In Search of Eden (48 page)

“I'd like a number for Loomis,” she said to the operator, “Daniel Loomis.”

She wrote it on her hand, then dialed quickly before she could think.

A child answered on the third ring. A little girl, and she felt a thrust of pain.

“I'm trying to get ahold of your daddy,” she said. “Danny Loomis?”

“He's at work. You want to talk to my mom?”

“Do you have your daddy's work number?”

“Just a minute.” Heavy breathing, paper rattling, then the number read to her.

“Thank you,” she said just as a woman's voice spoke in the background.

She signed off, then dialed again, quickly.

“Beauregard Trucking. This is Kip.”

“I'd like to speak to Daniel Loomis.”

“Just a minute.” She was put on hold. The phone picked up after a few seconds.

“Loomis,” the voice said. It didn't sound familiar in the least.

“Danny,” she said, “this is Miranda. I mean, Dorrie Gibson.”

A long silence, which she broke herself. “This isn't a social call,” she said bluntly. “I'm sorry to bother you, but I need some information.”

“Okay.” He sounded cautious, and she began to feel angry.

“I'm looking for our child,” she said.

A deep expulsion of breath. “Look, Dorrie, I can't talk about this now.”

“I don't want to talk. I just want to know everything you know. Don't you think you owe me that?”

Another pause. “I don't know anything.”

“Danny, someone got the original birth certificate. Was it you?”

A deep sigh, and her anger flared.

“You have it?” she demanded.

“Had it,” he said. “I gave it to your mother.”

Miranda felt stunned. She felt once more like the victim of treachery.

“All I know is that it was a girl. Your mother said she had a good home for her. Christian people. That's all I know.”

“You told me you didn't know anything.”

“That's what your mother told me to say. You know how it was, Dorrie.”

She knew how it was, all right.

“Look, I've got to go,” he said.

Her anger was replaced by desperation. “How much did she weigh?” she pleaded. “What color were her eyes?” She could hear herself almost wailing.

“I don't know. I don't remember. Look, I have to go. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, but that was all in the past. Let's leave it that way.”

And then he hung up.

She held out the phone and looked at it. Then she laid her head on her knees and wept. Deep wrenching sobs. And somewhere during her sorrow someone came near. She knew because she could feel it, a sweet presence, and then a warm small hand on her back. She could smell her. It was the sweet smell of childhood. Soap and sweat and grass.

“What's the matter?” Eden asked quietly.

Miranda couldn't speak. She shook her head.

“You want me to get somebody?” Eden asked. “Pastor Hector or Mom or Uncle Joseph?”

Miranda shook her head again. “Just you,” she said. So Eden sat down beside her and slipped a warm hand into her own and stayed there without talking until Miranda's sobs became shuddering breaths.

By morning she had made a decision. She had to tell Joseph. And she would do it today. She would do it this evening, she decided, for they had agreed to go walking on the trail for an hour or so when he finished work. She would do it now if she could, so eager was she to have it done.

“We'll stop by the Dairy Freeze, and I'll buy you a burger for supper,” he'd said when he called her last night. It was the perfect opportunity. Their long walk, surrounded by the beautiful mountains, would give her the courage that she needed.

The other decision she had made during the long sleepless night was to go public in her search. It was her only chance to find her daughter. As soon as she told Joseph, she would tell her other friends. She would ask the four pastors. She would put an ad in the newspaper if necessary.

She went to work as usual. She made coffee, filled the cream pitchers, and did the morning prep work, and while she was working, she slipped the picture of her baby girl out of her purse. She set it under the edge of the register so she could see it and be comforted. The tiny face peeked at her and made her smile. At six o'clock she unlocked the door. Joseph arrived a little after that and greeted her with a warm smile. She brought him his coffee, and he told her he was looking forward to seeing her tonight. She told him she was looking forward to it, too, and tried to ignore her churning stomach. No mature man would hold a fifteen-year-old girl's mistake against her, would he? And then she
suddenly repented of calling her daughter a mistake. Now that she knew a little more, the child was real to her, not someone she had only dreamed of. Her child wasn't an
it
any longer. She was a
she.
She, Miranda DeSpain, had a daughter. A little girl.

Joseph and Henry ate. After a half hour or so Henry left and Joseph came toward the register. He took out his wallet and then she saw something that changed everything.

Joseph smiled at her, lowered his eyes to his wallet, withdrew a bill, and set it on the counter. Then he frowned, something having apparently caught his attention. She followed his gaze. He was looking at the photograph of her baby. Her heart began thumping. Why had she been so foolish as to leave it out? She prayed he wouldn't ask her about it now.

As she watched, he reached over and picked it up. And then the oddest thing happened. He looked at the picture, not as if it was unfamiliar and he was studying it or trying to make sense of something, but fondly, as if it were someone he knew. Even loved. A brief smile played on his lips, and then he did something that stunned Miranda even more. He tucked it into his wallet.

“Thanks,” he said. “I'd hate to lose this. Where was it? Under the counter?”

She didn't answer, but suddenly she was seeing yesterday's cascade of photos and credit and business cards all over the floor as their heads bumped. She stood watching and thinking, her mouth slightly open. Was it? No. It couldn't be. She stood absolutely still, as if moving too quickly might banish the vague picture that was beginning to form. She nodded and smiled, as if she knew what he meant.

“I thought I'd picked up everything,” he said, “but obviously I missed one.”

“It's a good thing you saw it,” she said. “I didn't know who it was.” Truth. Clear truth.

He met her honest gaze. “Couldn't you recognize those cowlicks?” He set two bills on the counter and waved away the change.

“Such a sweet baby,” she said, wanting him to say something to confirm what she already knew. What she supposed she had known at some level since their first meeting.

“She's still a sweet girl,” Joseph commented, giving her another warm smile. “But then, you already know that.”

She finished her shift somehow, her mind overwhelmed with what couldn't be. There had to be a misunderstanding. After work she went into her tiny apartment and shut the door. She thought. About Eden and Joseph and Sarah and David and what she knew and what could not be true. Sarah had been pregnant, hadn't she? With David's child? Then how could Eden be her own daughter? She didn't understand how it could be true, but she had a feeling it was. There was only one way to know for sure. With her hands shaking, she phoned Ruth's house and asked for Eden.

Eden's voice was innocent and out of breath. “Oh, hi, Miranda,” she said. “Dad and I have been playing Ping-Pong. He can still beat me, even in his chair.”

Miranda made some kind of response. And then she asked, trying to keep her voice casual. “Hey,” she said. “I just realized there's something important about you that I don't know.”

“What's that?” Eden asked, and once again Miranda was struck by the innocence of her voice, and she had the urge to stop right then. To say never mind and leave the question unanswered. But the scale had been tipped and the slide toward movement inexorable.

“When's your birthday?” she asked, and in the seconds it took for the answer to come, worlds could have been created and destroyed.

“I'm gonna be twelve,” Eden said, “on December fourteenth.”

chapter
51

M
iranda spent the rest of the evening working out the how. Joseph came to the door at five o'clock, and she told him she wasn't well. If she told him the truth, he would think her insane or a liar. She must have looked authentically sick, for he gave her a concerned look and told her to get some rest.

She phoned Reverend Webb. He answered on the seventh ring, just as she was ready to hang up. His voice sounded frail, but she needed answers. She had waited long enough for them.

“Reverend Webb, this is Miranda DeSpain. I visited you the other day and asked you about Noreen Gibson.”

“Yes,” he said. “I remember.”

“I forgot to ask you something then. Could I ask you now?”

“Yes. Go ahead.”

“Mrs. Tallert said that Beck used to let Noreen and Bobbie go to church outings and trips. Do you remember what some of those were?”

“Oh dear. It's been a long time,” he apologized.

“I know. That's all right,” Miranda said and wondered if she should have bothered him. He became agitated when he couldn't remember things.

“Wait. Wait. There was a trip we took to Lewisburg to the state fair. I believe Noreen went to that.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“There were singings we went to from time to time at other churches. We went over to Hinton once and another time to Beckley.”

She took a deep breath and asked the question. “Was there anything in Virginia, Reverend Webb?”

There was a silence. “I believe there was, now that you mention it,” he said. “There was a camp the children used to visit. I believe Noreen went once. I can't remember the name of it, though, or where it was.”

“Could it have been in Abingdon, Reverend Webb?”

“I suppose it could have been.”

“Could it have been Camp Berachah?”

“It was!” he said triumphantly, his voice full and his memory sound now that he was on solid ground. “That was it. The valley of blessing. I remember because it was in the valley of blessing that Jehoshaphat cried out to the Lord with his enemies attacking, ‘Lord, we don't know what to do, but our eyes are on you.'”

“You're sure about the name of the camp?”

“Oh yes. I'm sure. Now that you tell me, I remember it well.”

She thanked him, her hands shaking.

“I've helped you, haven't I?” he asked.

“You certainly have, Reverend Webb. Thank you, again.”

She hung up the phone and sat there putting the pieces together. When she was finished, she had a feeling she knew who the person was that her mother had trusted.

chapter
52

R
uth waved good-bye to Eden and David and watched as they proceeded down the hill together, David in his power chair, Eden on her bike.

“Are you sure you don't want a ride?” she'd asked.

“Ma, we've got wheels,” David had joked. “We don't need a car.” She had smiled at her son and kissed them both before they left. Eden and David had exchanged tolerant grins, and she had felt her heart lift. She had the sense that her son's spirit was beginning to heal just as his body had. Even in the absence of his wife.

Neither David nor Sarah had explained Sarah's absence. They had talked behind closed doors and then announced that Sarah was going to visit her parents. David and Eden would stay here if that was all right with Ruth, which, of course, it was. Eden's jaw had tightened when Sarah had kissed her good-bye, but she had become her sunny self again with her father. Her mood darkened only when Sarah's name came up or at certain random times when Ruth was sure she was thinking of her mother.

She watched David and Eden proceeding down the hill, David going entirely too fast for a wheelchair on the sidewalk, Eden sticking her hands out at her sides. She shook her head and
turned away before she could worry herself into an early grave.

She hadn't seen much of Joseph during the past few days. He was busy with the festival. There was never much crime in Abingdon, but more people meant traffic and crowds, both of which were the police department's bailiwick.

She checked her watch and went back inside to fetch her purse. She was meeting with Johnny today to talk about the campground. She felt a pang of discomfort when she thought of Joseph and what he would say about the arrangements she'd made, but then she reminded herself that she was still the mother and he was still the son. She was a capable adult and could make her own decisions. And the truth was, she didn't want anyone, not even Joseph or David, not Hector, not anyone, not even Vi and Henry to point out the obvious flaws in her dream. She had always longed to see the campground open again. And now it seemed possible. She was not going to let go of that hope easily.