Finding Eden

  When we pulled apart, Calder said, "I was wondering if I could take your daughter out tonight?" He smiled at her and then looked over at me.

  My mom seemed conflicted. "Well . . ." She looked around at all the people staring anxiously at us, waiting for her to answer. She smiled a sad smile over at me and then looked at Calder. "Yes. But please bring her right back, okay? And take care of her?"

  Calder nodded. "I promise."

  My mom squeezed my hand and kissed my cheek. I took Calder's hand as he led me out of the garden. When I got to the edge, I turned around and waved at everyone and called, "Thank you all so much." And then we walked inside the house to the sounds of the group calling out their goodbyes.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Calder

  Eden's hand was warm in my own as we stepped into the deserted kitchen right off the garden.

  "I should change first," she said, turning and gazing up at me.

  For a few seconds I allowed myself to get lost in her eyes, those deep blue pools I never thought I'd get to gaze into again. I let the moment soothe my wounded, battered heart. Finally I nodded.

  "Want me to wait, or—"

  "No, come with me," she said, but neither of us moved. We stood there gripping each other tightly for several minutes before she pulled me by my hand through the large kitchen.

  We climbed the stairs and Eden led me down the wide hall to her bedroom. She closed the door behind us and immediately started unzipping the side zipper on her dress. She let it pool around her feet, murmuring a "thank God," as the gargantuan flower fell away from her chin. I chuckled softly and then moved my eyes slowly up her body. I hadn't taken the proper time to drink her in the night before. She was still slim, but she looked more womanly now somehow, her hips just slightly more round, her waist even smaller, and her small breasts round and firm in the white strapless bra she wore. My body surged to life, pressing uncomfortably against my new dress pants, the ones I'd bought just an hour ago so I could show up looking appropriate for her mom's party.

  I'd spent the day just as I told her, reliving the beauty we'd experienced together. I hadn't had it in me to go there in my mind over the past three years and I had needed it. I had needed to spend time with the us we had been in order to feel ready to move forward into our future. I'd gone to Madison and told her. It hadn't been easy, but I owed it to her to be honest immediately. I had never envisioned a future with her. I’d never been able to. I should have given her all or nothing at all. And it had never been in me to give her my all. I'd have to live with the regret I felt for hurting her.

  Eden rolled her tights down her legs and tossed them aside and then glanced over at me and paused, color moving into her cheeks. "Is it strange that I feel self-conscious in front of you?" she asked, sadness sweeping through her expression.

  I walked over to her, taking her hands in mine and shaking my head. "We have a lot of reacquainting to do, Morning Glory. There's no handbook for this. I doubt if there's even a self-help book that could touch what we've gone through. We're on our own here."

  Eden shook her head and looked down for a second before she met my eyes again. "Are we going to be okay, Calder? Do we even have a chance?"

  I thought about that for a second. I had promised her so much before, promised her that I'd protect her, that we'd be okay . . . and I'd failed. I breathed deeply to force the guilt out of my lungs, the anger and loss, and self-hatred. Yes, that most of all. "We're going to try our damndest, Eden. That's all I can give you. That's all I can promise."

  She licked her lips and looked to be considering my words. Finally she nodded. "That's enough," she said, meeting my eyes, her own gentle and willing. The trust shining from her face shocked me and almost took my breath away. After everything . . . she could still look at me like that? How? Why? I opened my mouth to ask her, but she leaned forward and kissed me. Her lips were soft and sweet just as they always were in my dreams. And though she'd been stolen from her family, isolated from friendships as a child, left to largely fend for herself in a strange city still recovering the harsh, brutal death of me and our baby . . . Despite all she'd suffered in her life, despite my failure to be there for her when she'd needed me, she still offered herself selflessly and without hesitation. I took it like the gift it was, opening my mouth and sliding my tongue against hers. We kissed deeply, Eden tilting her head and moaning sweetly into my mouth. I felt desperate to feel her skin against mine. But we were here in her mother's house with a party still going on downstairs. I wanted to get her back to my place where I could take my time with her. We deserved that. If we deserved anything, we deserved that.

  I broke the kiss and pulled away regretfully. I looked into her eyes and saw the same desire reflected back at me. My beautiful girl. I wanted her badly, but we needed time together in this new world. It felt necessary to experience a new normal together.

  "So," she said pulling away and grabbing a pair of jeans lying at the end of her bed, "this bowling thing . . . how good are you?"

  "Oh," I said, sitting down on her bed, "I've never bowled. Xander and I used to go to this bowling alley on Monday nights a couple years back." I paused, recalling the shell of a person I had been, sitting there blankly watching people whoop and laugh and pour beer from pitchers. "We were dirt poor," I said, shaking my head. "They had this all-you-can-eat nacho bar." I made a gagging motion. "I swear if I never see another vat of orange cheese for as long as I live, it will be too soon."

  Eden laughed a small laugh, but there was sadness in her eyes. She opened her dresser drawer to get a tank top and pulled it over her head. I leaned back on her pillows, turning my face to the side and inhaling the clean, apple blossom scent of the fabric. If I had anything to say about it, my own sheets were going to smell like that tomorrow and every day for the rest of my days.

  She closed her drawer. "No more all-you-can-eat nacho bars for you, famous artist," she said. She walked to her closet and opened the door just a crack and reached inside.

  I breathed out a small chuckle. "Hardly famous," I said, feeling slightly embarrassed for some reason.

  She turned her head and regarded me for a few beats. "You will be though," she said, like it was just a certainty.

  "I—" I sat up, my words halting and my blood running cold. "Eden, what is that in there?"

  Eden grabbed a shirt and shut the door quickly. "Nothing," she said. She licked her lips nervously, holding the shirt in her hand up against her breasts. "Just, um, some research I've been doing."

  I stood up and walked over to her, putting my hand on the closet door handle.

  "Calder—" Eden started, reaching for my hand. I halted, but her hand fell away from mine and she stepped back, breathing out a resigned breath.

  I opened the closet door and there on the back of it, covering every inch of space, were news clips of Acadia, pictures of the council members they had found and identified. There was a picture of Clive Richter—what had originally caught my attention when I glimpsed it from the bed—that she must have printed out from somewhere online, a rough sketch of who I was guessing was supposed to be Hector, and countless small notes written in Eden's handwriting. Toward the middle, there was something that looked like a timeline. My eyes moved from one side of the corkboard she'd adhered to the back of the door and all the items pinned to it and then to the other. It went practically down to the floor.

  "What are you doing, Eden?" I asked, my voice sounding flat.

  Color stained her cheeks and she looked away. "You don't have to sound like I'm a nutcase. I'm just . . . researching. I'm . . ." She made a small sound of frustration. "I'm gathering knowledge. It helps me feel in control. It helps me feel less scared, I guess. Less . . ." Her final words came out softly and then trailed off.

  I studied her. "Morning Glory," I finally said, taking her in my arms again and hugging her to me. "What are you trying to find here?"

  She shook her head against my chest, her arms trapped between our bodies where she
still held onto her shirt. She stepped back a very small step and looked up at me. She sighed and pulled the black, loose top over her head. "They haven't been able to identify Hector," she said quietly. She reached back and took her hair out of the smooth ponytail it was in and ran her fingers through it as it fell over her shoulders in a beautiful cascade of light morning sunshine. I inhaled as the sweet smell of her shampoo filled the air. "And I just thought, if I could figure out who he was, where he came from, you know, it would help me see him more as a man and not a—"

  "Monster?" I finished.

  Her eyes flew to mine and she sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. Finally she said, "Yes."

  I let out a loud breath and furrowed my brow. "I get it, I do. You know more than anyone on planet earth, I do. But this," I waved my hand over to the board with all her research pinned to it, "this can't be good for you—to spend so much time with them, it can't be healthy."

  She crossed her arms in front of herself and looked over at the board, seeming to consider. "I thought it might help me figure out who your parents were, too," she said, sadness flashing in her eyes. "They're still not even close to identifying so many of the bodies."

  I grabbed her hands and held them in mine between us. "You don't need to do that now," I said gently. "I'm here."

  She nodded. "But you still don't know who you are," she said. "If you can find out where your parents lived before Acadia, you might have grandparents somewhere . . . aunts, uncles, family."

  I looked off behind her, pausing. "I don't think I was born in Acadia anyway."

  She tilted her head, looking confused. "What do you mean?"

  I told her haltingly about what Mother Willa had said to me all those years ago, about how Maya was born at Acadia, but that I was not. And then I reminded her of the things Hector had said at the end about how he had brought me to Acadia. Granted he was as mad as a hatter, but. . . "My coloring, it was so different than my parents' and my sister's." A dull ache throbbed in my chest as I mentioned Maya, but I pushed that aside for now. "And learning that you were abducted, makes it even more plausible that I was, too. Clearly kidnapping was yet another thing Hector wasn't morally above doing."

  Eden was studying me, biting her lip again. "Well, then this is even more reason to look into—"

  "There's no way to find that out," I said, shaking my head. "I'm sorry, it's just, I can't . . . I can't go back there, not even in my mind, all right? I can't. Not yet."

  She looked at me with such understanding sorrow and something inside me pulled tight and felt on the verge of snapping. I sucked in a breath and turned my attention back to the board. "I'll help you take it down."

  She shook her head. "No. Not yet. I'll do it in my own time, but not yet." She motioned to the bottom of the board. "But I can take all this down. It was my attempt to locate Kristi so I could find Xander."

  I looked down at the lists, some items crossed off, notes next to others. It looked like they were names of colleges printed from the Internet. My heart squeezed so tightly I almost brought my hand to my chest as if I was going to have some sort of heart attack. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Instead, I grabbed Eden and squeezed her to me again, putting the overwhelmingly fierce love for her into that embrace. Morning Glory. Morning Glory.

  She squeezed me back and after a few minutes, our arms grew looser and Eden gazed up at me. I loved when she looked at me like that. It made me feel worthy. She shut her closet door. "I'll take care of that later. For now, take me on a date, Calder Raynes." She tilted her head and smiled at me. "It will be my first, you know."

  "I'm all your firsts," I whispered, "and all your lasts."

  She smiled. "And I'm all your firsts," she whispered back.

  I grinned at her, feeling a stab of pain at the fact that she wasn't all my onlys anymore. Another thing I'd have to learn to forgive myself for. And I only hoped she'd be able to as well.

  "Come on," I said, taking her hand. "Oh, grab some socks." She did and then slipped her shoes on at the door.

  We quietly descended the stairs. The voices were still coming from the garden. I had borrowed Xander's truck so I didn't have to drive Eden around on my motorcycle. Plus I didn't even own one helmet, much less two, and there was no way on earth I'd ever risk Eden's safety. As a small matter of fact, I was suddenly a little more concerned about my own. I squeezed Eden's hand as I helped her up into the truck as the feeling of disbelief swept over me for the millionth time in a day and a half. Then I leaned in and inhaled her scent, reminding myself this was in fact, reality. Her relaxed and sweet expression caused me to think she knew exactly what I was thinking. And she probably did. I rounded the truck and climbed into the driver's seat, turning the ignition.

  "So you learned how to use a computer, Eden?" I asked, wondering how she'd done the detailed research on Acadia. I turned on my headlights and pulled onto the street.

  "Yes. I saved up for one and bought a laptop about six months ago. I realized if I was going to find Xander, I'd need one. Calling around places was getting me nowhere."

  "Did you call the ranger station?" I looked over at her and she nodded in the dim cab.

  "Yes. That's how I got Kristi's last name. But they wouldn't tell me what school she went to—if they even knew—but I figured they did." She bit her lip for a second and shrugged. "For all they knew, I was some weirdo." She paused for a second. "I called there from a phone in the lobby of Felix's building. I was so paranoid." She shook her head again and looked down at her hands in her lap. "It's so hard not knowing how things work . . . what's safe and what's not. I was paralyzed with fear most of the time." She ended on a whisper. "The computer seemed safer, more anonymous."

  I nodded, reaching over and taking her hand.

  "Anyway," she went on, "I research other stuff, too. I've been looking up politics, religions—trying to understand what different people believe, what sort of feels right to me."

  I made a small snorting sound. "How can you believe in anything anymore?"

  She was quiet for a minute and I felt the weight of her eyes on me in the dim interior. "Sometimes I don't." She looked straight ahead again. "I'm still working on that, too."

  "What else do you research?" I asked to change the subject.

  "Um, all kinds of things. Just trying to understand the big . . . I mean, the world. You know."

  I smiled over at her. "Yes, I do know. Xander keeps trying to get me to buy a computer—and open a Facebook account. He tells me about it. Of course he uses a take off on his name."

  "Clive Richter," she whispered. I nodded, frowning. It seemed that the thought of Clive Richter had been our constant companion over the past few years, dictating so much of what we did and didn't do.

  I looked forward and was quiet for a minute. "Xander seemed upset he could never participate in this 'Throw Back Thursday' thing where you post pictures from the past, because he'll never have any of those." I laughed softly, but it held a note of sadness. Xander had actually seemed bothered by it.

  "Do you care about that at all?" Eden asked, tilting her head. "I mean, for yourself?"

  I thought about it for a second as I pulled into the bowling alley parking lot. I switched off the engine and leaned back in my seat. "I guess not."

  She watched me for a couple beats and then nodded. "And who are Xander's Facebook friends exactly?" she asked, raising one brow.

  I chuckled. "I don't know, guys he works with maybe? The women he sees. There are definitely enough of those." I stared ahead. Xander had his own way of coping with the demons that haunted him, and the loneliness I knew he struggled with.

  I felt Eden's eyes studying my profile for a minute before she said, "I went on there looking for Kristi, actually, but it didn't pan out. I thought about opening an account, but at the time I guessed I'd just be 'Eden No Last Name' and my status update would always be the same–Life Sucks–feeling suicidal. I didn't figure I'd get a whole lot of friend requests."

  I let
out a burst of laughter and then tried to suck it back. It felt extremely inappropriate. But when I glanced over at her, she had a small, amused smirk on her face and so I grinned and then laughed harder.

  She laughed, too, until we were both laughing so hard that tears were in my eyes and she was doubled forward.

  The laughter brought on a huge surge of unexpected emotion and it hit me like a tidal wave.

  I leaned forward on the steering wheel and continued to laugh until I realized there were tears running down my cheeks and my laughter had turned to shaking.

  "Come here," Eden said, and I could hear the tears in her voice, too.

  I moved over on the seat and grabbed her to me so tightly that she sucked in a breath.

  "I missed you so much. So fucking much," I choked out. "Oh God, Eden, my Eden. Oh my God, I wanted to die without you." I tried to hold the tears back, but something had taken over—maybe the reality of her being back had hit me, maybe the laughter had broken the dam of emotion that was barely contained. I didn't know. But I was helpless to stop it and so I just gripped her to me and inhaled her comforting scent and cried like a damn baby into her chest as she stroked my back. I felt her tears hitting the back of my neck. It was the first time I'd cried since Xander dragged me off that roof.

  We clutched each other for what seemed like a very long time as my heart slowed to a steady beat and I listened in awe and thankfulness to the sound of hers under my ear, which was wet from my tears.

  "Just for the record," I finally mumbled, "this is not how first dates are supposed to go."

  Eden laughed softly and then sniffled, kissing the top of my head. "No, in general circumstances, this would not be a good beginning."

  I chuckled, too, and then sat up. Eden leaned forward and kissed my cheeks, rubbing her face against my own so that our tears mingled. She smiled against my mouth and then kissed me lightly. We kissed gently for a few minutes, me sucking her bottom lip between my own and nibbling at her mouth. It was slow and gentle and soothing to my soul.