The Edge of the Light by Elizabeth George Read Free Book Online Page B

that the house needed. They were stacked along one wall in varying sizes, and on them was taped the location of their installation. Brackets to hold them sat on the workbench. These were wrought iron: simple, without ornament, and made by one of the island blacksmiths.
    Prynne looked at the scope of their work and said to Becca, “We got the better deal. Sometimes it’s useful to have only oneeye. Otherwise, I’d be outside pounding a hammer, I bet.”
    Becca was switching on the two portable heaters. It seemed even colder in the building than it was outside. She turned to see Prynne popping out her false eye and pulling from the pocket of her long wool skirt a small box and the piratical patch she wore when she didn’t have the glass eye in her empty socket. She stored the glass eye inside the box, positioned the eye patch where it belonged, and fastened the band that held it in place.
    â€œDon’t want to get sawdust in the old socket,” she said in answer to Becca’s unasked question.
    â€œYou’re nice to help us,” Becca told her.
    â€œWell, Seth’s my guy,” Prynne said.
    Becca nodded, but the truth was, she wasn’t so sure. Earlier, when Seth and Prynne had entered Ralph’s house in advance of Derric, Jenn, and Squat, she’d hugged hello to both of them. When her hands touched Prynne, she’d had a flash of an image. It had lasted two seconds, perhaps a little longer. But it was enough for her to see a bearded and bony guy looking up from a cluttered table, his eyebrows raised and a smile on his face. Sly, the smile seemed. Knowing as well. Becca felt uneasy when she saw him. She had glanced between Seth and Prynne, and she’d tried to read the level of comfort and trust they had in each other. But that was an impossibility. She might be able to hear their whispers, and she might be able to see through their eyes a previous moment they’d lived through. But that was it.
    Now, she and Prynne set out to do their assigned task. There were two cans of stain to make the railing match the woodwork in the house. Becca opened one of them as Prynne brought twoof the rails to the workbench. They worked in silence for a couple of minutes, a silence broken by the periodic roar of the chain saw and Seth’s voice outside Ralph’s shop, telling Squat and Jenn what they needed to do to help him build the ramp. Since he’d already put the posts in, they heard him say, they had to frame out the structure. Grand would have to be able to walk up and down it and he’d also have to be able to be pushed in a wheelchair on occasion, so the degree of the slope . . .
    â€œHe sure loves that guy,” Prynne murmured. “Working all week on construction and then coming here to do more? He’s tough.”
    â€œHe wants Grand home,” Becca said.
    Prynne dipped her rag into the stain and began applying it. “I didn’t get to meet him before . . . you know . . . before the stroke.”
    â€œHe’s great.”
    â€œGot to be. Nice that you get to stay here, too. I mean, nice that he lets you. Lots of old people . . . that’d sort of be the last thing they’d want, taking in some teenager they don’t really know. How’d it happen?”
    Becca had replaced her earbud when Prynne and the other two kids had come out of the house. That many people in her immediate vicinity still proved too much for her to block out. But now she eased the earbud from her ear, the better to pick up what Prynne might be thinking about Becca King and her advent on the island.
    Becca went with a slight variation of her original story: She’d come north from San Luis Obispo in California to live with her“aunt Debbie” at the Cliff Motel in Langley because her relationship with her mom wasn’t so hot. But things hadn’t worked out with her aunt, and she’d ended up here at