looked the part. His hair was Ben Franklin to the max today, and for some reason he’d decided on running shorts for his garb. His legs stuck out like a rooster’s from them, his feet and legs encased in sandals and striped knee socks.
She introduced them. Before she paused to consider what it meant, she said, “This is my friend Becca King. From school and from diving,” and then she felt flustered that she’d used the word friend without even thinking.
Becca shot her a smile. For his part, Bruce was thoroughly delighted. Jenn could see this one all over his face. Had her mom been home, her parents probably would have built an altar and sacrificed something in thanksgiving. Up to this point, her friends had been boys, her acquaintances had been her fellow soccer players, and that was it. That she would actually have a girlfriend, that she would—as far as her dad knew—bring this friend home from school to hang out, that this could possibly mean their kid was somewhat of a normal teenager after all . . . It was major hallelujah time, Jenn thought with resignation.
Bruce said expansively, “Welcome, welcome, welcome. Be it ever so humble—and it sure as heck is, eh?—you’re welcome to our palatial abode. What brings you here?” And to Jenn, “I hope you’ve offered worthy refreshments.”
Jenn didn’t say that they had worthy refreshments exactly like they had gold bars under the house. Becca hurriedly said, “Oh, I was just leaving. I just came over to . . .” and she looked at Jenn.
“She wanted to see Cilla,” Jenn said.
“There was a story in the paper,” Becca explained.
Bruce looked from Becca to Jenn to Becca again. He seemed thoroughly unconvinced by this tale. “Bit of a curiosity, eh?”
“When the paper said she could hear but she couldn’t talk,” Becca offered.
“Thought you might be able to I.D. her?”
“You never know,” Becca agreed.
And then as far as Jenn was concerned, Becca asked the strangest question of her dad. She said, “Did a little kid ever live over there, Mr. McDaniels?”
“Over where?”
“Inside that trailer.”
“Not hardly,” Bruce said. He shot Jenn a look and then went back to Becca. “Why d’you ask?”
Becca said, “Just wondering, is all. I guess I thought maybe Cilla showed up ’cause she used to have a friend here or something.”
“That wouldn’t be the case,” Bruce said. “No how and no way.” And to Jenn, “Did your mom leave a note about starting dinner?”
r /> Jenn could tell her dad was very deliberately dismissing the subject and she could see from Becca’s expression that she was thinking the very same thing. But Becca said nothing else except, “I better get going,” and left Jenn alone with her father.
Bruce didn’t waste time after Becca left. He said to Jenn, “Should I or should I not be thinking something’s going on?”
“Going on where?” Jenn asked him innocently.
“I b’lieve you know what I’m talking about.”
Jenn went to the kitchen to inspect the dinner possibilities. There were two lone pork chops in the refrigerator. Five potatoes, a bunch of limp carrots, and four onions sat on the counter. A pork stew? she thought. Light on the pork and extremely heavy on the stew? Looked like it to her. She got out a pot.
“Jenn,” her dad said, “you want to answer me?”
“You know what I know,” she told him.
He said, “Don’t be smart.”
“I’m not being smart. All’s I know is she wanted to see Cilla so she came with me on the bus. Annie took off and left us with her and we stayed for a while and now she’s asleep and that’s all there is to know. Becca works afternoons sometimes for Ivar Thorndyke, though. An’ he lives with Sharla and Sharla lived in the trailer and maybe Sharla said something about a kid who used to live there before her or maybe a kid who used to live in Possession Shores and maybe . . . I dunno.”
She rustled around for the potato peeler. She found the vegetable brush in a drawer. She went for peeling the potatoes first. She waited for her dad to depart.
He didn’t. He said, “No one lived there before Eddie and Sharla, okay? And that place did a job on them. Ended up with Eddie thinking he was a charter fisherman and Sharla wandering the beach, crooning to a stuffed seal, saying it was her baby, and getting herself put away in the loony bin. That’s what that trailer does to people when they spend too much time in it. Annie Taylor’d be wise to get herself away.”