First Impressions (Edenton 1)

When she knocked on his office door, no one answered, and when she tried the door, it was locked.

She felt as though someone was watching her. Turning, she looked into Minnie’s office and saw the young woman staring at her. But the moment Eden looked, Minnie turned her head away. Eden didn’t let that deter her. “Minnie!” she said brightly. “How are you?”

Standing behind her desk, Minnie gave Eden a look so cold that she wanted to run out the door.

“Is something wrong?” Eden asked, her voice close to breaking. Is this what she was going to get when she saw Brad?

“Wrong?” Minnie asked quietly, but in a deadly voice. “You were rolling around naked in the mud with my boyfriend, and you ask me if anything is wrong?”

“Your boyfriend?” Eden asked, eyes wide.

“Do you think he belonged to you. Do you think everything belongs to you?”

Eden thought her brain must be spinning around inside her head. She took a deep breath. “I think that Jared McBride belongs to himself. Minnie, I wasn’t naked. No one was naked. The little truck got stuck in the mud, we were trying to push it out, and we fell. That’s all.”

“That’s not what I heard,” Minnie said as she opened a file drawer and jammed in a folder.

“I can assure you that—”

“Save it,” Minnie said, turning to glare at Eden. “And here I thought you were different. You know what Brad went through with his wife. I told you the whole story as a warning. He can’t handle another adulterous woman in his life.”

“Now wait a minute!” Eden said. Maybe she couldn’t stand up to her pregnant daughter, but this young woman was a whole other matter. “First of all, I am no one’s wife, so adultery is impossible. And second, what’s between Braddon and me, and even between Jared and me, is no concern of yours.”

“Does that mean that you think you can walk into this town and suddenly you know what’s best for everyone? Are those of us who love Brad to stand by in silence and see him get hurt again? Is that what you think?”

“Minnie,” Eden said softly. “I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of. If anyone thinks I have, then they are the ones who have the dirty minds.”

“Then I guess that includes Brad.”

“Brad thinks I—?”

“Brad thinks you’re little better than his wife, that’s what. You hurt him, Eden. You hurt him deeply. He got on a plane just hours after he saw you in the arms of another man, and no one has heard from him since. You know what he did? He called my mother.”

At that Eden drew in her breath. Minnie’s mother. The woman Brad had had an affair with.

“At least I’m glad to see you remember who she is. Brad will never marry her, but she won’t believe that. You should see her now. She’s giddy with happiness because she thinks Brad’s going to ask her out again. I tried to talk to her, but she won’t listen. I told her that Brad will probably forgive you and that he’ll drop her again. But she won’t listen. And I’m caught in the middle. My mother wants me to spy on Brad, and he needs me to clean up after him. If it weren’t for my daughter needing her relatives, I’d leave this town forever.”

“Minnie, I’m sorry,” Eden said. “I never meant—”

“Right. You never meant to hurt anyone. You just loved having two men drooling over you, didn’t you?”

“I think that’s quite enough.” Turning, Eden took a step to leave.

“You were a slut as a teenager and you haven’t changed since, have you?”

Eden drew in her breath, then she turned to look back at Minnie. The young woman’s face was so distorted with anger that Eden could hardly recognize her. There was nothing she could say to combat anger like that. She left the office.

Minnie sat down hard on her chair, and for a moment she wanted to burst into tears. With Eden Palmer’s betrayal, all her plans for her future had been ruined. Brad would never marry Eden now. He’d had enough gossip about his first wife; he’d never set himself up for something like that again. And then there was Jared. Minnie felt betrayed by him too. She’d really felt as though they’d started something good, but it had all been an act. He’d only been in town because of Eden. Minnie wasn’t sure why Jared McBride had been there, but she knew it had something to do with Eden’s disgusting past. And as soon as he’d found out whatever he wanted to know, he’d left. So Minnie was right back where she’d started. She wasn’t going to g

et a house of her own, and she wasn’t going to get a gorgeous hunk of a man for herself. Instead, she was going to continue to be Braddon Granville’s cleaning woman and gofer.

She put her head in her hands and thought how she’d like to make them all feel as bad as she was feeling right now. How could some girl who came to town pregnant and destitute have two men after her? And at her age!

Minnie’s head came up. What was it Eden had said at that dinner about the man who raped her? He was head deacon at her church. Yes, that was it.

She jumped up from her chair, jerked open the second file drawer, and pulled out Eden’s folder. She’d had to fill out an employment card, and on it was the name of her birth town in Ohio. It took only one phone call to the local library in Eden’s hometown to find the name of a “little stone church,” then she called the pastor and asked him if he could possibly find out who had been the head deacon in 1976.

“I don’t have to look up the answer,” the man said, “because you’re not the only person to ask me that question. It was Walter K. Runkel.”