Free Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water by Elizabeth George Page B

she managed a “No one would take her from the island. I’m talking about an enclosure where she’d be safe until her health—”
    “No way,” Ivar said. “I won’t have
anyone
trying to catch that seal.”
    “Geez, it’s not like you own her,” Jenn muttered.
    Annie said, “Catching her isn’t what would happen. Look, there has to be a reason she’s here early. I hate to say it, but there also has to be a reason that she looks the way she looks.”
    “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Ivar demanded, like a man whose child has been insulted. “She looks the way she’s always looked.” He gestured at the white board where the picture of Nera out in the water had been displayed. “You can’t tell from a picture that she looks any different.
And
have you ever seen her before?”
    “I’m not referring to how she looked last year versus this year. I’m talking about how she looks in the first place: black, every inch of her. There has to be a reason. The seal could be a victim of—”
    “That seal’s a victim of nothing,” Ivar declared. “And she’s not about to become a victim by getting herself caught and tested for anything.”
    “Well, gosh,” Annie said. “She’s not exactly your property, Mr. Thorndyke. And from this meeting you’ve just had, it seems to me that people would like to keep her alive.”
    “You stay away from the seal,” Ivar snapped.
    Annie’s face asked the questions that were on Jenn’s mind. “Why?” was one of them. “What’s that seal to you?” was the other.



PART TWO

Saratoga Woods



Cilla’s World
    D ays and nights have passed. What I did at first was the only thing I knew, which was to follow the turns of the climbing road to depart the place where the mommy and the daddy had left me. I looked for them. I looked for the silver gray of their car. But when I reached the top of the climbing road, there was no one around. So I began to walk.
    I walk to the south. For me there is only light and dark. In light, I wander along the roadways that I come to, turning right or left as the feeling suggests. I walk along the top of bluffs. I walk next to fields. I walk deep into forests. This is what I do in the light. In the dark I sleep. I try to find a safe place to lie hidden from sight, and I try to stay warm.
    Cars whiz by me when I walk on the roadside. In the rain or the snow, they slow and someone within them rolls a window down and calls out, “Hey! You need a ride?” But I have no words, and I do not answer. Need, I think. What is need?
    I feel hollow with hunger and this hunger has taken me to the backs of isolated houses, where cans hold garbage. In the one town I’ve come to, it has taken me to containers behind buildings where the scent of food tells me meals are being cooked and served. But after that town, there have been no others, so I have just walked.
    The nights are long. The days are cold and brief. Frost powders the fence posts when I come upon them. It forms a skin on the leaves of bushes and on the fronds of spear ferns in the forest. It hardens the ground.
    I move merely from one object to the next. I seek nothing in the distance beyond what I can reach. I have always lived this way in the world and I understand that it’s how I must live now.
    I’m caught in a tide that’s sweeping me somewhere. I let it take me.

TEN
    O f all things, it was a project for their Western Civilization class that more or less brought a complete end to Becca and Derric. When she thought about it later, Becca couldn’t believe something so totally meaningless in the scheme of her life would have had the power to kick them to the curb.
    Step one had been their teacher Mr. Keith making the assignment: You’ll be doing it in pairs, it’ll be oral and written, and I
don’t
want to see or hear a damn thing off the Internet, all right? It’s due in six weeks. I’ll be checking, and you can trust me on that.
    Step two had been pairing off: