Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water (26 page)

She heard a moan. She was still on the step leading to the trailer’s door, but the moan wasn’t coming from inside the trailer. It was coming from . . . Jenn concentrated hard. The rain hit the trailer and pinged on its roof, but there was no wind to add to that sound. Faintly, Annie’s music played and Annie’s cell phone began to ring. But that was it. And then . . . the moan again. It sounded near, like from under the trailer.

Jenn jumped off the step. Part of her said to get away because she sure as heck didn’t want to know what was under there. Part of her said that it was a wounded animal and wounded animals could be dangerous, so she needed to get her dad. Another part said ignore it altogether and by tomorrow it would be gone. But then the groan turned into a cry, and the cry spurred Jenn into action.

She went around the side of the trailer, dodging dropped logs from the woodpile, some nets of her dad’s, four bait buckets, and a pile of floats. At the back of the trailer where the propane tank was, she heard the moan again and then the cry. It was quite close.

The trailer’s skirt was partly removed, something Jenn herself had done when she first began to help Annie make the place livable. She should have put it back, but she hadn’t thought to do so. Now she crawled beneath it as the moan sounded once again.

She followed it. Whimpering began. Then a cry. Then a deep and chesty cough. A
human
cough, Jenn thought. This was no animal. Some person was hiding under the trailer.

She nearly backed away at that point. The shadows were deep beneath the trailer, and since darkness was rapidly falling outside, it wasn’t going to be long before nothing at all would be visible to her. She moved cautiously, calling out, “Where are you? I can’t see you. Who are you? You okay?”

Nothing but the moan answered her. And then . . . ahead of her a shadow deeper than the rest of the shadows beneath the trailer. She advanced on it, her heart beating wildly. She said, “You okay? You need help?”

Nothing at first in reply to this. Jenn eased her way forward. And then she saw it.

A narrow band of light seeped from a worn spot somewhere within the trailer itself. Into the band of light an arm extended, its hand out and its fingers bent in supplication. The arm was attached to a filthy girl with matted hair so long it seemed to grow to her knees. She had grime on her face and streaks of mud on her clothes. She wore only a jacket, jeans, a pullover sweater, and socks. She wore only one shoe, a mud-clogged Nike. Her other foot looked injured. She herself looked half dead.

Her eyes met Jenn’s and she shrank away. Jenn said, “You wait here,” as if it were possible for the girl to run off in the state she was in. She added, “I’m going to get my dad.”

She went to do so.

“B
etter go faster,” Jenn said to her mother. They were tearing along the southern part of Cultus Bay Road. Jenn’s dad had phoned ahead to the Langley Clinic to make sure Rhonda Mathieson didn’t leave for the day, so there was no fear in her that the clinic would be closed. There was a lot of fear, on the other hand, that the strange girl in the backseat would die before they got there.

“We still need to be careful, Jenny,” Kate McDaniels said. “Deer jumps out of the trees and we’re in trouble, sweetheart.”

“She looks bad.”

“Then we need to pray.” Which was what she did, and since Kate McDaniels was evangelical with all the trimmings, she knew a lot of ways to talk to God. Some involved tongues, but she didn’t go there now, for which Jenn was grateful. Instead she just asked the Lord to stay with them all and to guide them in knowledge of His Father’s ways.

Jenn watched the girl. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was shallow. They’d hustled her into the car and covered her with a blanket, but her injured foot stuck out and it smelled like bad meat. Jenn could see the pus oozing out of her sock. It made her queasy. She turned away.

“D’you know her, Jenny?” her mother asked.

“Nope.”

“Odd.”

Indeed it was. The far south end of the island was sparsely populated. Possession Point was less populated still. Everyone in the place became known quickly. But not this girl. Jenn had never seen her.

When they pulled into the parking lot of the Langley Clinic, Rhonda Mathieson came outside immediately, zipping her fleece against the brisk April wind. She looked into the backseat as Jenn and her mother got out of the car. She said, “Let’s get her inside,” and the three of them together muscled the girl into a sitting position first and, once out of the car, into a carrying position second.

They went into one of the examining rooms, which the girl filled quickly with the terrible stench of her unwashed body, her unwashed hair, her unwashed clothes, and her infected foot. Without a comment, Rhonda handed out medical masks. She said, “Bruce told me you
found
her?”

“Under Eddie Beddoe’s old trailer,” Jenn said. “I heard a noise. I went to look.”

“Good on you, Jenn.” Rhonda put on surgical gloves and grabbed her stethoscope. The girl’s head lolled on her chest. She was sitting on the examining table, but she seemed only half-conscious. Her eyes were closed and she swayed to one side. Kate McDaniels grabbed her and lowered her to the table.

Rhonda began to examine the girl, listening first to her chest. She murmured, “Airway is clear but her lungs are congested pretty bad.”

“Pneumonia,” Kate murmured.

“Bronchitis more likely.”

“Is she dying?” Jenn asked.

“No. But she needs some serious care.”

“What about her foot?” Kate asked.

“Let’s have a look.” Rhonda picked the girl’s foot up and manipulated it gently. It wasn’t broken, she told them, but it was in bad shape. They would have to see about it. And she would have to stay off it.

“Seeing about it” involved first removing the disgusting sock and then exposing the foul and infected skin. There was pus everywhere, as well as debris, and when Rhonda began to clean the foot, Jenn felt her gorge rising at the sight, the smell, and the
clink
of something taken from a wound and deposited into a stainless steel basin. She moved away from the table and stepped back against the wall. The girl moaned and her eyelids fluttered.

“Looks like she’s walked miles and miles,” Rhonda murmured. “I can’t imagine how she did it with her foot like this.” She looked closely at the girl, who remained supine and close-eyed on the table. “Who are you, honey?” she asked her. “Where are you from?”

• • •

THEY HAD ONE
answer before they left the clinic when Jenn’s dad called with some information. He and Jenn’s brothers Andy and Petey had gone outside to scout around once Kate and her mom had left for the clinic. They’d discovered an old wheeled suitcase behind the woodpile. There were clothes inside. There was a collection of rotten fruit. There was a whole layer of nutrition bars. And there was a note.

He read it to them when Rhonda put the phone on speaker:

My name is
Cilla. I’m eighteen years old. I’m a good girl. I can’t talk. I can hear but I don’t always understand what you mean. It’s time for me to be out on my own. I can work if you show me what to do. I want to work in exchange for food and a place to sleep.

Kate’s eyes filled with tears when she heard this.

Jenn said, “How c’n she hear but not talk?”

Kate said, “Autism, Rhonda?”

Rhonda said, “If that’s the case, the parents need to be shot for . . . for whatever they did. Did they just dump her at Possession Point?” Into the phone she spoke to Bruce McDaniels. “You hang on to that, Bruce. You hear me? You hold on to that note.”

“Sure. But why?”

“Because Dave’s going to want to deal with this. Someone abandoned this poor girl somewhere and, eighteen or not, abandoning a teenager who can’t even talk . . . Don’t get me started. You’ll be hearing from Dave.”

• • •

RHONDA CONCLUDED HER
dealings with them by scouting out a pair of crutches, telling them Cilla needed to stay off her bad foot, and packing up clean bandaging as well as three kinds of antibiotics. One set was for her lungs, she said, and the other two were for the infection in her foot. “Make sure she takes them all,” she instructed them. And to the girl, “Cilla? You’ve got to take every one of these pills. No cheating, okay? Cilla? You hear me, honey?”

Cilla’s eyes opened at that for the very first time. Rhonda smiled and said, “Good. You know your name, don’t you? Well, I’ve got some crutches here for you and you’re a pretty sick young lady, but you’re going to be okay if you do like I say. I bet that foot of yours hurts like hell. So you use these, okay?” She held up the crutches.

Cilla shrank back like a puppy expecting to be hit. Rhonda reached out and gently petted her filthy head. “Don’t be scared,” she told the girl. “You’re safe with us.”

“I can drive her up to Whidbey General if you think she can tolerate the trip,” Kate said. “Jenny can sit with her”—which was the last thing Jenn wanted, as the girl’s speechlessness gave her the shivers, and her smell was so bad Jenn had a good idea it would rub off on her without any trouble—“in the backseat, and if you phone ahead for us—”

“Kate, this girl with her troubles . . . ? Whidbey General is going to scare the hell out of her. I’d take her home myself, but she’s got to be supervised twenty-four/seven. She’s got to take that medicine. D’you think . . . ? I hate to ask it, but I know that Bruce is usually at home.”

Kate didn’t hesitate. Nor was Jenn surprised. Her mom could recite scripture by heart, and taking care of the sick was going to be somewhere in one of the Testaments. “Help us get her to the car,” Kate said. “She can share Jenny’s room till Dave finds her people.”

Oh, great, Jenn thought.

• • •

EVERYONE CAME OUTSIDE
when Kate and Jenn returned to Possession Point. Even Annie emerged from her trailer, alerted by the boys that a half-dead girl had been hiding right beneath her and she could’ve been murdered at night in her bed. Jenn found her and she was all bloody and foaming at the mouth like she had rabies, was Petey’s contribution. His father cuffed him and told him not to be mouthy, but what he’d said was enough to get Annie away from whatever she was doing once she heard the car.

One thing everyone noticed was the girl’s smell. The boys shouted “Peee-you!” and shoved to get a better look at her. “Dad says she’s Cilla,” Petey cried. “Hey Cilla! Hey Cilla!” Andy shouted.

Bruce grabbed each boy by the shoulder and gave him a good shake. The girl shrank back and looked around fearfully. Then she stretched out her hand at Annie’s trailer.

“Well, looks like she recognizes where she is,” Bruce noted.

They began together to get her from the car and into the McDaniels house, but it soon became apparent that the girl was going to have nothing to do with this. She started to fight them. She made inarticulate cries that tried to communicate
something
and she flung her entire arm toward the trailer, her fingers spread wide.

“Good Lord. She
can’t
want to stay in there,” Kate said. And then quickly, “Sorry, Annie, but . . .”

Annie held up her hand. “No offense taken. And there’s not enough room anyway.”

But nothing else was going to do because every attempt they made to get Cilla into the gray clapboard house was thwarted by her arms, her legs, her shrieks, her arched back, her flung head. Bruce said he didn’t think they had a choice in the matter, and Kate agreed. The boys said, “Phooey! No fair! We wanted her!” and stomped up the steps to their rickety porch before their dad could discipline them once again. Kate said, “Annie?” and Jenn waited to see what Annie would do. This would put a real cramp in her style, she thought. It would also slow down her attempts to get to Nera.

Annie didn’t have much choice in the matter, considering the girl’s condition and the fact that Bruce and Kate promised to help care for Cilla. She said reluctantly, “I guess she could sleep on the couch.”

“Bruce, get the extra blankets and sheets and pillows,” Kate said quickly, as if afraid that Annie Taylor would change her mind. This was pretty reasonable, Jenn thought. Annie didn’t look like someone who was throwing out the red carpet.

• • •

ONCE THEY GOT
Cilla into the trailer, within five seconds it became clear what Job One was. The stench of the girl filled the whole place. Someone was going to have to wash her.

Kate McDaniels said, “We could . . . Could we start with her hair? We could do that in the kitchen, since she needs to keep that foot of hers dry.”

But they soon found out that anything having to do with cleaning the girl was going to be easier said than done. She seemed terrified of water. When they eased her to the sink and turned on the faucet to let the water warm, she reared back, lost her balance, and nearly fell as she tried to retreat. “We only want to wash your hair, hon,” got them only a response of inarticulate cries and yowling. This grew louder when they made a try at bending her over the sink. Jenn figured that the noise the girl made was loud enough to be heard all the way down to the cottages at Possession Shores.

Still, it was obvious the girl had to be cleaned. She needed to be washed and scrubbed and the clothes she was wearing had to be burned. And all of this needed to happen soon, Jenn figured, before the rest of them passed out from the smell.

She said, “She thinks you’re going to hurt her, I bet.”

“Jenn’s right,” Kate said. “This isn’t going to work.”

“We can hardly take her outside and hose her off, can we?” Annie sounded impatient. This unexpected visitor was putting a real crimp in her plans.

Kate frowned at Annie’s tone. She seemed to assess Annie for a moment before she turned back to Cilla and spoke to her gently, the way Rhonda had spoken to her at the clinic. She used her name a lot. She told her the plan: Just trust us enough to bend over the sink and let us wash your hair. We won’t hurt you, hon.

“We want to wash your hair, Cilla. Will you let us do that? Just your hair, hon. It won’t hurt. I promise.”

As Kate talked, she rubbed Cilla’s back, and perhaps it was the gentle tone of her voice or the softness and the warmth of her touch, but the girl grew calmer. She allowed herself finally to be led to the sink. Kate kept up the calm talking and the gentle rubbing—almost like petting an animal, Jenn thought—as Annie washed the girl’s hair.

Next came bathing, but there was only a shower and it was pretty clear that Cilla wouldn’t be able to stand under a showerhead and wash herself. That left someone to volunteer to go into the shower with her once they had her foot encased in a plastic bag. When Annie sighed and said, “I guess I’ll do it,” what Jenn thought of at once was what could happen. She thought of Annie coming on to her. She thought of Annie with this poor girl who couldn’t even talk. She said, “No!” without a pause.

Annie looked at her long. “Oh please. As if. It’s not what you think.”

Kate McDaniels looked from Jenn to Annie. Again her eyebrows drew together. Jenn knew she wondered, and who could blame her? But there was no way she was going to explain to her mom what her outburst had meant. She said, “I was just thinking . . .” and could come up with nothing except, “How can you get her into the shower without Mom?”

Annie said, “Well I’m going to have to, aren’t I? There’s barely room for two people in that bathroom and no way can three fit. So unless you want to be the one to wash her . . .” She said this last pointedly.

Jenn felt her face take fire. But she shrugged and said nothing. When Annie had gotten Cilla to the bathroom, Kate McDaniels said quietly, “Jenn. Is there something . . . ?”

To avoid an answer which she didn’t want to give, Jenn went outside where her dad and the boys had left the girl’s suitcase on the front porch of the house. The rotten fruit had pretty much done a job on the clothes. There was nothing inside that wasn’t creeped out by the smell of the food gone bad or by the food itself. She went in the house and rooted around. Her own clothes would be way too small for the girl, and so would her mom’s. But she found a thrift store flannel shirt and a threadbare pair of jeans among her dad’s belongings, and she took them back to the trailer, with her father and the boys following behind her to witness the next development.