Catherine Coulter - The Edge

I took my time, knowing my physical limits, not wanting to feel like I was going to fall down in a dead heap. I stopped at a Wendy's in Tufton, a little town near the coast. I saw the sign to Edgerton off Highway 101 an hour and a half later. There was only a spur west, 101W, a narrow paved road that ran four miles to the ocean. Unlike the scores of towns that were bisected by the coast highway, Edgerton was luckily situated west when they'd decided to take the highway more inland to the east. There were a few signs advertising three bed and breakfasts. The BUTTERCUP B&B sign was the biggest, shaped like a psychedelic flower and painted purple and yellow, announcing that it was right on the edge of the cliff, and showed a gothic structure that looked bleak and menacing on the billboard. If I remembered correctly, Paul had told me once that the folk here in Edgerton called it the Psycho B&B. There was another sign for a small diner called The Edwardian, claiming to have the best British cuisine, something I thought must be an oxymoron, based on my culinary experience during my year at the London School of Economics.

I remembered there had once been a small hotel on the narrow strip of beach at Edgerton, but it had been washed away during a winter storm in 1974. I tried to imagine such a thing and couldn't. I remembered the movie where a tsunami at least a million feet high had taken out Manhattan, and grinned.

I remembered wondering if the Indians would be interested in buying back the island after that. I stuck my head out the window and smelled the ocean, tart and clean and salty. I loved the smell, felt something expand inside me anytime I was close to the sea. I sucked in that wonderful sticky, salty air. That really deep breath hurt me just a bit, nothing close to what it would have done if I'd tried it a week ago.

I slowed the Ford down to navigate a deep pothole. My brother-in-law, Paul Bartlett, Jilly's husband, was a man I didn't know all that well even though he and Jilly had been married for eight years now.

They'd wed right after she'd gotten her master's degree in pharmacology. Paul had finished his Ph.D. the year before. He'd grown up in Edgerton, gone back east to Harvard. He'd always seemed to me a bit standoffish, a bit of a cold fish, but who really knew what another person was like? I remembered Jilly telling me how great sex with him was. No cold fish I knew of was into that.

I'd been surprised when six months before, Jilly had called to tell me that she and Paul were moving back to Edgerton, leaving Philadelphia and the pharmaceutical firm-VioTech-where both of them had sent the past six years of their professional lives. "Paul isn't happy here," she'd said. "They won't let him continue with his research. He's really into it, Mac." But what about you?

I'd asked her. There'd been a brief pause, then she'd said, "My clock is running out, Mac. We want a child. I'm going to lie low for a while and we're going to try to get me pregnant. We've discussed this thoroughly and we're sure. We're going back to The Edge." I smiled a bit, thinking of that name. She'd told me a long time ago, before she and Paul were married, that Edgerton had been discovered by an English naval lieutenant, Davies Edgerton, way back toward the end of the eighteenth century. The name had been corrupted over the years by the locals to the point that most of its denizens now just called it The Edge.

I was nearly there. The four-mile drive to the ocean was rough, and that was why the engineers had swung the highway to the east. There were deep ravines and hillocks, a wide gully with a bridge over it, some stunted pine and oak trees, and at least a dozen potholes that looked like they hadn't seen maintenance since World War II. There was little greenery yet, too early in the spring. A sign said EDGERTON-FIFTY FEET ABOVE SEA LEVEL AND 602 RESIDENTS. My favorite resident was in the Tallshon Community Hospital, some ten miles north of Edgerton, in a coma.

Jilly, I thought, my fingers tightening on the steering wheel, did you go off that damned road on purpose?

If you did, why?

I was deep inside myself and it was comforting. When I first realized I wasn't dead, I was shocked. How could I have survived? I'd whipped the Porsche right off the cliff, hanging, hanging, before it plunged clean as a stabbing knife through that black, still water.

Then I didn't remember anything at all.

I couldn't feel my body and perhaps that was a good thing. I knew there were people around me, whispering as people do around those badly hurt, but I couldn't make out their words. It was odd, but they weren't really there, just hovering, insubstantial shadows. Like the shadows, I was here too, but not really. If only I could have heard and understood what they were saying. Now that would have been delicious.

At last I was alone. Completely alone. Laura wasn 't here with me. Laura, I prayed, had gotten her revenge when I'd screamed like a madwoman and driven off the cliff. If she had come back with me, I thought I'd simply make myself stop breathing.

People came and went. I had no particular interest in any of them. I suppose they examined me and did things to me, but nothing really mattered at all.

Then suddenly everything changed. My brother Ford walked through the door and I saw him clearly. He was real, he had substance and an expression that was so filled with fear that I would have given quite a lot to be able to reassure him, but of course I couldn't. He was big and good-looking, my little brother, better-looking even than our father, who 'd been a lady killer, our mother had always said fondly. Mother and Father were dead, weren't they?

Ford didn't look quite himself. Perhaps not as buff, not as commanding, not as massive. Hadn't he been hurt or something? I didn't know, couldn't grasp much of anything. But Ford was here, I was sure of that.

I also knew that I was the only one who called him Ford and not Mac. He 'd never been Mac to me.

How was this possible? He was here and I could see him, but I couldn't make out any of the others.

If I could have shouted to him, I would have. But I couldn't move, couldn't really feel anything at all except this quiet joy that my brother had come when I needed him.

I was shocked again when I heard him say close to my face, "Jilly, my God, Jilly, I can't bear this. What happened?"

I clearly heard his words, understood them. I was even more shocked when I felt-actually felt- his big hands covering one of mine; I'm not sure which one. I felt a shot of warmth from him, and the warmth stayed with me. It was remarkable. I didn't know what to think. How had Ford come so clearly to me when none of the others had? Why Ford and no one else?

"I know you can't answer me, Jilly, but perhaps somewhere deep inside, you can hear me."

Oh, yes, I wanted to tell him, I can hear you, yes I can. I loved his voice: deep, resonant, and mesmerizing. I think I'd told him once how much his voice warmed me to my toes. He 'd told me it was his FBI interviewing voice, but that wasn't right. He 'd always had that intimate, soothing voice.

He sat down beside me, always talking, deeply and slowly, never letting go of my hand, and the warmth of his hand was dizzying. How I wished that I could at least squeeze his fingers.

"I was with you, Jilly," he said, and I nearly stopped breathing.

What did he mean?

With me where?

"I was with you that night. Scared the shit out of me. I woke up in the hospital sweating my toenails off, so scared I thought I'd die. I went over the cliff with you, Jilly. I believed at first that I died with you, but neither of us died. That highway patrolman saved you. Now I've got to find out how this could have happened. Damnation, I wish I knew if you could hear me."