The Edge of the Shadows (23 page)

“Wait for
what
?”

“The quickening.”

FORTY-FOUR

T
he problem for Becca was one of application. Diana said that you learn something and then you apply it to life. But how was she supposed to do that when half of what she learned came from whispers and now she knew that she couldn't trust them? So could she trust the memory pictures she was starting to receive? Probably not. Becca realized for the first time that this wasn't some special gift she had. Instead it was a terrific cosmic joke bringing ruin on her life and having the potential to bring ruin on the lives of others.

Becca understood from what had happened with Jeff Corrie and Connor West that every single whisper she daily heard or had ever heard was open to doubt. She'd drawn conclusions about so many things based upon those broken-up thoughts, and now she had to sort back through them and try to work out what to do next since sitting around and being patient and waiting for the truth to come to her like a bolt of lightning out of the sky were not options.

So she couldn't trust the whispers and she couldn't trust the memory pictures she'd begun to receive. She was thus down to trusting one thing only: her instincts. They would have to be good.

• • •

SHE AND SETH
arranged a time for their trip to Broad Valley Growers. It was outside of La Conner, a town that lay next to the Swinomish Channel, which emptied like a river into Skagit Bay. It was on the mainland to the north of Whidbey and just to the east of another island called Fidalgo. The islands themselves and the mainland were connected by bridges in this northern location. The first of them was some fifty miles from Langley, and Seth said that he was glad to drive Becca up there. So she waited for him on the designated day with her stomach uneasy about what they might find when they got to the tulip farm.

She was inside the house. She'd packed them a lunch and she was standing at the living room window, which looked out onto Ralph Darrow's garden of lawn, rhododendrons, and specimen trees. Ralph was raking beneath these trees, and she'd been watching him. He was moving slowly. He was pausing a lot and looking around, as if unsure of what he was supposed to do next. Then he seemed to remember and he went on raking. Moving as slowly and deliberately as he was, Ralph was going to take days to clear out all the leaves.

As Becca watched, Gus came into view, loping across the lawn from the parking area on the hill. Ralph greeted the dog, wrested a ball from Gus's mouth and threw it in the direction of the pond. At that point, he seemed perfectly normal again. Hands on his hips, he watched the dog run. Then he tilted his wide-brimmed gardening hat back on his head and waved at Seth, who was just coming down the path toward the house.

Becca made sure Ralph's lunch was where he could find it, then she gathered her things and went outside. At once she caught a whisper, which sounded to her like
glass eye
but could have been
pass by
. She didn't know who was thinking it—Seth or his granddad—and she no longer believed what she heard anyway. Plus the whisper itself didn't make sense, so in some irritation she rustled for the AUD box. She clipped this onto the waistband of her jeans and shoved the ear bud into place.

Seth and Ralph were in conversation as she crossed the lawn to them. Gus came charging up from the pond in her direction, clearly delighted to have yet another person to throw his ball. She paused to do this and by the time she reached grandson and grandfather, she could see and hear that things weren't fine between them.

Ralph was saying, “Damn it all, Seth, when someone has three things going on at once and one of them is taking down a phone message while smoke's pouring out of the fireplace because the flue didn't get itself open . . . I think I c'n be forgiven for not getting down every detail.”

To this Seth said, “Grand, you're not cheating with food, are you? This cholesterol thing—”

“Now you listen to me,” Ralph said stormily. “I've lived well into my seventies without a bunch of damn Darrows watching my every move and this has got to stop.” He caught sight of Becca and added, “You have anything at all to do with this current inquisition, Miss Becca? You my personal Mata Hari?”

She said, “Mata Who?” and he replied with, “What in damnation are they teaching in school these days?” But even as he spoke there was something in his eyes that spoke of fear.

Seth said, “Okay, Grand. You made your point. Anyways, me and Becca're going up to La Conner to see what this is all about.” He called for Gus and said to Becca, “You ready?”

Ralph said, “You're crazy, the two of you. Whoever called is gonna call back once the message isn't answered the way they want. Why don't you sit tight and wait for that?”

Because we can't, was Becca's thought.

Seth's response was a shrug as he told his grandfather it was a nice day for a drive and Becca hadn't ever seen Skagit Valley anyway. Ralph waved them off with a grumpy, “Kids,” and he turned back to his work.

As they climbed the hill path to Seth's car, Seth said to her in a low voice, “I dunno, Beck. I think he's just getting old.”

Her reply was, “Maybe, but his handwriting . . .” She set her backpack down. She still had the message that Ralph had written, and she hunted through her backpack to find it. She showed it to Seth because he of all people would be able to see the change in Ralph's writing.

This he did because he looked from the message back to Ralph in the garden. He said to Becca, “Is he taking his blood pressure like he's supposed to?”

“I set the reader out for him every morning but sometimes he says he'll take it later.”

“You think he might be stashing junk food somewhere? Chips, cheese, Cheetos? Is he going out for burgers and fries with anyone?”

“If he is, I don't know it. And if he's stashing food, I wouldn't even know where to look. I haven't checked his shop. Or the garden shed. And if he's stashing stuff in the forest, I'd
never
find it.”

Seth continued walking, Gus shooting ahead of them up to the car. He said nothing more till they reached the VW and were inside, with Gus panting between them from the back seat. Then Seth said, “I hate to turn Grand over to Dad. He'll come over and give Grand hell, and believe me, you don't want that to happen.”

“Well, he knows I'm watching him. He doesn't like it and I don't blame him.”

Seth started up the car and put it into reverse. “Maybe we're making a big deal out of nothing. It was only a message. It was only one time. And like he said, he was in a hurry.”

Only, Becca thought, Ralph's whispers had changed as well. They were choppy. Individual words were broken up, unlike what they had been before. Of course, at one time this would have meant something serious to her, except now she doubted just about everything. She wasn't sure what else to do, but still she worried about Seth's grandfather, as well as the quickening and whether he was part of it.

The journey to La Conner took quite some time. Seth drove them to the far north end of Whidbey Island, where the water flowed swiftly through a narrow strait called Deception Pass, meeting the Strait of Juan de Fuca one hundred eighty feet below a two-lane bridge. This bridge took them onto Fidalgo Island, and as it was another sun-drenched day, there were tourists aplenty at this spot, posing for pictures on the bridge with some of the myriad islands in the strait as a backdrop.

A larger highway coursed from Fidalgo Island onto the mainland. Here a wide valley opened up. It stretched on forever, occasionally interrupted by a copse of trees, a farmhouse, and a barn but otherwise arranged in neat fields upon which at this time of year nothing appeared to be growing. But Seth told Becca that planting was about to begin. For this was tulip country, brilliantly lit in spring by millions of the flowers that made the landscape look like Holland.

Seth suggested that they eat their lunch before visiting Broad Valley Growers. Becca was in a lather to get to this farm, but she said okay since Seth was doing her a favor in bringing her to this place.

He drove them through the town. La Conner sat right on the river-like channel, looking across at one of the many Indian reservations in the state. This began an area that was thick with forest, reached by a bright orange bridge near which Seth parked. They got out, Gus pitched himself joyously toward the channel's water, and Becca soon discovered why Seth had wanted to pause and have lunch before going on to Broad Valley Growers.

He'd met someone. She was called Prynne, and she was “a majorly excellent” fiddler. He was trying to talk her into joining Triple Threat. But the way he said this told Becca that something else was going on besides Seth Darrow looking for a fiddler for his gypsy jazz group.

She said, “Seth, how cool! When do I get to meet her?”

He said, “Dunno,” but she could tell he was pleased that
she
was pleased. Then he added that the girl wore an eye patch when she was playing the fiddle because she'd had cancer as a child and had lost her eye. She had a glass eye now but she didn't wear it when fiddling, he told her.

Glass eye,
Becca thought. That
was
what she'd heard. She felt the first relief she'd experienced since learning she'd misinterpreted Jeff Corrie's whispers that long ago day in San Diego.

They spent a little more time by the river, throwing the ball for Gus because no way was he going to get back into the VW without having had his bit of fun. But then they were on their way, and Becca's insides began fluttering as she understood how much closer they were to solving at least one small mystery.

They'd uncovered the location of Broad Valley Growers without any trouble as it had both a Web site and a Facebook page. So Becca knew the road on which the farm sat, but until they reached the place, what she didn't know was how close it was to the interstate highway. This was the same highway that she and her mother had traveled. It rolled north right up the center of California, and it did much the same in the states of Oregon and Washington till it got to the border of Canada. When Becca saw this, her heart pounded in excitement because she realized how it all might have happened: her mom dropping her off in Mukilteo to catch the ferry over to Whidbey, her mom returning to the interstate and driving north, her mom getting tired and pulling off the road and finding herself in need of rest or food or someone to help repair her car or
whatever,
but in any case ending up at Broad Valley Growers.

They'd have an Internet connection. She'd have kept watch. She'd now know that Connor West had been found alive and well. She'd be peeved at Becca—okay, all right, and who could blame her—for having misinterpreted Jeff Corrie's whispers. But all would be forgiven and they'd be reunited.

Gus seemed to pick up on Becca's growing excitement. From the back seat, he whined. Seth glanced her way and shot her a smile. “You okay?” he asked her. She nodded.

Broad Valley Growers was enormous. It seemed to be a place that not only grew tulips but, in the season, offered various activities for tourists who came to the area to see the colors. The farm was introduced by an arch over a drive, and this drive led not into a farm yard but rather into a parking lot suitable for fifty cars or more. To one side of this sat the biggest barn Becca had ever seen. Its white paint was fresh, and its tall wide door was partially open, allowing someone's rap music to beat the outside air. Opposite this barn was a similarly painted farmhouse with a wide front porch. This house was shaded by a sugar maple, a blaze of red and orange against the pure blue sky.

They got out when Seth parked, nearer to the house than to the barn. In their wake, Gus leapt to the ground. They'd given him some playtime, but clearly not enough because he began to gambol around the house. He snuffled and barked when he spied a chicken enclosure, and he was shooting toward it when a barking Dalmatian came flying off the porch. This dog was followed by two dachshunds.

A chaos of barking erupted from all four dogs. Seth started shouting, “Gus! No! Come!” and into this a bell began to ring energetically. Becca and Seth swung toward the sound, which turned out to be coming from the front porch. A woman had dashed out of the house and into the noise. It seemed the bell was her attempt to still it.

It worked. Three of the dogs retreated, silenced. Gus continued. Seth strode over to him and grabbed his collar. He said, “Hey, bad dog! When're you gonna listen up?” and then to the woman who'd stopped ringing the bell, “Sorry. He's a doofus, but he wouldn't've hurt these guys.” He nodded at the other dogs, particularly at the dachshunds, who'd gone back up onto the porch, where they kept a growling watch on the interlopers.

The woman had a dish towel hanging from the waistband of an apron she wore. They'd interrupted her in the midst of baking something, it seemed, because her hands were dusty with flour. She said, “Can I help you two?” She sounded pleasant, which Becca decided was a good thing. She removed the ear bud just to have a listen to anything that might float by in the air.

What she heard was
odd one never too sure
and
come in all sizes is what Jeff says.
At the
Jeff
part, Becca jumped back as if she'd had a shock from an ungrounded outlet.

She said, “Seth, I don't think so,” and she would have retreated at once, but he said, “Huh? What?” and looked confused. He added, “He's okay, Beck,” and she figured he was referring to the dog, trying to reassure her about Gus's behavior. There wasn't much she could do to clarify matters.

Seth said to the woman, pointing to himself, “Seth Darrow. This is Becca King.”

“Darla Vickland,” she replied pleasantly.

“This's gonna sound dumb,” Seth told her, “but someone from here called my granddad over on Whidbey. He couldn't remember who it was or what they wanted. So we came to see.”