“Gone to the tree house to invite Parker for dinner.” She saw his expression in reaction to this news and added, “There’s a bunch,” in reference to the food. “He’s gonna want you to stay too.”
Seth wondered how he was going to face Parker now that he had ratted him out to the sheriff. He didn’t have much time to prepare, though. Within thirty seconds of Becca’s invitation to stay for dinner, the tramping of more than two feet on the porch and the sound of voices as the front door opened told him Parker had accepted his grandfather’s invitation.
Ralph came into the kitchen first, putting his hand on the back of Seth’s neck and saying, “What say, favorite male grandson? I hope Miss Becca has invited you for dinner because she’s cooked for an army this evening.”
“Still working on getting the proportions right,” Becca said to Seth. She nodded a hi to Parker and thanked him for volunteering to help consume her experiment with beef bourguignon.
“Fancy French name for stew,” Ralph told Seth.
“Is not!” Becca protested. “It’s made with wine.”
“The French,” Ralph told her, “make everything with wine. They take a dish from the Ozarks, pour wine all over it, and give it a fancy name. You check that online where every detail of every subject known to man is apparently available.”
“Not that one, I bet,” Becca said. “You’re making it up.”
“One of the privileges of age,” he told her. “Beers for all? Saving yourself, Miss Becca.”
“I’m done with beer anyway,” she told him.
“I like a woman who learns her lessons fast,” Ralph said.
So Becca must have told him about the party, Seth thought. He sort of wished she hadn’t because he knew his grandfather would be disappointed that he had been there. But Ralph said nothing about Maxwelton Beach, the fire, or the death in the shack. Seth didn’t bring it up, for fear his face would betray that he’d given the sheriff the word about Parker.
Seth caught Becca looking at him, then at Parker. She quirked her mouth in that way she had, which told him she was curious about what was going on.
Parker made himself useful by setting the table as Ralph dropped into a chair next to a pile of newspapers in their recycling basket. He popped open his beer and directed his gaze from one young person to the next. He said, “Ah, youth,” and took a gulp of beer. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” he asked Seth.
The last thing Seth could tell him was the reason he’d come: to talk things over. So he said, “Checking up on you. Dad wants to know did you have your cholesterol checked again like you were supposed to?”
“Oh damn it all.” Ralph looked peeved. “You tell your father to keep his mind on his glass blowing.”
“What about the diet?” Seth asked. “Becca keeping it low fat as much as possible?”
“God almighty, Seth . . .”
“I’m watching him,” Becca said over her shoulder. “Leastwise, when I’m here, I am. When I’m at school . . . I don’t know. Could be he’s having Whidbey vanilla and whipped cream for lunch, with chips and guacamole for dessert.”
“There’re worse ways to die,” Ralph noted.
“And there’s staying alive,” Seth told him.
“On a diet of celery, raw potatoes, and carrots? I’d rather kick off now.” Ralph harrumphed and took up one of the newspapers from the pile, his way of saying the subject was finished. Unfortunately, his choice was the paper with the Laurel Armstrong picture on the front of it, and as Seth saw this picture, so did Parker.
“Putting a lot of effort into finding her,” Parker noted when Ralph unfolded the paper, opened it, and shook it meaningfully in front of his own face. “I’ve seen flyers with that same picture on them all over town.”
Ralph peered over the top of the paper and then turned it to see the picture. “Laurel Armstrong,” he said as he read the name.
Seth glanced warily at Becca. At the stove, her back was to them, but Seth could tell by her stiffened posture that she was listening.
Parker repeated the name and a light went on in his face. “Hey, Becca,” he said, “isn’t that your cousin up in Nelson?”
THIRTY-TWO
Becca hadn’t been wearing the ear bud for the AUD box, and she was grateful for that. Normally, she didn’t wear it when she was with Ralph Darrow anyway since his whispers and his words were identical. Now, in the kitchen, she’d been picking up mostly on whispers that seemed to be coming from Seth. They spoke of fire and Coupeville and the sheriff’s department and even throughout the light talk about Ralph’s diet, those thoughts had been there, popping up like ground squirrels checking the air for intruders. They’d kept popping up until Parker mentioned Laurel Armstrong’s name, and that put an end to everything other than here comes major trouble, which she herself was thinking right along with Seth.
Ralph was studying the picture of Becca’s mom. He was also reading the article. He was one second away from making the jump to page five, where the fifth-grade picture of Hannah Armstrong would smile up at him. Someone had to stop him from doing that, and blessed Seth did so.
He said, “Hey, lemme see that, Grand,” and he plucked the paper from his grandfather’s hands. “Hmmm.” He pretended to study the picture. “You sure this is the same lady that’s on those flyers? I seen one at South Whidbey Commons. What d’you think, Beck? This look like your cousin? Only, what’d she be doing on Whidbey Island?”
“I never met her,” Becca said, turning her back to them and stirring energetically at the French beef stew. She had cornbread in the oven as well. She opened the door and the fragrance was heady.
Behind her, Parker said, “But that was her name, right? And if you never met her, this could be her, huh? How amazing is that? You ask me about her and here she is.”
“Check it out, Beck,” Seth suggested.
Come on take it Becca told her that Seth had something in mind, so she cooperated although she didn’t wish to expose her lying face to Ralph Darrow. But she swung away from the stove and went to Seth. She pretended to study the picture and then said, “C’n I hold on to this?” to all of them in general.
Ralph was examining her in a way she didn’t much like. Becca said, “The name’s the same. I just wish I knew . . . Gosh, it would be nice to know what she looks like ’cause I could tell the sheriff this Laurel Armstrong he’s looking for lives in Nelson.”
“Could be you ought to do that anyway,” Ralph noted. Because you surely know something young lady constituted one of the few times his whispers didn’t match his words.
“Yeah,” Becca said, and she repeated her request with, “C’n I keep this, Mr. Darrow?”
He nodded and gestured to the pile of South Whidbey Records that lay on the chair seat. “Plenty more where that came from.”
They were through for the moment. But the reprieve didn’t last.
• • •
BOTH PARKER AND Seth left soon after the dishes. Becca went to her room, homework in mind. She was ten minutes into it when a knock on her door told her that Ralph Darrow wanted to speak to her. She said, “It’s open, Mr. Darrow,” and the door swung inward as she turned from her work. She put on her phony glasses. She wasn’t using the ear bud, and she didn’t intend to use it now, not with the grave expression on Ralph Darrow’s face.
He stood in the doorway in his striped pajamas, his robe, and his slippers, with his long gray hair unbound from its usual rubber band. Becca was glad she hadn’t yet washed her face of its hideous amount of Goth eye makeup. She was even more glad of this when get to the bottom of this preceded Ralph Darrow into the room.
His words confirmed what Becca’s fears were: He’d not for a moment forgotten what Parker Natalia had said about Laurel Armstrong. “So, Miss Becca,” Ralph began as he lowered himself to the edge of her bed, the only place to sit aside from the desk
chair that Becca herself was occupying. “There anything you want to tell me about this cousin of yours up in Nelson, B.C.?”
He was watching her in that way he had of watching Seth. He’d be making a serious evaluation. She settled on saying, “There’s not much to tell, Mr. Darrow.”
“How’s she related to you?”
“Like I said. She’s my cousin.”
“Through your mom or your dad?”
This was probably a trap, but Becca had no choice. She didn’t know who her father was, and sometimes she wondered if Laurel herself knew, given the many lovers she’d had. So she couldn’t risk telling Ralph this supposed cousin was from her father’s side of the family lest he then ask questions about her father. She said, “My mom’s side,” and she hurried on with, “Actually, I think she’s my mom’s first cousin, which makes her . . . my second cousin or something? Truth is, I only actually think her name’s Laurel Armstrong. I guess it could be Laura Armstrong. I mean, my mom mentioned her a few times is all. And when Parker told us he was from Nelson . . . the name just popped into my head.”
Ralph nodded thoughtfully but his whisper of road apples didn’t suggest he believed what she’d said. She remembered his long ago words about Darrows walking on the right side of the law, and she knew that one of his primary worries in having her on his property had to do with his deciding to believe her initial story. And yet despite her lies to virtually everyone else, the story she’d told to Ralph Darrow had been the complete truth: She was waiting for her mother’s return to Whidbey to fetch her; she’d been intended to stay with a woman called Carol Quinn who had died unexpectedly the night of Becca’s arrival; she was not a runaway. The only truths she’d left out were her real name and the name of her mother. And now that name hung between the two of them and if Becca admitted that she’d lied to Ralph Darrow in this one small matter, she had a very good idea what he would do.
She couldn’t risk telling him. She also couldn’t risk his opening the South Whidbey Record that even in this moment lay beneath her geometry book. She couldn’t point to the picture of Hannah Armstrong and say, “Okay. This is me. And the guy looking for us is Jeff Corrie,” because that would lead to why Jeff Corrie was looking and that would lead to what Hannah Armstrong could do, which was hear people’s thoughts, which even in this moment she could hear from Ralph Darrow as clear as anything, what’s the truth about this child’s mother? It was the single question Becca herself wanted answered.
Then he asked another, one that Becca and her mom hadn’t once considered because they’d assumed she’d be carefully ensconced in Carol Quinn’s house, where more subterfuge than simply having an identity for Becca would not be necessary. “What’s your mom’s name, then?” Ralph Darrow asked her.
Becca refused to give in to the panic that swept toward her. She glanced away, past the old man to the shelf on which sat her few books. The name she came up with was Marilla but she knew better than to go for something so strange, so she said, “Rachel,” because of Anne of Green Gables from which book the name Marilla itself had come. So had Rachel. Rachel Lynde, Marilla Cuthburt’s friend and neighbor. A nosy woman with decided opinions who had, at the end of the day, a very good heart. Just like Ralph. She hoped.
“Rachel King,” Ralph said.
“Rachel King,” she acknowledged.
“Who left you here to stay with Carol Quinn?”
“They went to school together.”
“Who was also married,” Ralph pointed out.
“Huh?”
“Carol Quinn was married. Makes me wonder why you didn’t stay on with her husband, Miss Becca, once you discovered Carol Quinn had passed.”
Because Carol’s husband hadn’t known she was coming. Because Carol Quinn herself had been sworn to secrecy about Becca’s identity. Because the story was going to be that Carol needed help around the house and here was this girl on the island who needed a place to stay and it was all supposed to work so well and so easily . . . except Carol had died of a heart attack and when Becca arrived and told Carol’s husband her name, the man hadn’t a clue who she was or why she was there.
She said, “It sort of seemed . . . I mean, it was, like, an intrusion, Mr. Darrow. I went to the house and there was the sheriff and an ambulance and it didn’t seem right. So I ended up at the Cliff Motel, more or less, till I came here to stay with you.”
Runaway and trying to keep out of sight except the fact that she’s going to school . . .
Becca seized on this. “You don’t have to worry. I know it all sounds like a total made up story, but you got to figure that I wouldn’t exactly be going to school if I’d run away from home. First, I wouldn’t have the stuff I would need to get myself enrolled. The paperwork? You know? And second”—she gestured to her homework—“I probably wouldn’t be trying to figure out geometry. And anyway, to be totally honest . . .” She hesitated over this last detail, reluctant to bad-mouth the place that had given her a welcome and shelter.
“Yes?” he prompted. “My being a fellow who likes total honesty, Miss Becca, do go on.”
“Well, d’you think I’d’ve chosen Whidbey Island to run away to? I mean, wouldn’t a city be better? Seattle? Portland? It’s easy, don’t you think, to hide out in a city. It sure as heck isn’t easy to hide out here.”
Truth to that said he was inclined to believe her. So did the fact that he slapped his hands on his knees and stood. He nodded thoughtfully and then looked around him. He seemed to settle on the shelf where she kept her books. He said, “Okay then, Miss Becca,” and he walked to the shelf and studied it. She thought he was looking at Seeing Beyond Sight, but to her dismay he picked up her childhood copy of Anne of Green Gables instead, the one thing she’d brought with her from her other life.
“Now this is a book I haven’t seen in years,” he said as Becca prayed fervently that he wouldn’t open it. “It was Brenda’s favorite. Seth’s aunt Brenda, my girl. It was also a book Seth’s sister loved. All of those Anne of books in the series.”
He started to open it, but that couldn’t happen since To my sweet Hannah was written in Becca’s grandmother’s hand right in plain sight. So Becca said the first thing that came into her mind, “I got it at Good Cheer,” which was the thrift shop in Langley. “I was gonna send it to my pen pal for her birthday. I don’t think it matters that it’s used, do you?”
Ralph turned the book over in his hands and looked up from it. “Didn’t know you had a pen pal, Miss Becca.”
“Just started last year.”
“Now, that’s a nice thing. Where’s she writing from?”
Becca said the only place she could think of quickly, “Africa,” and then she embellished. “Uganda. Derric set it up ’cause she’s from the same orphanage as him. We been writing back and forth only . . .” All at once, Becca saw that Ralph Darrow might prove helpful to the search for Rejoice. She said, “Here’s what’s sort of strange, Mr. Darrow. She was real good about writing back soon as she got my letters, but then she stopped.”
“Got adopted, maybe.”
“That’s what I thought at first, but then I started to wonder because it always seems like something bad’s happening to people in Africa, you know? So I looked up the orphanage online and it’s closed down. I don’t know where she is or how to find her.”
Ralph replaced the book on the shelf. He touched the top of Seeing Beyond Sight, but he didn’t bring it down. Instead, he said, “Might ask the minister at Derric’s church about that one. He’s the fellow who got folks interested in that orphanage in the first place. Derric can tell you the fellow’s name, can’t he?”
“Oh sure. He can. That’s a good idea.”
It was, in fact, a terrible idea. Bringing Derric into her search for Rejoice when he couldn’t even bear to think about his sister was not the way to go. But the minister of Derric’s church was a possibility.
She said, “Yeah. I’ll talk to him. Do you think—” But then her words drifted because Ralph Darrow was staring at her. His eyes had gone blank and so had his face.
Becca realized that he wasn’t studying her but rather looking just above her head. She swung to see if there was someone at the window beneath which her desk sat, but there was no one. It came to her that Ralph was staring at nothing, and nothing at all came from him in the form of whispers.
She said, “Mr. Darrow?” He did not respond. Louder then, “Mr. Darrow? You okay?”
For a moment still he did not answer. Then he blinked and seemed to rouse himself. He said, “Well, goodnight then, Miss Becca. Hope you get through that . . .” He frowned. “It’s U.S. History you’re working on, isn’t that what you said?”
She swallowed. The book was open. The geometry problems were in plain sight. “Yeah,” she said. “U.S. History.”
“Don’t stay up late, then. School in the morning.”
THIRTY-THREE
Derric’s church was called the Congregation of Christ Jesus, Redeemer. It was located in an autumn-brown meadow at the end of South Lone Lake Road, within seeing distance of the wide and tranquil lake itself and within smelling distance of a thoroughbred ranch. The church was a roughly converted barn, and its congregation consisted of islanders with the skills to turn the barn into a house of God, the intention to reach out to all people in need, and the limited time to do both. People in need came first. Hence, the rough conversion of the barn, which would be icy in winter, steaming on rare hot summer days, and had terrible acoustics throughout the year.
Becca knew she had to go there on a Sunday since she had no idea how else to track down the church minister, who did his ministering on a part-time basis. A phone call to the church gave her a recording with the information she needed: the time of services, the minister’s name, and the message that people of all faiths were welcome.