First Impressions

  “So what’s wrong?” Eden repeated. “And quit lying to me. I’m your mother, remember? I know you.”

  At that, Melissa burst into tears and began pouring out a long list of complaints. It seemed that Stuart was working late and Melissa was by herself three nights a week. When he came home, he was too tired to even be interested in the baby’s kicking. And then there was the kitchen. Stuart had said that they couldn’t afford to eat out every night or even have delivery, so Melissa was supposed to cook dinner for them. “I have no idea how to cook,” Melissa said.

  Not that I didn’t try to teach you, Eden wanted to say. “There are cookbooks in the cabinet over the refrig—”

  “I know where the cookbooks are,” Melissa said tightly. “Mother, is this going to be one of those fix-it conversations? I need some help here, not a pep talk.”

  Eden looked at the pile of manuscripts on the floor and knew she should have set her alarm for six. On the table was the sapphire necklace, and she picked it up. Was this why some man had swallowed her name? “I’m sorry,” Eden said. “I know that starting a new life alone with your husband is difficult, but—”

  “I want to be with you.”

  “Hmmm,” Eden said, holding the necklace up to the light.

  “Mother, are you listening to me?”

  “Yes, of course I am. It’s just that—” Frowning, Eden held the phone to her shoulder, got out of bed, and went to the window. She pulled back the curtain, then raised the blind. Sunlight threatened to pierce her eyesight. “Damn you, McBride!” she muttered.

  “Bride?” Melissa said. “Yes, I know I’m Stuart’s bride, but I still have a mother and I want to be with you when the baby comes.”

  Eden looked at the necklace in the sunlight, turning it over in her hand. She’d once worked in a jewelry store and she’d seen some nice jewels. There was something wrong with this necklace. Was it just the old setting, or was it something else?

  “Mother, did you hear what I said? If I get there tomorrow will you meet me at the train station?”

  “Train?” Eden said distractedly. “Honey, there’s no train here, except for freight trains, that is.” She put the necklace down on the windowsill, took a breath, and gave her attention to her daughter. “Listen, sweetheart, I know that being pregnant is difficult, but you have Stuart now, and I think—”

  “You don’t have to tell me what you think,” Melissa said quickly. “I know that your pregnancy was hell and I know that you were alone. And I know that having me has ruined your life.”

  “Melissa! What a thing to say! You’ve always been the best part of my life, and I’ve told you that often.”

  “Then why did you abandon me now when I need you so very much?”

  Eden ran her hand over her eyes. “I didn’t abandon you. You and Stuart were very excited to be on your own, remember? When I left, you were planning all the redecorating you were going to do.”

  “That’s what I thought was going to happen, but it didn’t. Stuart said we can’t afford to do any decorating now that he has to pay for the whole apartment. You know what he said to me?”

  Eden could smell food. The delightful aroma was wafting up the stairs and coming in under her door. She walked across the room, opened the door, and inhaled deeply. What in the world was McBride cooking this morning? “What did Stuart say to you?”

  “He said that I should go downtown to one of those ragtag flea markets and get old, used furniture and refinish it. Like you did! Can you imagine that? Here I am, pregnant with his child, and he wants me to drive downtown, waddle through a bunch of dirty flea markets, and haul furniture back on top of your old station wagon. Have you ever heard of anything so impossible? Is that how a pregnant woman should be treated?”

  Eden had a flash of her own pregnancy. Before she’d met Mrs. Farrington she’d gone without food for days at a time. After she met Mrs. Farrington, she’d been so scared she’d lose the job that she’d hauled huge boxes down from the attic by herself. She remembered one time when the dust made her sneeze eleven times in a row. “No, that’s not how a pregnant woman should be treated,” Eden said dutifully.

  “Mother, am I boring you?”

  “No, of course not.” She heard McBride on the stairs; she knew his step.

  “Food’s on,” he called. “You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted my strawberry muffins.”

  “Be right there,” Eden called back, her hand over the phone. She put it back to her ear.

  “Mother, was that a man?” Melissa’s voice was a combination of disbelief and disapproval.

  “Yes, it was, but—”

  “What is a man doing in your house at this hour of the morning?”

  “Melissa, please don’t sound like a prude, and besides, it’s nearly time for lunch, remember?”

  “I remember that when I called you this morning, I woke you up. Mother, did you spend the night with that man?”

  Eden grit her teeth. “Melissa, darling, my dearest daughter, that is none of your business. Now, if you can’t talk to me in a civil manner, I suggest we cut this off. I also suggest that you make up to your husband and stop putting me between the two of you. And as for your visiting, might I remind you that you’re a bit far along in your pregnancy to be taking long trips. Now, why don’t you take a nice hot bath, then look through those cookbooks and make your husband a nice dinner? I’ll call you when I can.”

  With that, Eden hung up. For about thirty seconds she felt great, like something out of a self-help book about standing up to your children. When Eden said she was leaving New York, Melissa had turned against her mother and chosen her husband’s side—which she should have done. Eden again felt the hurt of it all, how her daughter and Stuart had been so glad when Eden told them she was moving out.

  But her elation, her self-righteousness, and her did-the-right-thing vibes didn’t survive a full minute. The next second Eden slumped down onto the chair, put her hands over her eyes, and started crying. She’d just told off her child, her daughter who she’d been with since she was born. Her daughter was now having her own child and was alone with a man Eden didn’t like, and her mother had abandoned her. Should she have told Melissa to come here to Arundel? And get mixed up in some mistake with the FBI?

  “Anything I can do to help?” came a soft voice from the doorway.

  As Eden wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, Jared handed her a tissue. “Thanks,” she murmured.

  “That was your kid on the phone?”

  “Yes,” Eden said, blowing her nose. “My grown-up child now thinks I have abandoned her. And oh, yes, I’m a slut.”

  “You? You make nuns look promiscuous.”

  “I do not!” Eden said, sniffing.

  “Sure you do. Last night I gave you my best seduction drink. If you knew how many women that drink has worked on…Well, maybe I shouldn’t tell the total number, but I can tell you that it works. But not on you.”

  In spite of herself, Eden laughed. But in the next moment she looked down at her hands and her smile left her. “This isn’t serious, is it? I mean, about the argument with my daughter.”

  “I don’t have kids, but my guess is that it’s not. And I think that what you said to her was the right thing. Okay, so maybe I was eavesdropping a little bit. Professional habit. But I think you were right on the money. If she runs home to Mom every time she has a fight with Hubby, she’ll never learn.”

  “But Stuart, her husband…I can’t stand him.”

  “He was a new husband and living with a mother-in-law who’d made a success of herself in spite of all that life had done to her. Do you know what usually happens to girls who get pregnant at seventeen?”

  “Yes, of course I do, but I had help. I had Mrs. Farrington.”

  “Do you think she would have kept you if you hadn’t worked yourself to the bone for her?”

  Eden smiled. “No. She hated lazy people. She never did a lick of work herself, but she expected others to work from
early until late.”

  “So maybe it was you and not Mrs. Farrington who made a success of the whole thing.”

  “Maybe,” Eden said, smiling.

  “All right, so I’ve done all my cheering-up for the day. As fetching as you look in that nightgown—which, by the way, is nearly transparent in the sunlight—why don’t you get dressed and come downstairs and eat?”

  “I—” Eden began. Her instinct was to grab a blanket off the chest at the foot of the bed and cover herself, but she didn’t. Instead, she looked up at McBride.

  “Oh, no, you don’t. I want nothing given to me out of gratitude for my wisdom. Get dressed, and that’s an order. I’ve already called Granville and told him that you don’t feel well so you’re staying home today. You won’t be meeting any of his egomaniacal clients and trying to design gardens that they’ll never appreciate.”

  “You had no right to do that!” Eden said, standing up and glaring at him.

  Jared looked at her standing in front of the sun-filled window, wearing just the old nightgown, thin from a hundred washings, and turned pale. He opened his mouth to say something, but then he turned on his heel and left the room. “Ten minutes, Palmer,” he called back to her. “Take more than fifteen and I’ll be back.”

  Eden couldn’t help smiling as she closed her bedroom door and went to the shower. Men, and McBride in particular, were a pain in the neck, she thought, but sometimes they could make you feel great. In the shower, with the water turned on as hot as it would go, she washed her hair and lathered her face with a cleansing gel. Soap made her skin too dry, and the last thing she needed right now was flaking skin.

  As the water washed over her, she replayed in her mind everything that she and Melissa had said. She hadn’t been a good mother. She should have listened more, cared more, taken Melissa’s complaints more seriously. On the other hand, she was a person as well as a mother, and it still hurt the way her daughter had let her leave New York so easily. When Eden had turned her apartment over to her daughter and the man she’d married, they’d been elated at the idea of being on their own. But it was one thing to dream about being someone’s wife and another to be one.

  “Not that I know anything about marriage,” Eden said to herself. In the past, whenever she’d thought about marriage, her first consideration had been her daughter, and Eden had always feared what would happen if she let a third person into their lives.

  But that was done, she thought. Now she was free. As she washed the conditioner out of her hair, she thought about Brad. In spite of all that McBride said against him, she liked Brad very much. He was kind, considerate, thoughtful. They liked the same things. She very much liked the subdivision he’d designed. What was it that Drake Haughton had said? That he drew what Brad imagined. Brad was creative and intelligent—and he liked Eden.

  Where would we live? she thought, smiling. Here or his house? Here, of course, she thought. Who would want a Victorian house when they could have the eighteenth century? Yes, no question about it, they’d live here. Brad could let his daughter and her husband live in the oversize Granville house, and Minnie could move into the vacant overseer’s house down the road. Yes, that was how it would be, and maybe her life would be perfect. Smiling, she imagined holding a cold drink as she and Brad showed guests around the garden.

  By the time Eden got out of the shower, she was well over McBride’s fifteen-minute limit, but she knew he’d only been kidding. Everything McBride said was a joke, wasn’t it? He joked when he was a prisoner in a cellar, joked about death and about everything else. All the world was a joke to him.

  As she dressed (this time blow-drying the curlers in her hair so she could take them out) she was glad that she didn’t have to start seeing clients today. It seemed that ever since she’d arrived in Arundel, she’d been on a roller coaster. As she put in earrings (tiny frogs) she smiled at the thought of her daughter’s reaction if she’d told Melissa the truth about why she hadn’t called since she’d been here.

  You see, dear, I’m under investigation by the FBI because some spy swallowed my name. In fact, I have a terribly good-looking agent living with me, and another man, or men, I don’t know which, wander around my garden 24/7. No, dear, I’m not having an affair with the good-looking agent, but I am trying to have an affair with the good-looking lawyer Mrs. Farrington hired. But, you know how it is, with FBI cameras watching your every move, it inhibits you, although Braddon—that’s the lawyer—and I have managed a few kisses. No, no, dear, I know that to you I’m old, but these men don’t seem to think so, so don’t worry about me. And, by the way, Mr. McBride—he’s the FBI agent—didn’t press charges when I beat him up, so there’ll be no assault and battery charges on my record to embarrass my grandchild. I think Stuart will appreciate that. And, oh, yes, the FBI cleaned up the house after those criminals nearly destroyed it. No, dearest, I don’t know what they wanted and neither does the FBI. But we—that’s McBride, Brad, and I—think it has to do with the multimillion-dollar necklace that we found last night. That’s why I was sleeping so late this morning. The excitement and all. No, dear, I haven’t gone senile on you. It’s been a very eventful few days. Yes, very exciting, but also exhausting. That’s why Mr. McBride is insisting that I stay home today and not start the new job of designing eighteenth-century–style gardens for Brad’s new subdivision. Oh? Didn’t I tell you about my new job? No, sorry, that’s right, dear, I didn’t call you, but, yes, I have a new job. But I don’t know if I’m going to take it, because last night McBride looked at the will and said I do own the necklace. We were going to talk about that, but we started watching Fawlty Towers and—What’s that? Oh, it’s only an old English TV series. John Cleese and very funny. Anyway, it was nearly three A.M. before McBride went to his room—No, dear, I am not sleeping with the FBI agent. Or the lawyer, for that matter. Anyway, McBride asked me what I was going to do now that I’m going to be a multimillionaire, you know, rather like I won the lottery, and I said I have no idea. So today I think I’m going to work in the garden and think about what I want to do with my life. Things have been happening so fast in the last few days that I haven’t had time to figure out anything. But then, I’ll tell you a little secret. I’m not sure, but I think the necklace is a fake. No, I’m not qualified to make such a judgment. I can tell that it’s old, but I’m not sure if the stones are real or not. But don’t worry. I’m sure the FBI has people who can tell a real jewel from a fake one. Uh-oh, dear, I have to go. Mr. McBride is calling me to breakfast. Or, by now, I guess it’s lunch. See you when I can. Kiss the baby bump for me. Bye.

  By the time Eden had finished the little play running through her mind, she was downstairs. McBride was standing by the stove and watching her.

  “You don’t get a bite until you tell me what’s making you laugh. I could hear you chuckling all the way down the stairs.”

  “Nothing. I was just thinking of what I should have told my daughter.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing,” she said, looking away. The kitchen door was open. It was cooler than she liked, but it was great gardening weather. She could almost feel the soil in her hands. Too bad she had nothing to plant. Spring made her lust to dump plants out of pots and put them in the ground.

  “Strawberry muffins, omelets with onions and green peppers, milk, coffee, tea, cranberry juice with no gin in it. But not one bite until you tell me what was making you laugh.”

  “Okay,” Eden said, smiling, then she proceeded to run through the entire minidrama for him. She even held an imaginary telephone to her ear and pantomimed emotions.

  As always, Jared was a good audience, and the more he listened, the more he laughed, so the more outrageous she got. By the end he was laughing with his mouth open, showing his strong, straight teeth. At the end, though, his face stilled.

  “What?” he whispered when she’d finished.

  For a moment, Eden blinked, realizing what she’d seen while she was on the phone to her daughter. At
the time, Melissa’s complaints had so distracted Eden that she hadn’t fully registered what she was thinking. And since then, her thoughts had been on her daughter, not the necklace.

  “Where is it?”

  “Windowsill,” Eden said, turning toward the stairs.

  “You eat, I’ll get the necklace, and I’ll get someone out here as fast as they can to look at it.”

  Eden, starving, grabbed a muffin from under its cloth covering. “No helicopters,” she called after him. “Everyone in Arundel will come out here to see what’s going on if a helicopter lands in the fields.” She went to the stove and lifted the lid to the skillet. “Helicopters,” she muttered. “Two weeks ago I would never have thought of helicopters.”

  She slid the omelet onto the plate that Jared had placed on the counter and sat down to eat. What next? was her only thought. What monumental, dramatic thing could happen next?

  When she heard the hydraulic brakes of a truck pulling into her driveway, she wasn’t even surprised.

  “What’s that?” McBride asked from the doorway, the necklace in his hand.

  “A SWAT team?” she asked, her mouth full.

  Someone knocked on the door and Jared went to open it. Eden heard him exchange a few words with the driver, then they both went outside. She heard sounds of the truck door opening but didn’t get up to look. By the time McBride came back into the room, she had finished eating.

  “I think you better come look at this,” he said.

  “Is it good or bad?”

  “Come and see what you think.”

  She put down her napkin, drained the last of her tea, and followed him to the front door.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ALL she could do was stare. Her mouth gaped open, and her eyes blinked several times, but she still couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  On the oval lawn in front of the house was a little red truck, a Kawasaki Mule, cute beyond describing. It had a wide seat in front and a truck bed in back that was full of what looked to be top-of-the-line Spear and Jackson gardening tools from England. Behind the truck, on the ground, were hundreds of black plastic pots full of perennials. In front of them were annuals, and in back were boxes that bore the words LIVE TREES INSIDE OPEN IMMEDIATELY.