The Edge of the Shadows (24 page)

What in God's name
and
double doofus on toast
and
Jeff is going to want to know
and
some kind of trick
made Becca put the ear bud back in place. Darla Vickland said in some confusion, “Let me understand. You two have come all the way from Whidbey Island because of a phone message?”

Seth said, “He didn't know who it was for, see. Could have been for Becca here or for this dude called Parker Natalia or it could've been for Grand himself only the point is he can't remember and since it could've been important, especially for Becca . . . I guess this sounds kinda lame, huh?”

Worse and worse, Becca thought. They looked like complete idiots. She burst out with, “Is anyone, like, staying with you? I mean, a boarder or something like that? It might be a lady but it could be a man? Someone who maybe used your phone without you knowing?”

The woman's expression changed. She said, “Oh dear, I wonder if one of those darn kids was playing a prank. Listen, why don't you two come inside and let me get my husband?” She smiled and cocked her head and added, “If you wouldn't mind putting your dog in the car, I've got apple pies freshly baked. Let me just get Jeff because he'd probably like to know about this.”

Becca clutched Seth's arm and said, “We need to—”

But Seth cut in with, “Apple pie? Righteous,” and without a moment to consider that the farm wife might be anything from an ax murderer to a cannibal, he led Gus toward the VW to put him inside, prefatory to gorging himself on her fresh apple pie. Reluctantly, Becca followed him.

The woman walked in the direction of the barn as Becca said fiercely to Seth, “We gotta get out of here. This is a dead end. Or it's not. And it's probably not. Because she said Jeff. Did you
hear
her say Jeff?”

Seth opened the car door and Gus jumped inside. He riffled through the glove compartment for something, brought out a milk bone, and handed it over to the dog. Gus crunched happily and remained in place because the one thing about the Lab that everyone knew was that Gus would do anything if more food was in the offing, including obeying the command to stay.

Seth shut the door and turned to Becca. He caught the expression on her face because he said, “Beck, chill. There's more than one Jeff on the planet.”

“No!” she said. “I got to get out of here. Or I got to hide. Just in case. Because what if it is? And she said a prank. And if he got one of those kids to call because she also said kids and Jeff could talk any kid into anything and—”

“Too late now.” Seth was looking past Becca in the direction of the barn. “Here he comes. So. That your stepdad or what?”

Becca was afraid to turn and to see the truth, but there was nothing left but to do it. She slowly swung around, knowing beyond anything that, having made such a royal mess out of things, it would be icing on the cake of all the disasters she'd brought upon herself to find Jeff Corrie striding across the farm yard.

Only . . . it wasn't Jeff Corrie. It was just an ordinary man in jeans and a flannel shirt with a great dome of a shining bald head. And Becca would have noticed more of him and tried to decide if he presented danger to her had he been alone or even accompanied only by his wife. But right behind him came five kids of varying ages, laughing, chattering, goofing with each other and with him. And even these kids Becca might have noticed more closely had not one of them been a girl upon whose face Becca's gaze fell and in whose presence every breath of air whooshed right out of Becca's body.

The girl was tall for her age, which had to be around fourteen years. She wore jeans and a T-shirt and rubber boots. She wore a baseball cap with
Indians
scrolled on it so her face was shadowed but despite this Becca would have known her anywhere. For she was bitter-chocolate dark just like her brother, and if she ever smiled, Becca was sure it would be her brother's smile as well.

“Rejoice,” she murmured as everything about the telephone message became clear in an instant.

FORTY-FIVE

D
espite Isis's apology to her, despite her terrible story about the death of her baby brother, Hayley remained uneasy. She completely knew why. It all had to do with Parker. So just two nights after Isis had come to the farm, Hayley logged onto her family's computer and had a look at the girl's Facebook page. Isis was—as Hayley had come to learn—the least discreet individual she'd ever known, so whatever was going on between her and Parker was probably going to be there in living color.

It didn't take long for her to see that Isis's tale of her tree house encounter with Parker Natalia had pretty much happened the way she'd claimed. For there were pictures aplenty of Isis and Parker, and among them were shots taken in the tree house. Central to these was one of Parker with his shirt off sitting on the edge of the very same cot onto which he'd so lovingly lowered Hayley. Central to these was also one of Isis and Parker together, positioned in such a way that it wasn't rocket science to figure out that most of their clothes were off. And then there were the pictures from the Maxwelton party with Isis hanging all over him. And there were the pictures of them inside the pub in Langley and standing next to Parker's car.

Of course, all of these pictures predated Hayley's own involvement with Parker, but that wasn't the point. The point was Parker and “watch out for that guy” and what Hayley figured that actually meant.

Okay, all right, she told herself. Now she knew. Maybe Isis didn't care that he was a watch-out-for-that-guy-he-could-be-trouble individual and maybe she was posting pictures of herself with him in order to make Brady jealous down in Palo Alto. But Hayley
did
care about these kinds of things. She cared about who was going to be her first man and she cared about not making a total fool of herself.

• • •

AS IT HAPPENED,
Parker called that same evening, the first time she'd heard from him in several days. He said, “Hey. I'm sorry to be out of touch. I should've called, but I was waiting to get this—”

“I can't talk right now,” she said abruptly.

There was a silence at his end. Then he said, “Is something wrong? Is your dad okay? I've been thinking about you nonstop but every time I start to call something happens.”

“I've got a ton of homework to do,” she said.

“Oh. Okay. But this will only take a minute because I was wondering if you—”

“I'm totally busy, Parker.” She hung up. She understood that this wasn't quite fair of her, but at the moment she truly didn't want to get hooked into the warm mellow sound of his voice.

Five minutes after she hung up, she heard the front doorbell ring. Thirty seconds after that Cassidy burst into her room. “There's a guy talking to Dad in the living room but he wants to talk to
you
,” she said. At that same moment, their mom called up the stairs, “Hayley? Parker's got something to give you.”

Hayley pushed away from her desk. She felt queasy at the thought of seeing him. But there was no real escape at this point.

She went downstairs. He'd come out of the living room, and he was waiting for her. Thankfully, no one else decided they had to witness her meeting with him, so he was alone. He had a CD in his hand. He extended it to her.

“I was at the end of the driveway when I called,” he confessed with a sheepish smile. “I c'n tell you've got a lot going on but I wanted you to have this.”

This
was BC Django 21's music. When Hayley took the disc from him and looked at the cover, she saw that his was one of the faces on it.

“I'd love to listen to it with you right now,” he told her. “But with all that's going on here . . . Maybe tomorrow?”

She looked up from the CD. He seemed to read the wariness on her face, because he said, lowering his voice, “Is everything okay?”

Well, Hayley thought, he'd given her the opening she needed. So she said, “Come here, okay?” and she took him outside and onto the front porch.

He said, “What's wrong?” when she turned to him, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. It was colder than she thought it would be, and she should have put on a fleece because she shuddered. Considerately, he moved at once to take off his jacket. Somehow that made everything inside her break loose at once.

“I don't like users,” was how she put it. “I don't like liars. I don't like having to sort through what someone tells me to figure out which part of it is actually the truth and which part is a lie.”

Parker's mouth opened, shut. Then he said, “What're you talking about?”

“Hooking up with women and dumping them. You and Isis, to be exact.”

He looked past her, out into the dark fields beyond the house, then back again. “Me and Isis
what
?”

It was the pause that got to her. He'd so obviously used it to decide how to play her. “You and Isis and
sex
,” Hayley said baldly. “You were in the tree house with her, you had sex, you used that cot, and you were planning the same for me. Only you found out I'm a virgin and that changed things for you so now—”

He held up his hands. “
What's
going on?”

“You know what's going on,” she said. “You and Isis and you and me and you and who-knows-because-it-could-be-anyone.”

“Me and Isis? Look, I
told
you that dingbat was hanging around and I said she was acting like . . . like I don't know . . . like we were a couple, like we
are
a couple. But I never gave her any encouragement.”

“Oh please,” she said. “You were going after me just like you went after her.”

“No way. I told you she wasn't in the tree house when you asked me about that cigarette thing she uses.
And
I told you I wasn't interested in her. Jesus, Hayley. What's happening here? I thought you and me—”

“So did I. But you tell one story and the facts tell another.”

“What facts? What d'you think? That I'm two-timing you with Isis? Why the hell would I do that?”

“So what're you saying? You and Isis never did it? You never did it in the tree house with her? You never had sex with her and then moved on to me for the same thing?”

“'
Course
not.”

“And that's your story?”

“What other is there?”

The one that Isis's pictures told, Hayley thought. But she didn't say it. Instead she handed the CD back to Parker and told him to keep it.

• • •

“YOU CAN'T LET
this
mean
so much, Hayley.” Isis had been waiting outside the door to the band room when Hayley emerged.

“It's no big deal,” Hayley told her, although that was a total lie. She'd thought that saying goodbye to Parker would take one concern away from her, but it hadn't worked like that. What
was
she? she wondered. In love with the rat? It was like he'd taken up residence in her brain.

Finding the auditorium doors locked, Isis pulled her over to the girls' restroom and they ducked inside. She checked the stalls, found one engaged, and waited impatiently while a lone girl finished up and departed. Then she turned to Hayley and said, “Let me tell you how it happened.”

“I don't care how it happened. I just care that he lied.”

“Good grief, Hayley, wouldn't you have lied in the same situation? There he is on your front porch, all hopeful about taking your relationship to the next level. And you bring up me and him having sex. What d'you expect? ‘Oh sure, Isis and I did it but it was no big deal compared to how I feel about you.' Would
you
have said that in his position?”

“I hope I would have said something truthful,” Hayley said.

Isis fished in her shoulder bag. She brought out her electronic cigarette, saying, “I'm gonna tell you what happened.”

“I don't want to hear—”

“If you don't hear, you're going to imagine stuff. We were in the tree house. I don't know why he's saying we weren't except he probably panicked when you brought me up. But we were there and we smoked some weed. We got super loaded and he kissed me and I kissed him back because the one thing that dude knows how to do is kiss. Anyway, before we really thought about it . . . I mean, who really thinks when someone's that hot.”

“I don't want to hear—”

“You got to. So we had our clothes off and we were . . . you know . . . just doing it like monkeys or whatever. And okay it was excellent but that
doesn't
matter 'cause the only reason I was doing it in the first place was to get at Brady. I know he looks at my Facebook page because he spends, like, half his life on Facebook. So I knew he'd see pictures of me with Parker. But it didn't
mean
anything to either of us. It was just sex. I bet he was thinking of you the whole time. He's totally nuts about you and you'd be way so dumb to dump him just because him and me . . . Because like I say, it wasn't
about
him and me. It was just something that happened.”

“When?” Hayley asked her. “When were you two in the tree house?”

Isis thought about this. “I asked him if he wanted to go to the pub. That place in Langley on Second Street? I invited him. See? He didn't even ask me out, for God's sake. After, we went back to the tree house and that's when it happened. And, Hayley, this is the part you got to believe, okay? I planned it all.”

“What?”

“
You
know. Look, I needed something to happen because of Facebook and the pictures and Brady. I don't think Parker was even gonna, you know, take off my top.
I
had to do it. And okay, he went along with it all. I didn't exactly have to rape him. But what I want you to know is that I was the one—”

Hayley stopped her, but this time it wasn't because of the information. Or rather, it
was
because of the information, just not the particular details Isis was giving. She said to the other girl, “What about the ring?”

“What d'you . . .” Isis's voice drifted off as did, obviously, her thoughts. She put it together and said, “Brady's ring, you mean?”

“Were you wearing it that night? Did you take it off? You wouldn't have wanted some lumpy thing like a ring to get in the way. Or Parker wouldn't have wanted that, so he would have taken it off you, maybe. Isis, what happened to the ring?”

Isis's mouth formed an O. But then she shook her head. She said, “You can't be thinking that Parker kept it. Come on, Hayley. He's way too nice a guy.”

“Were you wearing that ring when you left the tree house?”

“Sure. I must've been. Sure. 'Cause didn't I take it off when I got home? I took a shower and I wouldn't've worn it in the shower so I would've put it . . . Oh, I'm sure I had it, Hayley.”

“Like you had that?” Hayley nodded at Isis's electronic cigarette.

“No way, no way,” Isis told her. “He didn't keep the ring. 'Cause if I forgot it, why wouldn't he just have given it back to me?” Isis sucked in on her cigarette. Her eyes were cloudy and her expression was grave. “I don't like to think that he could've kept that ring to make things bad for someone,” she said.

“We know he's a liar, Isis.”