The Last Place

“We’re trying to find someone who lives here,” Carl said, leaning on the counter. Tess found herself wishing he were just a little better looking, or a lot more charming. “I suspect if they’re here, you know them.”

“I wouldn’t claim that,” the girl said.

“This girl-she’d be a woman now-I’m not even sure she’s here anymore. But she was a teenager here, maybe fifteen years ago.”

“More likely my mother would have known her,” the girl said. She did not, Tess noticed, offer to find her mother.

“Her name was Becca,” Tess put in. She did not mind Carl’s new deferential ma

“Becca,” the girl repeated, with no show of recognition. “Not Rebecca?”

“No, just Becca.”

“Hmmm. You don’t recall a last name?”

“Harrison,” Carl said.

“That’s not one of the five families.”

“Five families.”

“The year-round residents. There are only five surnames in Tyndall Point, give or take an odd cousin or a newcomer. She must have been summer people. But they tend to come for one season and not come back. Can’t say as I blame ‘em. I sure wouldn’t choose to live here.”

She was projecting her words, speaking for someone else’s benefit. But for whom? The store was empty as far as Tess could tell.

“So Becca doesn’t ring a bell?”

“Huh?” The girl had drifted off, bored with them.

“Harrison,” a voice pronounced from behind a floor-length pair of oilcloth curtains that hung in a doorway behind the counter. A woman came out, and Tess felt as if she were staring at one of those cruel computer-generated projections of how a face ages. For here was the smooth girl in thirty years’ time, dried and gnarled. The shiny brown hair would turn gray and wiry, the complexion would mottle. But it was the hands that caught Tess’s eyes. They were huge, with ropy tendons and long thick fingers so big they appeared permanently splayed.

“The Harrisons lived here some years back. This one was in diapers then, if she was born at all.” Mother gave daughter a hard look. “For all the sense she has, maybe she should be in diapers now. What has it been, twenty years?”

“Closer to fifteen,” Carl said.

“Twenty, seventeen, fifteen, ten. The fact is, it seems like it was forever ago, and it seems like it was just yesterday. That’s how you know you’re getting old, when it all blends together.”

Old? The woman couldn’t have been more than forty-five.

“So you knew this girl, Becca Harrison?”

“I wouldn’t say I knew her.” Tess understood that “knew” was not a word to be used lightly here. “We were aware of them, of course. And the father, he was said to be someone. Come to think of it, he was the one who said it. I never heard of him before, and no one heard from him after, so I don’t know how famous he could have been.”

“Famous for what?”

“He wrote for magazines. Or so he said. I never saw his name in nary a one.” She gestured at the dusty racks in front of her cash register, where she had copies of TV Guide, People, and Sports Illustrated. “He said he was going to write a book about the island, but that never came along neither.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“He went by Harry Harrison. I suppose there may have been parents foolish enough to call their boy such a thing, but I hope he had a real name too. I just never heard it.”

Tess’s fingers itched to take notes, but she had learned that nothing made people dry up faster than seeing their words scratched onto a pad. She was trying to train herself to listen hard enough so she didn’t need to write things down. But it was tricky. Her memory wasn’t as good as she wanted to believe it was.

“How long has it been since he lived here?”

“Like I said, he wanted to write a book about Notting, a made-up story. So he moved on, found some other place to write about, I guess.”

“And Becca went with him?”

“Well, I swagger a man’s children should go where he goes, don’t you?”

I swagger. The unexpected localism was so charming, so unexpected, that Tess almost missed the woman’s neat evasiveness. She hadn’t said yes, she hadn’t said no, and her expression was cat-sly.

“Is there anyone here who knew Becca well, who counted her as a friend? Or her father, for that matter?”

“The Harrisons kept to themselves. The father claimed to like it that way. Said he had a clearer vision of what he was seeing here. We liked it that way too. He was… a frivolous man.”

“How do you mean? Did he drink, act silly?”

“Ah, you won’t catch me making judgments about those who drink. Drink is legal here, in Tyndall Point.” She nodded toward the refrigerated cases, three in all. Behind two were the greens, golds, and browns of domestic beers, while the third held a few essentials, such as eggs and cheese and milk. “Just beer, no hard stuff. The store over to Hark-ness, now, they don’t carry anything.”

“What made Harry Harrison frivolous?” Carl asked.

“Why, he didn’t do a lick of work that anyone could see. People work hard here. His idea of working was to wander around asking improper questions. Now, we’re used to being studied. College students, reporter people, those folks who care more about the marsh grasses than they do about human beings-”

“Environmentalists?”

“So they call themselves. Anyway, we know something about people who are making a study. But Harry Harrison, he was just interested in himself and how Notting affected him. He couldn’t see the way he affected Notting.”

The old woman looked thoughtful, as if she had said something she had long felt but never found the words for until today.

“But Becca-is there anyone here who would remember Becca or would still be in touch with her?” Tess pressed. As interesting as it was to contemplate the hapless Harrison, wandering around the island in his solipsistic state, it was his daughter they needed.

“Oh, I doubt it. As I said, they kept to themselves. Now”-the woman leaned forward and pressed her hands on the counter, until they looked like a griffin’s talons-“now, I suppose you’ll be wanting to buy something.”

Tess understood they were expected to repay the woman for the time they had taken, although it appeared that time was an abundant commodity on Notting Island. She picked up a bag of Oreos. The woman raised one eyebrow. Tess added a few cans of beans, a Slim Jim. The eyebrow stayed up and didn’t budge until Tess had amassed about $40 worth of groceries she didn’t need. Really, this woman could beat Whitney in an eyebrow Olympics.

“Do you think they were telling the truth?” she asked Carl as they headed back for Crisfield, racing the setting sun. It had been a clear day, but a few clouds had drifted onto the western horizon, creating a spectacular sunset. The world was turning purple and rose, and Tess was drinking a beer, part of the toll back in the general store. She wondered if the woman always charged six dollars for a six-pack of Old Milwaukee.

They had not relied on the old woman’s testimony that no one in Tyndall Point would remember Becca Harrison, much less know her whereabouts. Old woman-fu

And, like the heroes in a typical myth, they had ignored her hints. They had knocked on almost every door in Tyndall Point. Some were answered, but most were not. The few residents they found were female, and some looked to be in their early thirties, but not a single one recognized Becca Harrison’s name. Reminded of her father’s stay on the island, they allowed they might have known her, but no one had kept in touch with her. One said she thought Becca meant to be an actress, another said Becca pla