The Edge of the Light (8 page)

Rich rose but it wasn't in anger. He said reasonably, “Bren, we're not going to end up on the same page about this, so we need to let it go for now. And yes, I know what Seth's doing to the house: exactly what the health care specialist told us to do.” He extended his hands, palm up, in one of those help-me-understand-this gestures. He said, “You
knew
this was going to happen, so I don't get all the drama.”

“He can't live alone,” Brenda said. “You damn well know it.”

“He won't be living alone,” Seth said. “Becca's there. She lives there, too. And if you're so freaked out about a home aide person getting too friendly with Grand, Becca can—”

“Oh yes, Becca,” Brenda scoffed. “Your
sixteen-year-old
friend. She's going to keep an eye on things, is she? How is she supposed to do that?” She turned to Rich. “Dad needs to be moved to a place where he can be taken care of, and where there's no chance that someone is going to take advantage of him.”

“He's going to be taken care of,” Seth insisted. “And no one's going to be able to take advantage of him.”

“He'll have to be bathed and fed and dressed and undressed and taken to the bathroom,” Brenda went on, as if Seth hadn't spoken. “He'll have medications he'll need to take and physical therapy he'll have to get to. He'll need nursing and a proper diet and whatever else, and assisted living will give him that. Are we going to have to go to court over this, Rich?”

“Brenda, please,” Amy said. “You know we can't afford to fight this out in court.”

“If that's the case,” Brenda said with a smile, “maybe you ought to adjust your thinking as to what's actually good for my father.”

• • •

IT TOOK SETH
several days to work out how he could get Grand home and make sure he was well taken care of so that his aunt had no reason to take his father to court. The home health care aides were not a problem. The state of Washington had provisions that would help pay for that. It was the monitoring of those aides that was going to be trickier. Someone needed to do it in order to appease Brenda, and that was an expense no one in his family could afford except his aunt, who wasn't going to hand out a dime to help them.

During this time of tossing around ideas, he and his friends continued to work feverishly to get the house ready. The weather cooperated, so the ramp went up quickly. Inside the house, all of the handrails got securely placed. Ralph's belongings got moved from his bedroom above to Becca's below, and Becca's got moved up into his. All that was left was the completion of the driveway, and one of Seth's fellow construction workers had signed on to do that, in exchange for Seth's paying for materials and gas. From the sale of the downed trees, there was money enough, so the driveway got professionally graded and a porous surface of stone was applied, which would harden over time. No one could accuse it of being anything less than perfect for getting Grand down to his house.

Having someone there twenty-four hours a day to make sure the home health aides didn't “take advantage” of Grand was trickier, naturally. Seth couldn't do it because he worked. His mom couldn't do it because she had six months of healing in front of her. His dad had to keep up with his glass blowing. Options, thus, were limited. But Seth saw a way, and after work one day, he caught the ferry to Port Townsend to begin the process of making it all happen.

Prynne didn't know he was coming. Seth figured he could kill two birds with one stone that way. He could not only spell out the plan to her, but he could also meet her roommates at last. Trouble was, he didn't have her address, only the knowledge that she now lived somewhere in the upper town, where Victorian homes, fishing bungalows, and getaway houses of Seattleites filled the streets. And there were many of those streets. He knew
he couldn't drive up and down them in his VW, hoping to find the house Prynne lived in. But once he called her from the ferry dock, what was she going to do?

It turned out that what she wasn't going to do was invite him over. What she said when he announced that he was in the parking lot of the sporting goods store right next to the ferry dock was, “Here? I wish you'd let me know you were coming over, Seth. This isn't a good time. Why didn't you call me before you got on the ferry?”

He'd expected surprise, followed by delight. The surprise was there, but not the other. He said, “I need to talk to you and I wanted it to be in person. There a problem with that?”

“Only that the guys are totally obliterated here. They can't even talk.”

“That's okay, since I don't want to talk to them.”

“You wouldn't like it. Two of them are practically comatose. Look, I'll meet you downtown.”

“I don't get why—”

“Seth, I just told you. The guys are loaded. Why don't we meet at the coffeehouse? I can be there in less than ten minutes.”

He knew which coffeehouse she meant. Although this was the land of coffeehouses, and although in most towns in Washington you couldn't walk half a block without running into two of them, in Port Townsend there was only one. Several places sold espresso, of course. But when it came to a real coffeehouse . . . It was where he'd first heard Prynne playing her fiddle.

He said okay. If she didn't give him her address there was no
other way he was going to see her. So he rumbled out of the parking lot, telling Gus that a wait in the car was in store for him. The Lab did his tail-thumping bit. He'd just spent the entire day dashing around the construction site where Seth was working. He'd had the companionship of two other dogs. He was ready for a nap.

The coffeehouse was practically at the end of Port Townsend's main street of old brick buildings housing boutiques, antiques shops, and art galleries. It took up space in one of the ancient warehouses not far from the dock where fishing boats still went into Puget Sound. It was exactly what a coffeehouse should be: furnished with slouching sofas and tattered easy chairs, heated by a wood-pellet stove, dimly lit. Its walls were painted oxblood and its floor was beaten-up reclaimed lumber. Posters covered it, commemorating ancient rock bands and advertising appearances of newcomers.

When Seth walked in, there was music playing, sort of an aimless strumming on a guitar. It was, he saw, coming from a guy with tattoos covering his neck and his hands. When he looked up at the rush of cold air, Seth saw he'd also had himself inked with
KISS ME
across his forehead. He was completely stoned.

Looking around, Seth picked up on the fact that other stoners were in the coffeehouse. Even the barista looked halfway gone. He wondered why he'd not noticed any of this the only other time he'd been in the place. But Prynne, he decided, was the answer to that. He'd been there to hear her play, and once he'd caught sight of her, he hadn't noticed another thing.

He ordered a drip coffee for himself and a decaf skinny latte for Prynne. He was sitting at a table with these and a bran muffin when she breezed in the door. Before he could stand or say hi, two of the stoners called out, “Prynne, hey” and “Here comes trouble,” this with a laugh. Prynne gave them a smile and a raised-eyebrow nod before she walked over to Seth and put her arms around him. She kissed him and said, “My dude, my man. You look banged up. Hard day at work?”

She stepped back and eyed the small table with its offering of muffin and latte. She dropped into a chair and said, “Sorry for being such a pig on the phone. It's just that the guys . . . It wouldn't've been a good scene.”

She picked up her latte and saluted him with it. He picked up his coffee to do the same. She winked at him and he wanted to smile at her. But he could tell that she, too, was stoned.

He decided to ignore it. There was something more important than telling her she probably shouldn't get on her Vespa if she'd just done weed.

His face must have given him away, though, because Prynne said, “Seth. Come on. You know I smoke weed. Just because you don't, it doesn't mean—”

“Weed whacks me out. I can't even read when I do it.”

“Well, that's not the case for me, okay? And since I don't do it in front of you, you need to ease off if you just show up, without telling me you're coming, and I'm stoned.”

He said, “Yeah. Okay, okay,” but the truth was that she reeked of weed. It was like she'd taken a bath in it. He said, “You been doping all day?”

“Seth,
you
came
here
. I didn't invite you. I smoke with the guys and it's no big deal.”

“What's that mean anyway? ‘With the guys.' And why don't you want me to meet them?”

Prynne set down her latte. She observed him with her good eye. She said, “Is that what we're going to talk about? 'Cause if it is, I'm out of here. I love you, and I don't want to fight with you.”

She was right. Going in that direction was stupid, and it wasn't why he'd come. He said, “Sorry. I'm blowing it.” He went on to tell her the plan.

He had a proposition for her, he said. It had to do with the care of his grandfather. Grand was coming home, no doubt of that. There would be home health care aides to help him out. But his family wanted someone to be there to make sure they treated Grand right because sometimes when someone was old and vulnerable and not able to talk right . . . Prynne got that, huh?

“Sure,” Prynne said, although she cocked her head and Seth could tell she was wondering where this was leading.

Becca was there to make sure everything was okay from her after-school hours until the next morning, Seth told her. He himself could be there to make sure everything was okay on weekends. But on weekdays . . . from seven in the morning till Becca returned after school, someone else had to be there. Seth hoped it would be Prynne.

She said, “You mean to go back and forth from here to Whidbey every day? I can't afford that, Seth. I don't have money for the gas, not to mention for the ferry.”

“That's not what I'm thinking,” he told her.

“Then what? You planning to pick me up every day and cart me to your grandfather's place and then bring me back? How're you going to do that and still work?”

Seth pointed out to her that she didn't have a regular job and that she currently relied on her gigs with the fiddle to make money. He said to her, “What if we paid you? It would only be minimum wage, but you wouldn't have expenses because you could stay right on Whidbey at my parents' place.”

“Where? On that sleeping porch?”

“In my bedroom. We'll share it. You'd get room and board and minimum wage and all you have to do is keep an eye on how things're going with Grand during the day. You'd just watch out for him. Sort of make sure the home care person's doing the job. You could take him to PT, too, and help him practice whatever they tell him that he's s'posed to practice. You could make him lunch if the aide's doing something else, but that's it. Really, Prynne, it's no big deal.”

“Uh . . . how am I supposed to get him to PT, Seth? On the back of the Vespa?”

“You can use his truck.”

“And how am I supposed to get him inside the truck?”

Seth considered this. To this problem, there was a simple solution. “We'll trade. You take Sammy—”

Prynne smiled. “Wait! You'll let me drive your V-dub? Your perfectly restored, pristine, polished, always washed 1965 V-dub?”

He smiled back. “Hard to resist, huh? Yeah, you can drive Sammy and I'll take Grand's truck.”

She cocked her head. “Do your parents know about all this? Me moving into their house, showing up for meals, sharing a bedroom with you? How are they going to feel about that?”

“Sheesh, Prynne. They didn't even get married till after I was born, and my sister's
older
than me, okay? Figure that one out. And besides . . .” He reached for her hand, although his own was rough with work. But she didn't seem to mind and she laced their fingers together. “I want you to be on Whidbey,” Seth told her.

She seemed to be studying their joined hands, and at first Seth thought she wasn't going to reply. He thought he'd misread her somehow, that her feelings for him weren't as strong as his were for her. When she said “Can I have a couple of days to decide?” he was disappointed, and he knew his face showed it. He said, “Why? Don't you want to be with me?”

“I don't know how it'd all work out. I mean, such as it is, I have a life here.”

“You'd have one on Whidbey, too. You'd have more of a life because we'd be together.”

“In your parents' house,” she reminded him.

“Just at first.”

“I need a couple of days. And you need to go over all this with your parents.”

“Okay,” he said. “A couple of days.”

But he felt uneasy about her hesitation.

T
he following Monday Jenn McDaniels was running the trails behind South Whidbey High School. The school backed up to a large community park: a vast area of forest that was accompanied by a concrete skateboard bowl with jumps and rails, a playground for little ones, a baseball diamond, and enormous open lawns that were used for soccer. The forested section was filled with trails, and here the various athletic teams at the high school ran. Jenn's team was girls' soccer, varsity level. She was the center midfielder, and although soccer season was finished, it was her intention to make it onto the All Island Girls' Soccer team, whose tryouts were in May this year. She'd tried out during the previous year, but she hadn't put enough effort into her prep, so she hadn't made it past the first cut. That
wasn't
going to happen this time around. The All Island team was her key to an athletic scholarship. An athletic scholarship was her key to going to college. If she didn't go to college, she'd have nothing in her future but finding a lousy job on Whidbey, living at home, fighting with her mom about religion, and listening to her read the Bible aloud, special emphasis on Sodom and Gomorrah.

She was on her eighth time around the Waterman Loop, hurtling along the north side of the upper field where a fellow member of the high school team, a girl called Cynthia Richardson, was still working on her goalie skills. She'd been there each time Jenn had run past, in the company of another girl: Lexie Ovanov. Lexie wasn't a member of the soccer team, so she was pathetic at keeping the ball away from Cynthia. It didn't seem to matter to either of them, though, since every time Jenn dashed by, they were yelling at each other and shrieking with laughter at how bad Lexie was.

Jenn wasn't sure what the point was. It wasn't like Cynthia actually needed to train. She'd made the All Island team every year since ninth grade. She was a super player. She was also tough not to notice. She was five foot ten, she was blond, she was blue eyed, and she had a perfect complexion. She'd had a 4.0 average probably since kindergarten, and for that same amount of time she'd been one of the most popular girls in South Whidbey School District. So when she was elected homecoming queen, no one batted an eye. It was, after all, expected. But what wasn't expected was Cynthia taking Lexie Ovanov as her date to the homecoming dance. That had
definitely
made a statement.

“You are totally pathetic!” Jenn heard Cynthia call out to Lexie on a burst of laugher. “
Kick
the ball, dummy. This isn't bowling.”

“Kiss my butt,” was Lexie's reply.

“Bring it over here,” Cynthia called out.

Jenn ran on, past the field, into the woods, down the slope, under the trees. She came out at the top parking lot where Becca
King was waiting for her, a stopwatch in one hand and a clipboard in the other. Becca clicked the stopwatch and made a note. Jenn stumbled to a stop, breathing hard.

“Better,” Becca said.

“How much?”

Becca examined the clipboard and did the math. “Two point five seconds.”

“That sucks.”

“Isn't the point to keep shaving off seconds?”

“The point is not to be wrecked at the end of eight laps.”

Becca scratched her cheek and observed Jenn thoughtfully. “Well, it's not like I didn't tell you to give up smoking.”

“I gave it up!”

“When? Last week?”

“Very funny.” Jenn walked to a bench and plopped down. From there, she examined her friend. “You and my mom would get along great,” she told Becca. “You're both holier than holy.”

Becca walked over to join her. “You mean I get into heaven just 'cause I don't smoke? How cool is that!” She laughed. “Does it mean that otherwise I c'n be as bad as I want to be? 'Cause if it does, I'm signing up.”

“Great. Speaking in tongues will be your future,” Jenn told her.

“I'd sort of prefer to use my tongue for other stuff.”

“You, girl, are
very
bad.” Jenn bent to retie her shoes. They were old and filthy, a score from Good Cheer Thrift Store down in Langley. She'd tried to clean them up about six times but had
given up the effort. She knew she needed to replace them, but as always, she lacked the funds.

Becca seemed to know what she was thinking. She said, “How's the job hunt going?”

“It's not. I'd become a streetwalker if someone was actually out on the streets after five
P.M.
around here. What about you?”

“Nothing. There might be something with Mr. Darrow, but I don't know yet.”

“You still alone at Mr. Darrow's house?” Jenn sat back up, saw Becca nod, and said, “Ooohhh, that must be nice for you and Derric.” Jenn laughed when she saw the color sweep into Becca's cheeks. “So?” she encouraged her.

“So . . . what?”

“Come on. You're in a dream situation. You guys doing it?”

Becca's eyes widened. “Jenn!”

“What? Not my business? It's always the business of the BFF to know what the other BFF is up to. Come on. Give. Your secrets are totally safe with me.”

“Don't you have a shower to take?” Becca gestured vaguely in the direction of the high school, which sat beyond two baseball diamonds, the skateboard area, and the children's playground.

“That must mean yes.”

“No. It doesn't. I'm not ready.”

“To spill?”

“To have sex with Derric. Not the whole thing, I mean.”

Jenn rose from the bench. She stretched. As she did, she said
to Becca, “Aren't you worried he'll do it with someone else? I mean, he's a guy. He's . . . What is he anyway? Seventeen?”

“Eighteen.”

“Eighteen? Geez, in some cultures he'd already be married.
Aren't
you worried?”

“About him doing it with someone else?” Becca hooked up her ear thingy. She fiddled with the connection to the iPod on her waist. “He already did.”

Jenn felt her eyes bug out. “No way.”

“Way.”

“But he's, like, supremely into you. Now you
have
to put out. Are you . . . I mean . . . Are you doing anything at all?”

Becca became red to the roots of her hair. She said, “Jenn!”

“Okay. Okay. Just tell me this: naked or not.”

“Sometimes. And that's all I'm saying. I don't bug you about your love life.”

Jenn guffawed and slapped Becca on the back. “Like I have one?” was her response.

• • •

THEY PARTED WAYS
back at the school. Becca headed for her bike in the stands in front; Jenn made her way to the girls' locker room. Inside, she heard the showers running and over the sound of the water, singing. The choice of tune was “I Will Survive,” and Cynthia and Lexie were belting it out, with interruptions of “That's not how it goes!” “Is too!” “Is not!” And then laughter and laughter. Those two were very big on laughter.

Jenn went to her locker. She grabbed her towel and headed toward the showers herself. When she got there, it was to see Cynthia and Lexie soaping each other's bodies, though. She stopped dead because they'd also fallen silent. Before she could turn away and make tracks out of there, they stopped soaping and they started kissing. Jenn beat a retreat as fast as she could.

• • •

AT THIS HOUR,
the only way to get home was the island transit bus. Once Jenn had her backpack of homework, she plodded across the school's front parking lot and out to the shelter along Maxwelton Road. She was waiting there when a silver Honda with Seahawks stickers all over the driver's door came out of the parking lot and rolled her way.

Cynthia was driving. Lexie was in the passenger seat. Cynthia lowered her window and called out, “Jenn! You need a ride?”

The last thing Jenn wanted—aside from being naked with those two—was to be in a car with them. She said, “Nah. It's okay. The bus'll be here in a couple of minutes.”

“You sure?”

“Yep. Thanks, though.”

“We saw you on the trail,” Cynthia called back. “Looking good. Bye!”

Then she was gone and Jenn could breathe again. The two girls drove off in the opposite direction, toward Langley. It was just as well, Jenn thought, that she hadn't accepted Cynthia's offer because it would have taken the girl way the hell out of her way.

• • •

JENN HAD TO
ride two different bus routes to get home from the high school. This meant a wait in the wind and in the rain that had begun to spit from the sky when she alighted from the first bus, hung around for a bus from another route, and then alighted once again at a triangle of rough, cabin-like buildings that formed a hobbit-sized commercial area called Bailey's Corner. She could have ridden the second bus farther at that point, in order to end up closer to her home, but she wanted to talk to the proprietor of the small market that was the main feature of the Corner, and she knew from experience that he would be there till seven o'clock when he shut down for the night.

So she dodged through the rain and, with her backpack of homework slung over one shoulder, she dashed to the market. The door banged closed behind her.

Tiny Holiday was behind the counter, and he was neither. The size of a Jeep, he possessed a funereal air that had long suggested to his customers a serious lack of vacation time on sun-drenched beaches or in snowy ski resorts. He was hunched over a magazine when Jenn entered the premises, and he hid this reading material beneath the counter in a furtive move that suggested the publication's questionable nature.

“Say what, Jenn?” was his greeting. “Whatcha need?”

“A job,” she told him. “You been thinking any more about my proposal?”

“Big storm coming,” was his reply, with a look directed outside into the darkness. Both of them could hear the wind
howling, and a howling wind meant trees crashing onto the island roads and through people's roofs. “Your parents know you're out in this?”

“Course they know,” Jenn told him, a marginal falsehood. Since she wasn't yet home from school, they knew she was
somewhere
. “So I'm wondering if you've thought about the job? See, I could do 'bout anything for you, only it has to be in the morning because I got soccer after school. Or I could come here
after
soccer and close up the place for you, and that way you could go home and have dinner with your family. You'd get home around six or even five-thirty if I get lucky with the buses. What d'you say?”

“Too dangerous,” Tiny Holiday told her.

“What's too dangerous? Eating with your family? Why? Do they throw knives or something?”

He har-harred appreciatively but then said, “Too dangerous having a teenager here to close the place is what I mean. There's been break-ins all over South Whidbey and two armed robberies at the Wells Fargo over in Clinton. We got druggies living in the woods and coming out only when they need to score, and the only way they
can
score is with someone else's money. So the answer is still no.”

Jenn was not about to be deterred. “What about early morning?” she said. “Druggies don't like to get up early.”

Tiny rolled his eyes. “I'm not about to open this place any earlier than seven, girl.”

“But there'd be customers. People on the way to the ferry.
They'd buy coffee. They'd buy doughnuts. We could try it and see how it goes. I could open up for you at five. Or even four because of the early ferry.”

He shook his head. “Not enough business, Jenn. I'd be paying you more than I'd be taking in.” He raised his head as a loud
crack
indicated a heavy branch coming down nearby. He said, “You get home now. You can use the phone to call your dad to come pick you up if you'd like.”

She didn't want that. She wanted a job. She shook her head and left the place after telling Tiny Holiday that she'd be fine. Her parents would be too busy anyway to have to come up from Possession Point.

Just outside the little market, Jenn dug inside her backpack for her flashlight. There were no street lights on the island roads, and once she left Bailey's Corner for the long walk to Possession Road, she'd be in complete darkness with only the wind and rain as companions.

She set off into a frenzy of storm gusts. It was long way home, and she wanted to kick her own butt for having gotten off the bus in order to talk to Tiny Holiday again.

She needed a job. Now. Yesterday. Whenever. She had to come up with the fee for the All Island team, and she also had to grab funds somewhere in order to purchase better shoes and decent equipment, none of which was going to be on sale at any of the thrift stores on the island.

It took forty minutes for her to make the walk home, but at last she reached the pockmarked driveway that led to her family's ramshackle house. It was on a property that had seen its
heyday at least sixty years previously, and the features of this place were now piles of junk like old toilets and fishing nets and orange road cones, along with a single wide dump of a trailer that had been briefly occupied the previous year but was now as empty as her family's bank account.