The Edge of the Light Read Online Free PDF

but that wasn’t often. Mostly it was damp and cold and you had to get used to it or you’d off yourself sometime in the middle of January.
    Jenn was used to it. She’d lived all her life on Whidbey Island, and although her ambition was to live the rest of her life
off
Whidbey Island, she wasn’t going to be able to do that unless and until she managed a college scholarship that got her far away from this dismal place. But that was more than two years in the future, and in the meantime she had to put up with Holy Redeemer, her mom’s religious fervor, and a degree of poverty that sent the family to the thrift store for clothes and to the food bank for meals.
    It didn’t have to be this way, she told herself. If she had a father with a normal job and a mother who made money doing
anything
other than driving the Whidbey Island taxi, they wouldn’t have to live at the edge of the water, selling bait to fishermen during the season and illegally selling growlers to the local beer lovers the rest of the time. They would live in one of the three towns at the south end of the island: Freeland, which spread out along enormous Holmes Harbor; Langley, which sat above the waters of Saratoga Passage; or even Clinton, where she stood now in front of one of the strip of shops and empty storefronts and bars that defined the place.
    She wanted a cigarette. She wished she hadn’t given them up. She knew she’d needed to, because of soccer, but at the moment it would have felt so good to be lighting up. Part of the good feeling would have been the satisfaction of a need. The otherpart would have been the statement that she’d be making, a fine moment of rebellion that she wanted people to see as they came out of the Sunday service.
    But she had no cigarettes and there was no place close by to purchase them. There was just the rain. That and the cars coming off the ferry with their headlights piercing the gloom. They were heading north without stopping, which was poor Clinton’s curse. People opened businesses here and then closed them after a year or two. No one slowed long enough to glance at the windows of the few shops that managed to stay in business. It was a miracle, Jenn thought, that there was anything left in the place at all.
    Behind her she heard voices swelling in song, accompanied by piano music that tried to keep up with them. The piano was played by Reverend Sawyer’s twelve-year-old daughter. She had no talent, but she’d been given tongues when she was eight, so she was much admired.
    â€œJust
look
at her, Jennifer,” Kate McDaniels would whisper when the girl made her way to the folding chair that served as piano stool. “Think how deeply God loves her to have sent His Holy Spirit.”
    Jenn would look at her dutifully. The poor kid had absolutely no ankles. Her legs dropped down from her knees like vertical tree limbs, and the knee socks she wore in winter made them look like poles decorated by the anonymous knitters who went around Langley putting sweaters on the street lights.
    Now the girl was pounding the piano enthusiastically. When she missed a note, no one cared.
    At the conclusion of this, Jenn readied herself to face her mom. Kate was going to be furious with her for ducking out.
    Her brothers managed to get out first. Petey was carrying a picture he’d drawn. Andy was carrying three crayons that he’d stolen. Petey’s picture was a stick figure with a sword held high over his head. Andy’s crayons were red, black, and green.
    â€œIt’s Abraham,” Petey announced, holding the picture up proudly. “See, he’s going to kill his kid only the angel’ll stop ’im just before he chops his head off.”
    Jenn examined it. “Where’s the angel?”
    â€œNot there yet,” Petey said.
    â€œWhere’s the kid?”
    â€œHe was too smart. He ran away.”
    Jenn guffawed, saying, “Don’t tell