Eden wanted to sit her daughter down and make her talk, but she couldn’t do it. Eden knew that whatever was wrong with Melissa would be said to be her fault. “My fault,” Eden whispered.
“Did you say something, Mother?” Melissa asked in a chilly voice.
Eden knew that right now she didn’t have the emotional security to take on more complaints about herself. Minnie’s angry words still haunted her.
It had been a cool dinner, with stilted conversation between them. Twice Melissa had shot Eden that look of anger—or was it hatred?
Immediately after dinner, Melissa had gone to her room and shut the door.
Slowly, trying not to think, Eden had cleaned up the kitchen, then gone to her room and tried to copyedit a manuscript. But she couldn’t keep her mind on what she was reading. Instead, she kept asking herself, Now what? Now what was she to do with the rest of her life? Would Stuart never show up and take his wife away? If he didn’t, would Melissa blame Eden for that too? “If you’d just been nicer to him,” Eden could hear Melissa say. “If you’d just—” Was it a fact of motherhood that you got blamed for everything bad in your child’s life?
At two A.M., Eden was still awake, still trying to not think about her future. What was she to do now? How did she make the best of what life was handing her?
At two-thirty, she got up, pulled on her jeans and a sweatshirt, and tiptoed down the stairs. Maybe if she had something to eat she could sleep. Or maybe if she—She stopped thinking when she looked out the window and saw a tiny light. It was like a cigarette tip or a little flashlight. Whatever it was, it shouldn’t be there.
Her cell phone was in its charger on the kitchen counter. She’d already programmed Jared McBride’s number into it. Should she call him? He was probably back in D.C. by now, she thought. He was probably far away. He was—She picked up the phone and pushed the buttons to send the call through to him before she argued herself out of it.
He picked it up on the first ring, but he said nothing.
“There’s someone outside my house,” Eden whispered.
“I know. It’s me,” came Jared’s voice. “I saw your light on. If you want to talk, I’m here.”
Without thinking about wha
t she was doing, Eden snapped the phone closed, then ran out the door into the night. She ran past the herb garden, then headed toward the orchard. There wasn’t anything clearly in her mind about what she wanted to say, but the thought that there was someone nearby who she could talk to made her frantic. “Where are you?” she asked in a loud whisper, then felt a touch on her arm. Turning, she looked up into the dark blue eyes of Jared McBride.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, and his face was that one she’d seen earlier: full of concern and ready to listen.
“I…” Eden began, meaning to sit down with him and talk over her problems, one adult to another. But the moment she looked at him, she collapsed. If Jared hadn’t caught her in his arms she would have fallen to the ground.
“Hey, hey,” he said softly, pulling her to him, holding her tightly and stroking her hair. “What’s happened? Has someone hurt you?”
“No,” she said as the tears began. “Yes, I…I…”
“Sssssh,” he said, holding her tighter. Then he bent and put his arm under her legs and lifted her.
Eden sank into him, limp and helpless. Never in her life had she felt such a need to surrender to someone. When she’d been a pregnant teenager there had been a lot of fight in her, defiance. There was a streak in her that made her determined to win, no matter what she had to do. She was going to do anything she could for the child she was carrying.
But now the fight seemed to have gone out of her. Tears came that seemed to have been buried for years and years, maybe for all of her life. As he carried her across the lawn, she clung to him, tears pouring out of her so hard that her entire body was shaking.
After a while Jared stopped and put her down on something soft, but her arms were still around his neck. She tried to stop crying, but couldn’t.
He sat down with her, still holding her, took out a handkerchief, and began to wipe her face.
“I’m making a fool of myself,” she managed to say.
“Tell me what’s happened,” he said, ignoring her comment.
“It’s just that…I mean…” Sniffing, she moved slightly away from him and looked around. “Where are we?”
“The well house,” he said.
Blinking, she looked about her. A flashlight was pointed at the ceiling. The building, eighteenth century, and quite pretty, had once been the smokehouse to the plantation, so it had no windows. In the corner, inside an ugly plywood closet, were the tanks and pump necessary for piping well water to the house and the outside spigots. The rest of the small building had been used for storage, and it had always been filled to capacity. She saw that now it was clean and had what looked to be a mattress and blankets on the floor.
“The men used it,” Jared said as he lit a fat candle and turned the flashlight off. He was sitting just inches from her on the mattress. “They were taking a chance that you’d find them, but a lock’s been installed and…” Trailing off, he shrugged and looked away.
Outside, the rain began to sprinkle, making a pleasing noise when it hit the tin roof of the building. Eden wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I better get back inside. Melissa will—”