“Have you been to the tree house with him?”
“Like that’s even important right now? Brady wasn’t s’posed to give that ring to anyone. It’s not his, it’s his dad’s. Only he gave it to me and don’t you see? I took it off and now it’s gone. Can I spell it out any better for you? For all I know, my stupid brother took it and sold it so I can’t send it back to Brady and Brady will never get back together with me now. And by the way, great, on top of everything, I’ve just found out that you’re so self-involved that I can’t even depend on you to help me out. And why? Because I’m doing Parker . . . like that’s even important. Hey, why don’t you tell the sheriff I’m the person who set the fires, Hayley? Yeah, go ahead and do it. I might as well die because everything in my life turns to shit anyway.”
She leaped out of the truck on her final words, and she crashed its door shut behind her.
FORTY
Hayley assumed that her friendship with Isis Martin was over at that point. She was actually a little relieved. Parker had said one thing about what had gone on between himself and Isis: nothing. For her part, Isis had made pointed references to something else altogether. So one of them was lying, and Hayley knew which of them she wanted to believe. But this required a certain distance from Isis. So when she jumped out of the farm truck, a large part of Hayley gave a very great sigh of relief.
Still, she wanted very much to talk to someone about the skirmishes going on in her mind. At some other time she might have talked to her mom, but Julie Cartwright was overburdened enough.
On the day of the final farmers’ market, the crowd at Bayview was the largest of the year. The trees edging the market were brilliantly orange and red, with the sun shining brightly upon them and the air that surrounded them was crisp and clear. A slight breeze tossed the colorful pennants that welcomed shoppers to the rectangle of stalls and tables, and it blew the scents of autumn everywhere: hot spiced apple cider, pumpkin pies, apple pies, sweet potato pies. The vegetable growers had brought in the last of the lettuces along with beans, a dazzling variety of squashes, and an inordinate supply of fingerling potatoes. The knitters and the weavers had delivered their scarves and hats and gloves, and business for them was brisk as the weather altered. At the Cartwright booth, Julie was making sure that people were signing up for deliveries of fresh eggs throughout the winter as well as for the farm’s root vegetables, which would continue to be harvested till the ground hardened.
Hayley was packing up one of her necklaces for a tourist from Spokane when she saw Seth. He had Gus with him on a leash, and the dog was being obedient for once. The Lab was sitting patiently at Seth’s side as he talked to a fellow carpenter. When Seth was ready to move, Gus glided next to him like a dog long used to doing his master’s bidding. They were coming toward the Cartwright booth, and Seth caught Hayley looking in his direction. He gave one of his head-jerk nods, and he pulled on his ear gauge in that way he had that told her he was feeling nervous. He came over and gave his usual Seth greeting.
“Hey,” he said. “How’s it going?”
“Okay. How’s it going with you?”
“Okay.”
Then they were silent. They looked out at the crowd of people who were laughing, chatting, admiring goods, and petting each other’s dogs. A beautiful day and a friendly crowd . . . and Hayley knew Seth was the single person she could talk to about her doubts.
He said, “You guys have a good season?”
“Good enough. But Mom’s cleaning houses three days a week now and I’m gonna need to get a decent job. She doesn’t get that, of course. She says my job’s school—”
“It is,” Seth told her. “You started applying—”
“I’ll graduate and there’s an end to it, Seth.”
He said meaningfully, “Hayl . . .” but she shook her head.
They fell back into silence again. Seth shuffled his feet. Gus sighed gustily and rubbed his head against Seth’s thigh.
Seth said, “Hey, I shouldn’t have told you—” at the exact same moment as Hayley said, “Seth, I need to ask you—”
They laughed at this, a little uneasily. Hayley cocked her head and looked at Seth fondly. “You go first,” she told him.
“I shouldn’t have said anything about Parker,” he told her. “The thing that the guy from BC Django 21 told me? You were right. I mean, here’s this guy I don’t even know up in Canada and all he says is ‘watch out for that dude’ and what’s the deal with that? He could’ve just been pissed off that Parker’s a better musician or something.”
She mulled this over but didn’t say anything at first.
He went on. “I c’n see Parker’s into you. I guess I just want you to be careful.”
Hayley was gratified to hear Seth say all this because there was something she wanted to say to him. She introduced the topic with, “She’s good. She’s excellent, in fact.”
That he knew at once that she was referring to the fiddler told Hayley Seth was indeed intrigued by the girl. He said, “Prynne’s coming over to play for the guys. I want her bad. I mean . . . I want her in the group.”
“That’s her name? Prynne?”
“Her first name’s Hester. It’s s’posed to mean something, but I don’t know what.”
“Hester Prynne?” Hayley said. “It’s from a novel about a Puritan woman who had sex with a guy and got pregnant and had to wear a big red A on her chest for the rest of her life.” Seth drew his eyebrows together, which told Hayley he wasn’t quite on board with what she meant. “A for Adultery. She did it with the preacher and went to jail and when she got out, she had to wear the A.”
“Harsh,” he said.
“Puritans.”
“How d’you know that, anyway?”
“Honors English,” she told him.
“Got it. Anyways, that’s what her parents called her, which is probably why she goes by Prynne.”
“You like her, huh?”
He glanced at her. “I really do.”
Hayley found that she was glad of this because Seth was, at the end of the day, her friend. He deserved to find someone who was going to love him the way he wanted to be loved and the way she herself had never been able to love him. She hoped it would be Prynne.
He said, “Your turn now,” and for a second Hayley thought he meant it was her turn for love, but then she remembered they’d interrupted each other.
She said, “Well, it’s this.” She glanced around to make sure that no one could overhear them before she went on. “I think I might know who started the fires, Seth. Only . . . I’m not sure and I don’t know what to do.”
He cocked his head at her. “Who is it?”
“I don’t like to say. See, I’m not sure why I want to give this person’s name to the sheriff. Do you see what I mean?”
“Uh . . . no.”
“It’s private. What I mean is that why I want to give the name is private. It’s something sort of bad that happened between us plus something I know and when I put those two things together it seems like I’m trying to cause trouble for that person instead of just trying to be helpful to the sheriff.”
He considered this as he examined her face, and Hayley could tell from the heat in her cheeks that she was blushing. That alone seemed enough to tell him what she would have preferred him not to know. Then he said, “Parker.”
She said, “What about him?”
“He’s involved in this, huh?”
“Parker didn’t start those fires! How c’n you even say that? You’ve just apologized for bad-mouthing him to me and all of a sudden he’s back on your list and that’s totally unfair because you know that . . .” She pretty much ran out of steam because of the way he was looking at her.
He said quietly, “Hayl, I didn’t say Parker was involved in the fires. You just figured that. So think about it, huh?” He looked
around, seemed to want to say more, but gave a mighty sigh instead.
• • •
LATE THAT AFTERNOON Hayley was up in her room working on a paper for her honors English class. She was deep into it, and didn’t hear the knock on her door. But then a voice said, “Hayley? Your mom said you were up here, but I’m sort of scared to open the door. I’m so sorry for being such a bitch. C’n I come in?”
What Hayley thought was “Oh no.” She didn’t really want to see Isis.
“Hayley . . . ? Okay. I’ll go. Only I wanted you to know how sorry I am.”
Hayley sighed, got up from her desk, and went to the door. Isis stood there looking abject. She had a small wrapped gift in her hands, cradled within them the way you would hold a baby bird. Her eyes were bright with tears that began to drip down her cheeks as she said, “I want you to forgive me. I understand if you can’t. What I want you to know, though, is that I know how bad I am. But I also know that there’s no one else in my life like you. I learn more being with you for five minutes than I ever learned being with anyone else. And then I dump on you and I walk away and I know in, like, three minutes that what I just did was wrong and I don’t even know how to be sorrier than I am. I understand if we can’t be friends anymore but I wanted to give you this.”
Hayley looked at the package. Its wrapping sparkled in the light that came from a window at the end of the hallway. She stepped back from her bedroom door. Isis stepped inside, saying, “I hope you’ll take this. When I saw it, I knew I had to get it for you. Would you be willing to open it?”
Hayley took the package. Isis went to the bed and perched on the edge of it. Hayley went to her desk chair and sat. Slowly, she opened the gift. Inside was a square box like something you’d get from a jewelry store. It held a small piece of porcelain shaped like a fortune cookie. This had hinges on it, so she opened it to see a slip of paper not unlike a fortune. “Someone close to you is very sorry,” was neatly printed on it. Hayley knew it was Isis’s printing. She looked from this to the other girl’s face: her trembling lips, her earnest expression.
“I was throwing dog poop again,” Isis said. “It’s not like my mom hasn’t told me I’m crazy a million times. And so has my dad. And they forgive me when I do, like, what I did to you. . . . But I guess they forgive me because they’re my parents and they have to ’cause they’re stuck with me.” She clasped her hands between her knees, as if she was trying to stop them from reaching out to Hayley in order to beseech her to listen. “So what I mean is that I know you have a choice about forgiving me or not and I’m hoping you say, ‘Okay, I forgive you, Isis, ’cause I know you don’t really mean what you say only sometimes you just get going and can’t stop.’”
Then Isis said nothing more. But she looked so hopeful and so contrite and there was the fact that she had apologized and that she knew what she’d done was wrong and that she did not blame Hayley for any of it at all. . . .
Hayley said, “You’ve got to stop dumping on me like that. It’s totally hurtful and—”
Isis jumped up from the bed. She flew to Hayley, dropped to her knees on the floor, and hugged her. “I promise. I’ll never . . . never again. Oh, thank you, Hayley.” She dropped her head into Hayley’s lap, like an earnest supplicant who finally knew that forgiveness was not given lightly and might not be given at all in the future.
With her face shining with relief and joy, Isis lifted her head and said, “Hayley, I got to tell you something. I’m going to go crazy if I don’t. And I think that if I tell, you can help me when I start to go off into the dog poop zone. Only, if I tell you . . . No one knows outside of my family and that means even Grandam.”
Hayley froze. She thought, She’s pregnant. That had to be it and Brady had to be the father.
But when Isis went on, in very short order Hayley discovered that Isis’s information had nothing to do with Brady at all. She said, “We went to Lake Shasta every year. A week of camping. And I was about eight years old when this happened and Aidan was seven and Robbie was . . . like two months old maybe? He was fussy ’cause it was time for his bottle and he was in the back seat with us. And it was one of those backwards seats, you know? So Mom knew he needed to eat and she handed the bottle over and Aidan was s’posed to hold it for him, but Aidan wasn’t paying attention and it didn’t seem like . . . I mean, it was only a baby bottle and kids use baby bottles all the time. Only . . .” She seemed to struggle for a moment before she went on. “See, he choked or he breathed in the milk instead of swallowing it right. Dad pulled over to the side of the road and he tried . . . and Mom tried . . . and then the EMTs were there and they tried . . . Only no one could save him, and it was Aidan’s fault. My mom started screaming at him on the side of the road and then . . . Hayley, she just stopped screaming, dead. And she never said another word about it. Never. And they cremated him. They cremated Robbie and they didn’t even have a funeral and he’s not buried anywhere and no one says anything and it’s like he never existed at all.”
Hayley felt like a statue, immovable. It was so terrible a story that she could feel the pain of it, even at this distance of years from the time it had happened.
Isis went on. “That’s when Aidan started the fires. They screamed at him that he was only trouble and he had to stop only how could he stop when they wouldn’t ever let him just talk about how bad he felt about what had happened to Robbie? It was a little thing, see. Just give the baby his bottle. Only it went all wrong and they would never say anything, not ‘We forgive you, Aidan’ or ‘We should have found a rest stop because that would have made more sense’ or anything. But the thing is that people need to talk about the bad stuff in their lives ’cause if they don’t, it eats them up inside until they do something.”
Hayley wasn’t sure what to say other than, “Oh gosh. Isis . . .”
Isis rested back on her heels. She said, “That’s why I’m not always too good to be around. But I’ll try hard because I don’t want to do anything else to mess up our friendship. I know you’re dating Parker now, and I’m totally cool with it. Him and me . . . It all had to do with Brady. I knew that, and I knew Parker wasn’t right for me and anyway I could tell from the first he was into you. So what I’m saying is it’s so good that you two are together. And I really mean that. Okay?”
Hayley studied her face. It was so earnest. She said to Isis, “Okay,” and then when Isis made a move to hug her, she added, “But did you guys . . . Did you and Parker . . . ?”
Isis waved her off. “Did we have sex? Hayley, it was no big deal. Get rid of the whole virginity package you’ve got going on and you’ll see for yourself.”
FORTY-ONE
“I can see forgetting some kinds of stuff,” Becca said, “like where you put your car keys or maybe why you walked into a room. Even a message you’re s’posed to give to your mom. But this wasn’t like that, Seth. This was forgetting even taking the message. It’s like he came across a jumbled-up piece of paper and he read it and he can’t remember anything about it.”
Seth frowned. He was standing in the parking lot used by people who walked onto the ferry when they went over to Port Townsend and he’d been watching that same ferry steadily approaching Whidbey when his cell phone had rung with Becca calling. He considered what she was telling him. “Grand’s just getting old,” he settled on saying. “I don’t get why you’re so freaked about it.”
“I’m freaked because the message could be important, and you know why.”
Seth did know that. He said, “Your mom?”
“What if she didn’t go all the way to Nelson? Where is this place La Conner? I mean, they said Skagit Valley but where’s that?”
“Up north, just off island,” he told her. “But, Beck, why’d your mom be on a tulip farm? What’s the place called again?”
“Broad Valley Growers. And I don’t know, maybe she didn’t need to go all the way to Nelson. Maybe she got
. . . like . . . a flat tire? Maybe . . . what about amnesia?”
Seth said, “Beck . . .”
“I know it’s dumb but don’t you see that—”
What he saw was Prynne. The ferry was docking and she was standing with the other walk-on passengers at the very front of it just behind the chain that held the cars back. He waved, but of course she didn’t see him since she’d not ever been to Whidbey Island and she didn’t know where to look. He saw that she didn’t have her eye patch on and that she didn’t look exactly pretty but really, truly interesting with her tangled hair and the long skirt she was wearing. She had on her cowboy boots and a faded denim jacket and a slew of chains that winked in the bright sunlight. It came to him that she was just like him, out of step with most other people, and he liked that about her.
“Seth! Seth!”
He realized that Becca had been going on and he stirred himself to say, “Lemme call this place, Beck. I’ll feel them out and see if I can find out something. If I can’t get an idea what’s going on, we can go up to La Conner. We can check the place out and if your mom’s there—”
“No! It could be a trick. Ever since those posters went up everywhere, I’ve had a feeling like something’s going to happen. What if someone’s put together who Laurel Armstrong is and who I am? That picture of me in the paper . . . the old one when I was in, like, fifth grade . . . ?”
“It barely looked like you.”
“Aidan saw me looking at that picture. So what if he called up with that message? He knows I’m looking into him, too.”
Seth saw that the ferry had docked and the passengers were disembarking. He began to stride in the direction they would have to come. He said, “’F that’s the case, then maybe he’s just trying to freak you out.” Seth waved to Prynne and this time she saw him. She had her fiddle case dangling from one hand and she lifted it in a form of hello. He said into the phone, “Look. I gotta go, Beck. But we c’n check out this place if you want to. Try not to worry in the meantime. You got to remember, it could’ve been a message for Grand or even for Parker and Grand just can’t remember.”