Ralph went to the door, where he grabbed his old denim jacket and a flashlight. He handed a second flashlight to Seth. He went outside and began to walk in the direction of the forest.
Uh-oh, Seth thought. He needed to deal with Gus. He needed to get to his VW. But he also knew his grandfather. Ralph had an intention about something and when he had an intention, there was nothing Seth would be able to do to divert him from it. So he followed.
Ralph strode to the forest behind his house, to a trail that disappeared into the trees. The trail marked a narrow trek, hacked by Ralph through thick vegetation that grew like a contagion everywhere. They came to a secondary trail some way into the forest. They took this and then a third trail. At that point Seth knew where his grandfather was taking him although he didn’t yet know why.
It was a clearing, perhaps the size of four parking spaces. In it, two ancient hemlocks had grown close together to form a V with their branches. In this V was a tree house. Across from the tree house and in the clearing stood an old log bench overtaken by lichen.
When they reached this spot, Ralph made for the bench and sat on it. Seth did the same, and together they shone the beams of their flashlights on the tree house, fifteen feet above the ground and accessed by a ladder.
This was no ordinary tree house. It had a viewing deck in front of its door. It had two glass-paned windows, and both of them opened. It had a metal roof and screen-topped metal chimney that spoke of a woodstove inside the place as well.
Ralph pointed to the structure and said, “Now that, grandson, is not the work of the family loser.”
“I ought to use it more,” Seth told him. “I put you to a lot of trouble not to be using it.”
“Using it wasn’t ever the point. Building it was. Just look at that thing, Seth. There’s artistry in it, and you were the artist.”
“No, I wasn’t. You showed me what to do.”
“That’s how we all start. Knowledge is passed along. But at the other end of the knowledge has to be someone with the talent and skill to make something out of it.”
Seth observed the tree house. It was a single room only, but he knew that, inside, it was worthy and perfect because that was how Ralph had insisted it be built. It was rainproof and snowproof, and it was warm inside when you lit the small stove.
As they looked on the tree house together, Ralph spoke. “Where’s Sammy, Seth?”
Seth told him that the VW was in the parking lot of Saratoga Woods.
“And Gus?” Ralph asked.
“Hayley’s got him.”
Ralph looked away. His lips curved down. He smoothed his mustache. “Hayley,” he finally said, and he sighed. Then he murmured, “There’s a kind of wood that won’t take sanding, no matter how you go at it. It can’t bear it, Seth.” He meant by this that Seth had to let this one go, let Hayley go, let it all go and get on with his life.
“I know that,” Seth said, “but I just can’t do it.”
“How’s ‘can’t’ been working for you so far?”
“Not at all,” Seth admitted.
“Why’d you go out there, anyway?” Ralph asked. “Why Saratgoa Woods of all places?” and what Seth knew was that Ralph was asking because of Gus. He wanted to know why Seth had taken the lab out to Saratoga Woods, when the woods were vast and Gus wasn’t yet trained well enough to run there.
“It wasn’t the best idea,” Seth said morosely. “I made the wrong decision.”
“True enough and I’m glad you see that,” Ralph told him. “So let’s do something about it.”
* * *
FOURTEEN
Something was getting Sammy first. Ralph said they’d go by way of Lone Lake, which shimmered like a silver coin in the moonlight, motionless water with a canopy of stars slung over it.
Seth could tell from his grandfather’s silence that it weighed heavily on his mind that Seth felt like such a loser half the time. He knew it weighed doubly on his mind that Seth hadn’t yet got past Hayley Cartwright.
They came upon Saratoga Woods from the direction opposite to the one Seth had taken earlier in the day. This route carved through a woodland of conifers that were black in the darkness, split occasionally by narrow driveways, overgrown with moss and ferns.
At Saratoga Woods, Ralph pulled the truck next to poor little Sammy. The VW looked sadly abandoned at this time of night. Seth thought his grandfather would just drop him off and head back home, but instead, Ralph shut off the Ford’s engine and got out as Seth did.
Seth said thanks: for paying his bail, for coming up to Coupeville, for carting him back to the woods. Ralph nodded, but then he cleared his throat and from this Seth knew his grandfather had something to say.
It was this. “Not a good time for Gus, grandson.”
Seth said, “Huh?”
Ralph said, “Best I hang on to the dog for a while.”
This hurt, and Seth was surprised by how much. Ralph had given him the dog, and to have Gus taken away like this, with ten brief words, was a blow that felt like a fist smashing right below his heart.
Ralph, of course, knew all this, so he said, “It’s the woods, grandson, that’s all it is.”
“What’s that s’posed to mean?”
“You can’t train a dog and be his friend at the same time, Seth. Training comes first. Friendship follows. The way I see it, you’ve got some things on your mind right now, things that need dealing with. Training a dog’s not one of them. You take some weeks now and get yourself sorted out. Gus’ll be fine with me.”
“It’s Hayley, isn’t it?” Seth demanded bitterly. “It’s the fact that I handed him over to Hayley and not someone else when the deputy took me.”
Ralph shook his head. He was about to say that Hayley Cartwright was only part of what he was concerned about, but suddenly a telephone began to ring. He and Seth stared at each other and then looked around to find the source of the noise. Simultaneously, they headed for the information shelter.
The ringing stopped. Then in a moment, it began again. It was an easy matter to trace the sound then. Ralph plucked the cell phone from one of the shelter’s rafters.
Seth heard only Ralph’s end of the conversation, which began the way Ralph always answered the phone. “Yahoo . . . What d’you mean ‘Who is this?’ Who the dickens is this? . . . I heard the ringing and followed the noise, that’s how . . . Saratoga Woods, outside of Langley . . . You nuts, or what? . . . Ma’am I am seventy-two years old and so’re my eyes and no way am I making that drive tonight. I’ve done it once already . . . You want it, you send someone for it . . . Ralph Darrow . . . I’ve got no problem whatsoever with that.”
He flipped the phone closed and shoved it into his pocket. He said, “Cops. Someone used this thing to call nine-one-one today about some kid falling in the woods. You know anything about that?”
Seth shook his head.
Ralph evaluated him for a good thirty seconds. “I can’t help you if I don’t know,” he pointed out.
“There’s nothing to know,” Seth declared.
SETH’S GRANDFATHER WENT the way they’d come, which was also one of the routes he could take to get to Smugglers Cove Farm and Flowers, where Hayley Cartwright and her family lived. Seth, on the other hand, went into Langley to the Cliff Motel.
It came to Seth that he didn’t know which room Becca King was staying in. Several rooms were lit, and he didn’t think it would be one of his better ideas to knock on all the doors looking for her. This meant he would have to ask Debbie Grieder where Becca was.
He went to the office. The door was unlocked, and a bell rang to alert Debbie that a potential customer had just walked in. She came from the back where her apartment was, and when she opened the door, he could hear the television and Chloe and Josh squealing over something that they were watching.
Seth said, “Hi, Mrs. Grieder,” in his most polite voice. “Came by ’cause Becca left something in my car, only I don’t know which one of the room’s hers.”
Debbie gave him the kind of look a teacher gives to a kid when she suspects there are lice crawling in his hair. She said, “What?”
“Her cell phone. Must’ve fallen out of her pocket. I didn’t notice till a while ago.”
Debbie held out her hand. “I’ll give it to her.”
Seth said, “I sort of need to talk to her, too. I mean, just for a second. It won’t take long.” He wanted to add that it wasn’t exactly Debbie Grieder’s business what he was doing there since she wasn’t Becca’s mother or anything, but he didn’t. He might not have been a scholastic whiz kid, but he wasn’t stupid.
Debbie said, “You need to stay away from that girl, Seth Darrow. She’s fourteen years old.”
“I know that. I’m not interested in her in that way.”
“Then what way are you interested in her?”
“No way, really. But we lost Gus in the woods this afternoon, and I wanted to be able to tell her what happened.”
Debbie had an expression on her face that said she believed that story pretty much as firmly as she believed the moon was made of Limburger cheese. But she said, “She’s in room four-forty-four. Make it quick.”
Seth nodded and backed out of the office so that the daggers Debbie was aiming at him with her eyes wouldn’t end up in his back. He went to Becca’s room and knocked on the door.
When she answered, Seth was surprised to see that she was in her pajamas. It seemed early for that. She also didn’t have her glasses on, and she wasn’t wearing her usual mask of makeup, so she looked different to him. Her eyes were bloodshot, too, as if she’d been crying.
Seth wanted to feel some sympathy for her, but the sight of her brought everything back to him in a rush. Most of all what it brought back was the hours he’d spent in the jail, worrying about his parents and what they would say, thrashing over the mess he’d made of his relationship with Hayley, waiting for the cops’ questions to begin . . . His mind went a little crazy with everything he wanted to say to Becca about the kind of trouble he was now in and the fact that now he’d even lost his dog and the hassle he had caused his granddad and—
Suddenly, Becca covered her ears. She cried out, “Stop it! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” and she began to scramble around on the floor next to the bed. Seth could tell she was looking for something, but what she found made his vision go red. She grabbed an earphone and slammed it into her ear and turned up the volume on what looked like some kind of iPod. Seth thought, What? She’s listening to music? And then he began to rant.
“What are you doing? Give me a break. We have to talk. I got taken to jail. You know that? They’re asking questions. Then your cell phone started to ring, and my grandfather found it and . . . Would you take that stupid thing out of your ear and listen to me?”
She said, “It was ringing? The cell phone was ringing?” and unaccountably she began to cry.
Seth said, “It was the cops. They were trying to trace it. My granddad’s taking it up to them. Or they’re coming for it. Hell, I don’t know. Will you stop listening to that music for a minute?”
“It’s not music,” Becca cried. “It’s the only way I can hear you when you’re mad like this. See for yourself.” She pulled the earphone out of her ear and handed it to him. He received a blast of static that made him wince. Hell, who was this chick? was what Seth thought. Was she from another galaxy or something?
She was really crying now, Seth saw. She’d grabbed a pillow and she was clutching it. When she tried to talk, the words came out in big gulps of air.
From the gulps, Seth was able to piece together the story that Becca had no choice but to tell him. Without the cell phone, she’d lost her ability to phone her mother. Without the cell phone, she was so far into being on her own that she knew she would die without telling someone at least part of the truth.
Her stepdad had probably murdered his partner and he knew that she knew he’d done it. Plus he’d been using her to help him get money from old folks looking for secure investments, only Becca hadn’t known how much money was involved and what Jeff Corrie was doing with it and how much more he wanted of it and how this was why he’d murdered his partner. But she couldn’t go to the police about any of this because they wouldn’t believe her because of how she knew it. And when it all became clear to her, she and her mom had gone on the run. Only Jeff Corrie was going to come after them soon. That was a given.
“I could tell what they wanted, see?” Becca gulped as she talked to Seth. “I could tell what they needed. I could see how . . . if Jeff said the right thing . . . I could tell what he needed to say to them and I thought it was helping them with their investments. Jeff said people sometimes are afraid of change so they don’t do the right thing to help themselves when they start so I was the person who could guide him in what he had to say . . .”
Seth felt like one of those cartoon characters who needed to bang himself on the side of the head to make sense of all this. What was she saying?
The part he got clearly was the part about her mom. Her cell phone was the link to her mom, the cell phone was gone, and that was bad. But the way Seth saw, there might be something worse. This chick could be completely nuts.
“The phone,” Becca said. “I need that phone.”
“Cops are going to trace it,” he told her. “If they get their hands on it, they’re going to trace it.”
He sat on the bed. Becca got herself up and sat next to him. Carefully, cautiously, Seth put his arm around her shoulders.
“I don’t think they c’n trace it,” Becca said. “We got the phones at a 7-Eleven.”
“And how’d you pay for them? Did your mom use cash?”
“I think . . . She never used cash. It was her credit card.” That was all Becca knew aside from the fact that when the phone was handed to her, her mother had programmed it with the only number she needed: the number that went with Laurel’s own newly purchased phone.
“If she used a credit card,” Seth said, “the cops’ll find her.”
Becca swallowed. She felt defeated. She’d let herself down, she’d let her mom down, and it even seemed that she’d let Seth down. She said to him, “What happened to you? I don’t get how you ended up in jail.”
Seth told her the CliffsNotes version of his adventure. This was the version that dealt with the unpaid traffic tickets and his grandfather making bail for him. He left out Gus and he left out Hayley, and he left out a few other details as well. But then Becca asked a question that brought nearly everything into the open.
“You’ll be able to pay the tickets, won’t you? I mean, they won’t lock you up if you pay them.”
They wouldn’t lock him up in the regular course of things, but there was something more that she didn’t know. He said as carefully as he could, “I can pay the tickets. Grand’ll help if I ask him. But there’s something more.”
“What?”
“Derric Mathieson. There’s this thing between me and him.”
“What thing?”
“A Hayley thing.”
“Hayley Cartwright?”
“He’s why we broke up. Her and Derric hooked up one night. I caught them at it.”
Becca was silent for a moment as she took this in. She said slowly, “But he’s only a freshman and—”
Seth shot her a scornful look. “Uh . . . like that’s actually important? He’s sixteen anyway. So is she. And big deal that she’s a junior. It doesn’t matter to Hayley. Lots of things don’t matter to Hayley. Would it matter to you if that dude wanted . . . Forget it. Anyway, it’s why me and her—”
The door flew open. Debbie Grieder stood there.
Seth dropped his arm from around Becca’s shoulders. He put three feet between them as fast as he could. But he could see from Debbie Grieder’s expression that this was too little, and it was way too late.
* * *
FIFTEEN
Debbie’s face was flaming. Her forehead scar was a bolt of white. She came into the room li
ke a tractor rolling over a field. She was talking in a fierce low tone because there was an occupied room to one side of Becca’s, but there wasn’t any need for her to shout because her expression was doing the shouting for her.
Becca had not returned the AUD box earphone to her ear, so she flinched from the assault of Debbie’s whispers. They blended in with Seth’s whispers and with what they both were saying aloud. The result was chaos in Becca’s head. She dropped her gaze to the floor, which only made her look guilty.
“What’s going on?” Debbie demanded. “I said no sleepovers.”
You’ve been here . . . you think I don’t know . . . how it starts and then . . .
“I said no boys.”
Always happens like . . .
“You and I had an agreement and you’re violating—”
Lying . . . they always lie . . .
“Mrs. Grieder, it’s not what you think.”
You’ve been here . . . who you are . . . you think I don’t know . . . drugs involved . . . like you he was . . . the struggle . . . not this time . . . boys get up to . . .
“How many more girls in this town are you going to try—”
“Me? Hey, I’m not trying anything. I just came by to—”
Totally bananas . . . whoa . . . control . . .
“Show me that cell phone. You show me that cell phone.”
Control it . . . remember . . . God grant me . . . crazy . . . Saratoga Woods like always . . .
“You said you were taking that dog for a run. Well, where’s the dog now? You tell me. Where is he?”
“Gus? He’s with Hayley. When the cops showed up, I asked—”
My God . . . in the forest . . . that’s where the drugs . . .
“Cops? Police? What’ve you been up to? Hayley didn’t work out for you, so you’re after her?”
“I’m not after anyone, Mrs. Grieder.”
Stay cool, stay calm, she’s flipping . . . not here . . .