Hayley was so used to people—well, Seth, let’s face it—trying to get her to talk about her father. She was so used to her family not even wanting to talk about not wanting to talk about her father. She was so used to the entire subject of her father being taboo that she felt a chink in the armor that protected her and prevented her from speaking, and she was able to say to the young Canadian, “He’s not going to get any better. He’s going to get worse, so things’re rough.”
Parker reached for her hand. She steeled herself for the advice that would do no good. But instead he said, “I’m real sorry. You shouldn’t have to go through bad times.”
• • •
HAYLEY SAW SETH about thirty seconds later. Of all people to be in Port Townsend on the very day of her date with Parker, there he was. At first she thought he’d somehow followed them, and she felt a surge of irritation. But he walked right by the diner, and he seemed intent on his destination.
Inadvertently, Hayley said, “What the heck . . . ?” when she saw him, and that took Parker’s gaze to the window, where he noticed Seth, too.
“Bet I know where he’s going,” Parker said.
“Why?”
“Because we’re going there, too.”
After their meal, they walked in the same direction Seth had been taking. Hayley figured their destination had something to do with music if Seth was heading there.
She was right. Parker took them to the end of the main street, near the point where there were no longer shops and trendy boutiques but rather marine businesses overlooking a small harbor. There, a coffeehouse had been fashioned out of part of a warehouse and when Parker opened the door for her, Hayley heard fiddle music of a wild nature that reminded her of gypsies around a campfire dancing.
The source of the music turned out to be a girl. She stood on a makeshift dais, and she was accompanied by a guitarist who wasn’t at the moment playing but was rather watching her with a grin on his face. Everyone else had grins as well. It was tough not to smile when someone’s music was so uplifting.
The girl herself was intriguing. She had curly dark hair that fell to her waist, a cowboy handkerchief rolled up and used as a headband, cowboy boots with her jeans tucked into them, and a T-shirt with a hole under its arm. Most remarkable was her eye patch, black like a pirate’s and somehow in keeping with the rest of her.
Hayley glanced around and found Seth sitting on the edge of an old sofa. He was, like everyone, enthralled. Parker saw Seth, too, and he murmured in her ear, “He wants her,” and at Hayley’s startled expression he added, “For Triple Threat. That’s why he’s here.”
“What about you?” she asked. “I thought you were playing with—”
“I can’t stay much longer,” he told her. “Visitor’s visa. I have to get back to B.C.”
“Oh.” Hayley could hear her own disappointment. He was leaving, she thought. Wasn’t that just her luck?
He smiled and brushed some hair off her cheek. “But border crossings are easy enough when you’ve got a passport,” he told her.
• • •
WHEN THE GIRL’S set ended and she announced that she was taking a break “so you guys better order lattes or they won’t let me come back here,” Hayley saw Seth approach the girl. It came to her that this was the very first time that she and Seth had been in the same place without him automatically approaching her. She told herself she was glad of this. But still it was strange to see him leap to his feet and dash to the girl before anyone else could get to her.
• • •
IT WAS JUST after ten when they got back to the island, early hours for a date to end. Parker pointed this out, asking if Hayley had a curfew.
Hayley said that there wasn’t much to do on Whidbey after ten o’clock anyway unless you were old enough to get into a bar or knew of a place where a party was happening or wanted to dope up or drink in the woods. So although she always had a midnight curfew, she rarely was out after eleven.
“What about tonight?” Parker asked her. “I can take you home, but if you don’t need to . . . I know of a place.”
When he shot her a smile, she thought about how she’d like to put her fingers in his curly hair and she’d like to kiss him and—this was really terrible of her—she’d like to feel him pressing against her. But what she said was, “Sure. Long as I’m home by midnight.”
They ended up at Ralph Darrow’s house, in the parking area. There Parker grabbed a flashlight from his glove compartment, and he led her down the path toward the bright lights from the house. She could see Seth’s grandfather and Becca King in the living room as they passed. Becca was feeding some logs into the huge fireplace. Ralph Darrow was reading in a chair near the window with a bright crown of light falling on his long gray hair.
Then they were on the path through the woods, Parker leading but holding her by the hand. She knew where they were going because she’d been in Seth’s tree house a hundred times.
When they reached the clearing where the tree house was built into the branches of the two old hemlocks, Hayley realized she was a little bit nervous. She wondered what Parker expected of her, and she felt unsure of herself.
He seemed to sense this when they got to the steps that led up to the place. He turned to her and said, “It’s cool, Hayley.” He switched off the flashlight for a minute and in the autumn darkness, she felt him move toward her. “No worries,” he said.
He kissed her, and the kiss went on and on. Hayley thought how it was a man’s self-assured kiss and not the kiss of a boy. She thought how strong he seemed and how his strength was something she wanted as part of her life. And then she simply stopped thinking at all.
He finally broke off. He said huskily, “You’re amazing. You want to go up?” And he indicated the tree house above them.
Hayley said, “Yeah. I do.”
They used the flashlight to negotiate the steps. Across the deck they went and then they were inside the tree house, which was warm with a fire that had been banked in the wood stove as if waiting for their arrival.
Parker lit a lantern, but turned it low. Hayley looked around. She was acutely aware of there being no place to sit aside from the cot on which a sleeping bag lay. She swallowed a little nervously. She shot him a smile. He smiled in turn.
“Got some dope,” he told her.
“Oh.” Hayley wasn’t sure how to put it without sounding like the most inexperienced goody-good on the planet. “I haven’t exactly . . . I mean, I’ve never done any dope.”
“Not even weed?”
She shook her head. She could feel her face getting hot, and she was glad of the low light so he couldn’t see how badly she was blushing. But even if he could see, it didn’t seem to matter. He said, “There’s always a first time for everything, huh?”
He had a stash in a tea tin on the windowsill. He said, “Want to try? You won’t turn into a heroin addict. Really,” with a smile. He began rolling a joint so expertly that only an idiot would have thought he didn’t do this on a regular basis.
He came to her, joint in hand. Hayley thought he was going to hand it over or light it and take a toke, but instead he looked at her and touched her hair and moved it behind her ear in a sweet caress. Then he kissed her in that way he had and again the kiss went on and on.
He finally said, “Want to sit?” and indicated the cot. When she hesitated he said, “I can put that sleeping bag on the floor and we can sit there if you’d be more comfortable. Only . . .” He laughed. “I guess it’s still a sleeping bag. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you here. I see what it could look like from your perspective.”
Hayley said to cover her embarrassment, “No. It’s okay. Let’s sit,” and she was the first to do so. He sat next to her and that was when he lit the joint and took a deep hit of it. He told her he was going to teach her how to smoke weed because it was time she was just a lit
tle bad. He told her to take the smoke in with a lot of air at first, so that was what she did.
She expected to be instantly high, but she felt nothing. He told her to take another hit and he added, “When it’s your first time, sometimes you don’t feel anything. Not like you’re going to feel your second or third time.”
She blushed at this because first time and second time had more than one meaning. He seemed to realize this just as he said it because he declared, “Oh hell,” and he took the joint from her and he set it on the edge of the wood-burning stove. Then he kissed her, at first gently, and then more deeply, and Hayley realized it was fine with her. When the kiss broke off, he said in a low tone, “Have you ever . . .” and she shook her head. “Then we won’t,” he told her. “I mean, I won’t. But you’re so beautiful and it’s hard not to want you. What I mean is that whenever I see you, I can’t help thinking about . . . but I want to be respectful. I know how special you are and how far you’re going to go in your life and—”
She put her hand over his mouth. “C’n you stop talking and kiss me?” she said.
He grinned. “That I c’n do,” and his kiss sent shivers up and down her spine. They intensified when he kissed her neck. They morphed into sighs she didn’t even know she was making as he laid her back on the cot. She felt herself heating up so much that she gripped the rumpled sleeping bag tightly just to keep herself from floating off into space.
That was when her fingers closed over something buried among the rumples of the bag. She glanced at it in some confusion.
It was Isis Martin’s electronic cigarette.
THIRTY-SIX
Seth had been able to tell a lot from the way Parker and Hayley were acting around each other in the Port Townsend coffeehouse although he’d concluded at first that they were there for the same reason he was. As a fiddler, Parker would probably want to hear the girl play. He was as interested in music as Seth, and this girl was an incredible musician. But then Seth noticed that there was a disturbing air of ownership about the way Parker kept his hand on the back of Hayley’s neck. He kept moving his fingers lightly through her hair, and the way he kept glancing at her with his eyes all soft and gooey . . . Seth had wanted to say to him, “Hey, take it to a bedroom or something,” because it was pretty darn obvious what he had in mind.
As for the fiddler that Seth had come to hear . . . ? He’d read about her in advance of coming to Port Townsend, so he’d known she was good. But just how good . . . ? He hadn’t had a clue.
Her name was Prynne Haring. When he went up to her at the end of her set and introduced himself, she said with a roll of her eyes, “It’s Hester Prynne Haring, actually. My mom thought that would keep me out of trouble.”
Seth hadn’t the first clue what she meant, but he went along with it, took a risk, and said, “Bet it didn’t work.” He was pleased when she laughed. She set her fiddle in its case, and said, “What’s your instrument?”
He told her guitar. Then he told her Whidbey Island. Then he told her Triple Threat. For her part, she told him she came from Port Gamble and she added, “Music is, like, my whole life, bro.”
He said it was the same for him and would she be willing to come over to Whidbey and listen to Triple Threat and, perhaps, join them for a session or two? He said, “We’re looking for a fiddler and the way you play . . . You’re really something.”
“I’m more bluegrass than what you guys are into,” she told him frankly. “Django Reinhardt? Gypsy’s cool but I dunno. I’m a lone agent. I like things that way.”
He said he knew what she meant but he also figured that once she heard Triple Threat, she’d change her mind. She said she would consider it, and Seth decided to wait till after her gig when he’d do a little more talking to her. After all, one of the things she confessed was that she’d never been to Whidbey Island. He’d talk up its charms and its possibilities, he decided, and he’d use the rest of her gig to figure out what those charms and possibilities were.
Thus, he saw Hayley and Parker leave together, ducking out a few minutes before the end of Prynne’s performance. Through the windows he also saw how Parker put his arm around Hayley’s shoulders. He saw how their heads moved toward each other in a way that blended Parker’s dark hair with Hayley’s strawberry blonde. He could tell that Hayley was taken with the guy, and who could blame her since Parker appeared to be laying it on. But she was vulnerable and what she didn’t need was heartbreak from some bad news dude in Canada. So he had to tell her what he’d heard about Parker. After all, that was what friends were for.
• • •
ONCE PRYNNE’S GIG was over, Seth spent some time talking her into a trip to Whidbey. He’d pick her up at the ferry, he’d buy her dinner, he’d show her the sights . . . if she would agree to bring her fiddle. “Keep an open mind, Hester,” he told her. “That’s all I ask.”
She told him she would and she added, “It’s definitely Prynne, by the way. I don’t use Hester. I have this instead of an A, if you know what I mean.”
Seth didn’t know what she meant by the A, but he did know what she meant by this because she pointed to the eye patch she wore. He’d figured it was all part of her performance getup. But Prynne said, no. It was real.
“Cancer,” she told him. “I was seven. They did this and that and nothing worked so they had to dig out the ol’ eyeball. They gave me a glass one that I usually wear. But when I’m playing I like the eye patch. I think it kind of adds something.” She shrugged.
“Whatever,” he said. “I thought it was cool anyway. I mean . . . not that I don’t still think it’s cool. You got your glass eyeball under it or what?”
“Nope,” she told him. “Just the empty socket. It pretty much creeps people out when they see it. Want to see?”
“Sure,” he told her. What the hell.
• • •
SETH DECIDED TO talk to Hayley at the end of the next Saturday Bayview market. It would be one of the busier Saturdays there because the selling year was drawing to a close. So people would be crowding it while it lasted.
He had to rehearse with Triple Threat first. He needed the time with them. None of the guys knew he’d gone to see Prynne, and he wanted to prepare them for the idea of having a girl join the group. After they made thorough dopes of themselves by going on about a girl with an eye patch—“What is she, a pirate? Yo ho, yo ho . . .” —they were on board with having her come to jam with them.
Seth arrived at the market as the Cartwrights were disassembling their stall. Brooke, he saw, was looking morose and moonfaced. She was monosyllabic when he asked how she was.
“Fat,” she said bitterly. Then she added, “’cording to Hayley. You got any money, Seth?”
Whoa, Seth thought. That was totally out of character. He said, “Yeah, sure. But what’s—”
“It’s only I want a piece of that sweet potato pie. But Mom says if I want something to eat, I can have a carrot. As if.”
“Oh. Got it.” Seth reached for his wallet.
Hayley, however, apparently saw this because she said to her mother, “She’s doing it again. Seth, don’t give her any money. She’s not supposed to eat any—”
“My stomach needs food!” Brooke protested. “It’s empty, and I need to eat.”
“You need to stop eating. Try looking in a mirror instead.”
Harsh, Seth thought. That wasn’t like Hayley. He began to say to her, “Hey, is there something—” but their mom interrupted.
“Girls,” she said tiredly. She glanced at Seth and went on. “Brooke’s fine. And there’s plenty to eat here.”
“There is not!” Brooke stomped off.
“She’s probably going to panhandle,” Hayley said. “She’s got the worst case of the thirteens in history.”
Seth wasn’t convinced of this, but pressing on about why Brooke was acting so strange wasn’t why he was th
ere. So he said to Hayley, “You want a sandwich from the deli when you’re finished here? We c’n eat over by the schoolhouse and I’ll drive you home.”
Hayley opened her mouth and Seth could tell an excuse for turning him down was about to come out, but her mom had heard his invitation and she said, “You go on, Hayley. You’ve been working hard and you deserve a break. Let’s just get this stuff into the truck.” She looked around. “And don’t let Brooke catch you or Seth’ll be buying her a sandwich, too.”
“I c’n do that,” Seth said.
“She isn’t hungry,” Hayley told him. And she gave Seth a look that also told him not to say anything more about her sister.
When they’d finished getting the stall disassembled and the veggie crates loaded into the truck, Seth and Hayley went into the deli that was a feature of the renovated old commercial buildings of Bayview Corner with their wooden stairs and wooden sidewalks. They ordered their sandwiches. While they waited Hayley told Seth what her mom had meant about “working hard” and “deserving a break.” She mentioned her college essay and taking the SAT and being up to her eyeballs in homework. Seth waited for her to mention being up to her eyeballs with Parker, too, but when she didn’t, he told her he was glad that she was doing what she was supposed to be doing to head to college next year.
She explained that she was “doing it for now,” and when he asked her what that was supposed to mean, she said, “It didn’t hurt you not to go to college. Matter of fact, it didn’t hurt you not to graduate.”
He responded with, “Come on, Hayley. You and me were always playing on two different levels. Can you even picture me going to college? Or even getting out of high school? Not hardly. I’m too dumb—”
“You are not dumb,” Hayley said hotly.