The Edge of the Shadows

  “He won’t check my room. He’ll think I’m still in bed.”

  “And when you get home?”

  Becca knew what Diana was asking, so she said, “I’ll tell him what happened. He’ll find out anyway because of the fire and the fishing shack and all that.”

  Diana nodded slowly. “Well, the dogs will be happy to see you,” she said.

  • • •

  ALTHOUGH BECCA HAD been expecting some sort of lecture from Mrs. Kinsale, she didn’t get one. What stood in place of it, though, was a trip into the powder room beneath the stairs in Diana’s house. There, Diana stood behind her and told her to have a look in the mirror. She said, “Tell me what you see,” and she placed her hands on Becca’s shoulders.

  What Becca saw was her face robbed of color except where her copious mascara and eyeliner had created deep pits beneath her eyes. Her hair was a matted and tangled mess, her glasses were smudged, and dried vomit graced the front of her T-shirt. She got the point. “Yuck,” she said.

  “I find that sometimes simple vanity is the cure.” Diana indicated the mirror. “This is Becca King drunk.”

  That said, Diana showed her to the guest room upstairs. Despite how she felt about everything that had happened that night, Becca still felt a thrill at being admitted to this part of the house. She vowed to herself that she would be the perfect guest. She would leave the bedroom in pristine condition and she would clean the bathroom after she used it.

  Using it was what Diana suggested: a shower, a hair wash, and then a good night’s sleep. They would talk more in the morning. She left Becca in the hallway and went to her own room at the back of the house. The door clicked softly closed behind her.

  • • •

  THE MORNING BROUGHT a raging headache to Becca, along with a roiling stomach. She woke with the golden light of autumn coming in the window, and had she not felt so wretched, she would have enjoyed being where she was. Like the rest of Diana’s house, the guest room was colorful and comfortable, with a bed that was like being cradled in security. There was a window seat with pillows on it, and there was an armchair in a corner of the room with a throw that picked up the colors of the walls. It was all exactly as Becca had imagined it might be, and she wanted to get up and go to the window seat and look out at the day . . . only she was totally sick to her stomach.

  She heard noise from downstairs: soft music and movement in the kitchen. She went to the bedroom door and eased it open. The fragrance of coffee and bacon would have been wonderful had it not made her wish to throw up.

  She did what she could to make herself look like her normal self. She had no makeup with her, so she rooted around the bathroom vanity, but there was nothing to use. She was left with doing something with her hair and her glasses and cleaning up her T-shirt as best she could.

  As she descended the stairs, the breakfast smells got stronger and her stomach got queasier. Bright light was pouring in through the kitchen windows and she stopped at the doorway and squinted. She said, “Thanks for letting me stay, Mrs. Kinsale,” and Diana turned from the stove where she was frying bacon.

  Becca was surprised at the sight of her friend. Diana’s face was terribly swollen and beneath her eyes were great big puffs of flesh, as if air had been injected beneath them. It came to her that she’d never seen Diana Kinsale upon rising, and Diana put her hand to her face, laughed awkwardly, and said, “We’re a pair, aren’t we? I must look the same way you feel. It goes away eventually.”

  It was a moment when Becca longed for a whisper from Diana because her voice, which was usually so calm, seemed somewhat anxious. Then Diana added, “It’s the one thing I’m vain about. This”—with a gesture at her face—“every morning. Sit, my dear. I expect you don’t want breakfast yet, but coffee may help.”

  Becca made her way to the table, a nook with benches not unlike what you’d find in an old-fashioned diner. There were two places set, and Diana had been at one of them already, for a half-drunk cup of coffee stood there, along with a cotton napkin that lay unfolded next to a plate. Becca hesitated before sliding onto the bench. It wasn’t an uneasy stomach that stopped her, though. It was the sight of that incriminating edition of the South Whidbey Record inside of which was her old picture. The island newspaper lay next to her own plate, neatly folded. It was exactly like an unspoken accusation.

  Becca said nothing. Neither did Diana. Instead, the older woman brought Becca a cup of coffee and a piece of unbuttered toast, and she said, “Start with this. You don’t feel like eating, but that’s part of the cure. The jam’s homemade and a thin coating of it might help things go down. We’ll work our way from there.”

  Becca looked bleakly at the toast. The thought of putting it into her mouth made her want to bolt from the kitchen, but she broke off a piece and used the jam as directed. Because of the threatening presence of that newspaper, anything less than cooperation at this point seemed like something that would put her at risk.

  Diana joined her with a plate of bacon and a bowl of soft-boiled eggs. There were egg cups on the table, but Becca didn’t know how you were supposed to use them. Even if she had known, a yolk that was runny and yellow and oozy . . . She knew she couldn’t manage to get that down.

  Diana didn’t seem bothered by this. She ate quietly. Becca nibbled her toast. Between them was the great unspoken of the newspaper with Laurel’s picture on the front and Becca’s own inside. It was an invitation to speak, and Becca knew this. It was also an invitation to trust completely.

  What made the situation worse for Becca was that this moment did not comprise the first time Mrs. Kinsale had extended a hand to her, asking her to take it and to believe that she would not be betrayed. But so far in the year that she’d known this aging and yet ageless woman, Becca had only been able to trust her so far. Risking more than that meant risking the return of Jeff Corrie to her life.

  Diana was the one who finally broke the silence, but she didn’t do it until she was finished eating and until the quiet between them had gone on long enough to underscore how unnatural it was. Then she said something that Becca did not expect her to say, waiting as she was for the moment that Diana asked her about the girl whose picture was inside the paper.

  Instead of doing that, she said quietly, “You were sent to this island, Becca. Have you realized that yet?” For a moment she looked away, toward the window where the sky was an ever- brightening blue. She looked back at Becca and went on. “I ask because things are quickening.”

  Becca frowned. “I don’t get—”

  “You’ll have to investigate the word. Quickening. And how it applies.” She brought the newspaper to her side of the table. She unfolded it and placed her fingers on Laurel’s picture. She said, “I’ve found in my life that nothing really happens by chance. Not this, not anything. Not last night and not tomorrow. And certainly not your presence on Whidbey. Have you never wondered why I picked you up that first night when I saw you with your bike on the side of Bob Galbreath Road?”

  Becca’s lips felt dry and she picked up her coffee and took a sip. She said, “I thought it was ’cause that’s just who you are.”

  “Perhaps there’s some truth in that. But I’d taken the dogs over town, which I never do. And they’d given me some trouble when I tried to get them back into the truck, which they never do. And so my trip was delayed far longer than it should have been. Which put me on the road far later than I would have been. And truth to tell, Becca, I don’t stop for strangers and since it was dark when I came upon you, I had no idea if you were young or old or male or female or harmless or frightening or intent upon murdering me where I stood.”

  Becca smiled. “You knew I wouldn’t—”

  “That’s not the point. The point is chance and the fact that it doesn’t exist at the deepest level of things. I’ve been waiting for you to see that. But time is getting short and although my heart tells me you will u
nderstand at some point, my mind is beginning to argue with my heart. So I’ve spoken, and I hope you’re able to hear me.”

  For you are the one. Five simple words and they came to her with a diamond’s perfection. They comprised all that Diana was willing to let Becca hear of her thoughts in that moment. But the fact of what had just occurred so blatantly prompted Becca to take a leap of faith.

  “The one for what?” she asked Diana Kinsale.

  Diana extended her hand across the table. “Thank you for that,” she said.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Hayley wasn’t put on restriction after the Maxwelton party. There wasn’t much point since she hardly had anything going on from which she could actually be restricted. So the only restriction turned out to be what they were going to tell her father. Hayley wasn’t surprised when nothing turned out to be the answer to that.

  Her mom had made this clear the moment Hayley had climbed into the truck in front of the small brown church. Then she’d cried all the way back to Smugglers Cove Farm and Flowers, and all Hayley had been able to say to her was “I’m sorry. I didn’t know, Mom.”

  Then they rode in a silence broken only by Julie Cartwright’s occasional stifled sob. By the time they arrived home, Hayley could not have felt more wretched.

  Brooke met them in the kitchen. All she said was, “Nice going, Hayley,” to which her mother said, “Where’s your father? If you’ve wakened him, Brooke, I swear—”

  “Hey,” Brooke broke in angrily. “He’s still in bed and lucky for you he didn’t hear the phone ring and get the news about his precious Hayley.” She went to the refrigerator and jerked its door open.

  Hayley glanced at her mother and saw that Julie had a stiffness to her that usually suggested she was trying to get herself under control. Julie said, “I was harsh with you, Brooke. I’m on edge. I’m sorry. Go to bed.”

  “I want some milk. My stomach hurts and—”

  “You heard me. Go to bed.”

  “And you heard me. I want some milk.” Brooke grabbed a carton, and she took a large glass from a cupboard. She poured milk to the top, taking all that was left.

  “You put that back right now and go upstairs,” her mother said.

  “And you go suck an egg.”

  “Brooke,” Hayley said.

  “And you shut up,” Brooke snapped, and then said to her mother, “All’s I’m doing is having some milk and you’re acting like this is some kind of crime. What about Hayley? What’s she got to do that you’ll finally—”

  “Julie? What’s going on?”

  It was Hayley’s father. All of them became statues.

  “Julie? Julie! I need to pee.”

  “This is so stupid, you’re stupid, he’s stupid,” Brooke shot at her mother. “He needs to sleep down here now. He can’t climb the stairs and he’s going to fall and wow I bet that’s what you’re waiting for. ’Cause if he falls and breaks his neck—”

  Julie advanced on Brooke. She grabbed the glass of milk and threw it into the sink. The glass shattered and the milk shot upward. Brooke’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Julie!” their dad cried.

  “You go to bed this instant,” Julie hissed at Brooke. To Hayley she said, “You stay here because I’m not finished with you.”

  Brooke took off but she was sobbing as she pounded up the stairs. A door slammed and Cassidy cried out, startled from sleep. And Hayley’s dad continued to call for his wife.

  Julie left the kitchen with a fierce look at Hayley. Hayley went to the sink and dismally began to clean up the broken glass and the milk. Above, she heard her mother’s voice trying to be comforting as she helped her husband to the bathroom.

  Hayley felt tears claw at her throat. She knew that she’d caused trouble for her family, but she hadn’t intended to do so. On the other hand, she also knew that if she hadn’t intended to cause trouble, she shouldn’t have gone to the party in the first place.

  She’d talked to Isis for just a few seconds before the other girl and her brother were strong-armed out of the church by their furious grandmother. Isis had been in a state of panic. She’d grabbed Hayley by the arm and said, “I had no clue so many people would show up. I didn’t tell anyone except the kids we invited, and how many were there? Like ten or something? But Aidan knew, and I bet he told because that would be just like him. God, I’m so sorry because now I bet your mom won’t even let us be friends. Only . . . please don’t tell her it was my idea. We can say we heard about it at school. God, I need a hit of nicotine . . .” And she’d started fumbling in her purse for her electronic cigarette but before she could manage to root it out, Nancy Howard was there and she barked, “Get yourself out to the truck.”

  Now, Hayley sat at the table in the kitchen and waited for the consequences coming her way. But when they arrived, they weren’t what she was expecting.

  Some ten minutes after she’d gone up to help Hayley’s dad, Julie Cartwright was back downstairs. She strode over to the phone and just when Hayley thought she intended to make a call despite the hour, instead she took from beneath the slim Whidbey phone directory a couple of sheets of notebook paper with her own handwriting covering them.

  These she thrust at Hayley. “We’re not talking any further about this thing at Maxwelton. You’re heading in the wrong direction, and that stops now. This is the essay that goes with your college applications.” She nodded at the papers. “Put it into your own words. Get it typed up and printed or whatever the format is supposed to be. You have an appointment with Ms. Primavera at the high school on Monday and I’ll be there. Are we clear on this?”

  They were, Hayley told her.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Julie Cartwright was as good as her word. At the appointed hour for their meeting with Tatiana Primavera, she came through the doors to the high school’s administration offices. The determined expression on her face told Hayley that they were going to get to the bottom of why, in her senior year, she’d apparently developed a new personality that prominently featured lack of cooperation.

  Hayley was waiting for her, sitting on a decrepit chair of phony leather splitting at the seams. She rose. Wordlessly, she and her mom gravitated to the reception desk, where the student aide in charge made the call to Ms. Primavera. There was virtually no wait for the counselor. Within seconds, Tatiana Primavera teetered toward them on the faux Jimmy Choo heels she favored for her footwear at school.

  She took them back to her office, where the meeting began with the ceremonious handing over of Hayley’s senior essay. Tatiana was thrilled to receive this. She leaned back in her chair, said, “Excellent,” as she began to read it. She frowned, however, at the midway point. She glanced up at Hayley, then at her mom, before reading to the end and pursing her lips thoughtfully.

  “Well,” she said, “as a start it’s touching some of the bases. But it doesn’t actually reflect . . .” She paused as if considering a way to put things.

  Hayley waited. Her mom sat in silence. She held her handbag on her lap with her hands folded over the top of it and her feet planted squarely on the floor. Hayley could see that Tatiana Primavera’s birdlike glances between them indicated that she was picking up on their tension.

  “Let me put it this way,” Tatiana finally said. “Considering the classes you’ve taken and the grades you have, the essay actually looks a bit . . . Did you write this yourself, Hayley?”

  Hayley said nothing, but she felt her mom’s eyeballs boring holes into her head. Julie Cartwright said, “Can I . . . ?” and extended her hand. Hayley waited for her to read the essay and to see that all she had done was copy her mother’s own work word for word. When she read, Julie Cartwright said, “Is this supposed to tell me . . .” and then she switched gears. “She thinks she’s not going to college,” she said to Tatiana Primavera. She tossed the essay on the counselor’s desk.

  Tati
ana Primavera frowned at Hayley. “Is there a reason you don’t want to go to college?”

  Hayley waited for what she knew wasn’t going to come in answer: her mother telling the counselor that the family needed Hayley at home to help run the farm. She had overheard her mom on the phone talking to a woman on the island who had a housecleaning business. “What about three days a week?” Julie Cartwright had asked, and Hayley knew darn well that she wasn’t asking to have someone come over to clean their place.

  “Hayley?” the counselor probed.

  “I’ll go to the Skagit Valley classes offered on the island. And I’ll get a job.”

  “Jobs are scarce on Whidbey. And even if they weren’t—”

  “I c’n clean houses,” Hayley said. She tossed a meaningful look at her mother.

  Tatiana Primavera cast another glance between them. She said carefully, “Do we have a mother-daughter conflict going on here? It might help our discussion to get whatever issues there are between you out in the open.”

  “There isn’t an issue,” Julie Cartwright said.

  Oh right, Hayley thought. There was just no issue her mom would talk about.

  Tatiana nodded doubtfully and went on once again to talk about Hayley’s grades and the classes she’d taken. She’d never received less than an A in anything, and her classes were tough. She had honors classes wherever possible; she was in her fourth year of foreign language; she was taking AP statistics. She was poised for the Ivy League. Or if she didn’t want to travel far from home, there were places like University of Washington, Evergreen, Seattle U, University of Puget Sound . . . But, really, with her grades, she needed to consider Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford.

  “I don’t want to—”

  “D’you have catalogues for those places?” Julie Cartwright cut in. “We’ve looked through Brown’s and Reed’s, but if there are others . . . ? And what else should she be doing?”