In Search of Eden (50 page)

“I was supposed to meet your uncle ten minutes ago,” Miranda said. “But I suppose I could drop you off, go find Joseph, and then come back for you two. Are you sure it's okay with your dad?”

“I'm sure,” Eden said. She was glad Miranda was quiet when they drove, and she scrambled out of the car as soon as it stopped.

“Go make sure Grady and his dad are there, then wave at me. I'm not going to leave you here alone.”

Eden agreed and tore down the hill toward the RV park. “Grady!” Eden called. “Grady! You come out here!”

There was no sound, and as she came through the grove of trees, she saw nothing moving around the trailer. Mr. Adair's truck was gone, but Grady's bike was there, and if she listened real quiet she could hear snuffling. She went to the door and peeked in and sure enough, there was Grady, sitting at the kitchen table bawling like a baby.

This was serious. She heard a horn honk. She'd forgotten about Miranda. She ran back through the trees and waved goodbye, feeling a little guilty because Grady's dad wasn't actually there. It was the second lie she had told, but before she could reconsider, Miranda held up her hand and backed out. Eden hurried back to the situation in the trailer. Grady hadn't moved.

“What's the matter with you?” she asked.

He didn't answer, and he didn't even try to hide or pretend he wasn't crying, which meant things were pretty bad. Eden was
really feeling worried now. There were too many people crying this week. First Miranda and now Grady. She was wishing she hadn't waved Miranda off. There weren't many times when she needed a grown-up, but sometimes it was nice to have someone who had a driver's license.

“What's wrong?” she asked, kinder now.

He shook his head and couldn't speak for the gulps and sobs. She went to the sink and ran a glass of water and took it to him. He took a few sips. She found a napkin and handed it to him.

He blew his nose with a big honk, and she was going to laugh, but when she saw his face she decided not to.

“I'm supposed to get things ready to leave,” he said.

“You're leaving?” she asked with disbelief.

He nodded.

“When?”

“Right now. As soon as my dad gets back.”

Eden hadn't paid a lot of attention, but she had thought that Grady's dad was working for Grandma. Another secret she wasn't supposed to know about. “What about the campground?” she asked, and Grady looked even more miserable. He shook his head again.

Eden suddenly got the feeling that something was seriously wrong. “Look here, Grady, you'd better tell me what's going on.”

“If I tell you, you'll tell your uncle, and then my dad will go back to jail.”

“Why would your dad go to jail?” Eden asked, feeling truly alarmed. “Has he done something bad?”

Grady nodded. “Real bad. And he's doing it right now.”

Eden stared at Grady. She didn't believe what he was saying. Nice, kind Mr. Adair a jailbird? She tried to remember if she'd ever seen his face on a Wanted poster, but nothing came to mind.

Grady struggled for a minute, the tears back again. Finally he seemed to make up his mind. “Here,” he said, going to the bedroom area and opening a drawer. “Look in here.”

Eden looked in, and it took a minute for her to figure out
what she was seeing. She picked up the stack of cards. They were driver's licenses, all with Mr. Adair's picture but with different names.

“And here,” Grady said, opening the broom closet and showing her a stack of license plates.

Grady looked miserable.

Eden didn't want to believe it, but she could see he was telling the truth.

“You said he was doing something bad right now,” she said.

Grady nodded again.

“What is it?” she asked, and she had a really bad feeling about it, even before he answered.

“He's stealing some money,” he said, “from your grandma.”

Johnny smiled and held out a sheaf of papers for Ruth to sign. “These are all the contracts for the roofers and drywallers and plumbers and electricians,” he said. “And one naming me general contractor. If you think I'm up to the challenge.”

Ruth gazed intently at Johnny Adair. “I feel this is the Lord's project and that He has His hand on it. Don't you?” she asked, meeting his gaze.

He met her eyes and gazed at her steadily. “I have sensed that myself,” he said.

“Well, then, He'll watch over every detail, don't you think?”

She reached for the papers he held out to her, and for the tiniest fraction of a second he didn't release them. They both had hold, and neither one let go.

“You wanted me to sign?” she asked.

“Oh. Yes.” He let go.

She set the papers down on the table and signed each one by the yellow flag, then handed them all back, this time her check for the deposit on the work clipped to the top one.

He reached for the contracts, but now she held on a second too long as she spoke.

“That camp was a wonderful place, Johnny. It was a place where children and young people could decide what kind of lives they would live. Whether they would follow Christ into the wildness of His journey for them, sometimes leaving everything familiar behind, or whether they would not. I think we all have such a moment, don't you, Johnny? A time of decision. When we make up our minds what kind of person we're going to be. I think at those times we can't think too much. We have to just say yes and trust that if we do right, things will be right.”

He met her gaze. His eyes were dark and unreadable. She let go of the papers, and he must have let go, as well, for they scattered to the floor. They both stared at them; then after a second he stooped and picked them up. He shuffled them together, his head and eyes lowered.

“I'd better get to the bank,” he said, “before it closes.”

“You'd better go, then,” Ruth said and watched him walk out the door.

chapter
54

I
didn't know what to do,” Wally said, “so I came to you.”

Joseph looked at the paper in his hand and felt sick. “You did the right thing,” he said.

“It was just odd, you know, her giving me the social security number and then having them say it wasn't her.”

“Yes, it is odd, but it's probably nothing,” Joseph said, wishing he believed it.

“That's what I think, too. Like I said, she's a real nice gal. Just thought you ought to know.”

“Thank you, Wally,” Joseph said. “I'll let you know if there's a problem.”

Wally shuffled off, and Joseph's head swam as he looked down at the paper. The owner of the social security number Miranda had given Wally belonged to one Dora Mae Gibson, the social security administration said. Joseph was confused. And he had a feeling that when the facts made sense, he would wish they didn't. Things didn't add up.

He checked his watch, then quickly, before it closed, phoned Tennessee's vital statistics department. He identified himself and waited while the clerk searched birth, marriage, divorce, and
death certificates for Dora Mae Gibson. Death and marriage struck out, but birth yielded one return.

“I have a birth certificate on file for Miranda Isadora DeSpain. Mother Noreen Gibson, father Thomas Orlando DeSpain.”

He thanked the clerk, hung up, then shook his head. Why did she use two names? Maybe there was an explanation, he thought, holding on to a thread of hope. The desperation with which he did so made him realize how much he had grown to care for her. Something was rumbling, though, and he remembered the feeling he'd had when they'd first met. JDFR. It just didn't feel right. That had been what his gut had told him, and gradually he had let his heart override it. He felt a heaviness in both now.

“Hey.” Her voice drew him out of his brooding.

He swiveled his chair around. She was standing in the doorway, looking sober herself.

“David said you'd been called back to work.”

He nodded, not sure what to say or how to proceed. She took the matter out of his hands.

“Joseph,” she said, “there's something I have to tell you.”

Her face was sober, her eyes full of tears, and he had an impulse to tell her no. To walk toward her and put his hand over her lips and say,
Whatever it is, it doesn't matter.
But he did not. “Tell me,” he said.

She stood there in front of his desk like a child called before the principal.

“Sit down,” he invited.

She shook her head and looked straight at him, and he felt grief mixed with love.

“Just let me tell it,” she said.

“Tell it,” he said and steeled himself to listen.

“I don't know where to begin, so I'll just start in the middle,” she said.

He had to stifle a smile. It faded when she spoke her next words.

“When I was fifteen I had a baby,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion.

Oddly enough, he thought of Eden. Of how he would feel if it were her standing before him in a mere four years, telling him this. His heart twisted with sorrow, and he nodded and waited for her to go on.

“My mother made arrangements,” she said, and he remembered the story of Noreen and how his hand and Miranda's had clasped together tightly as they heard it together. “A private adoption was arranged, and I knew nothing at all until my mother died. She left an envelope.”

She dug around in her purse and handed it to him. He took it from her and looked at it. He recognized his mother's gracious swirling handwriting immediately. He frowned, trying to make sense of what she was saying, of what he saw.

“This envelope?” he repeated dumbly.

She nodded, tears flowing freely now. “With a picture inside. Of my baby.”

Why would his mother have a picture of Miranda's baby? The obvious interpretation made no sense. It didn't fit with what he'd been told, but he made the leap anyway, knowing that if his preconceived beliefs didn't fit with the evidence, one of them must be wrong.

Miranda watched him. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something. He looked back down at the envelope and went through that evidence now, taking reluctant steps with the determination of someone who knows a devastating truth must be faced. She had appeared out of nowhere at just the right time. She had sought out his family. She had certainly shown an excessive interest in his niece. And suddenly he remembered. As the last piece slid into place, he felt the same sense he always did on solving a small mystery. It was slight surprise mixed with vindication, as if a key was selected from a group, and amazingly it slid into the lock and the door opened. But this time it was mixed
with sharp regret. He barely needed the confirmation, but he made it anyway.

He remembered standing at the cash register, and there it had been. The picture of his niece. He thought, seeing the scene in detail, remembering her responses and his rejoinders.

He looked at Miranda, still standing before him. She was watching his face, and her own expression was stoic.

He opened his wallet now and took out his small bunch of photos, and he knew what he would find, but he hoped, he prayed he would be wrong. There could still be another answer, his heart insisted, but his brain knew the truth.

The photograph he had taken from beneath the register was on top of the stack. He took it out and held it up to the light, and now, of course, he could see that it wasn't worn in the same pattern as the others, not curved from his wallet, but flat and shiny. He turned it over and saw Eden's age written on the back in his mother's handwriting.

Slowly he thumbed through his other pictures, his mind racing ahead and not wanting to come to the conclusion he had to face. With each picture he looked at and then placed on the bottom of the stack, he felt as if a hope was being set aside. He looked up again and saw Miranda watching him silently, her eyes pooled with tears.

He set down another photo, and just past the gap-toothed first grade picture, there it was. His own baby picture of Eden Elizabeth Williams. He set the two identical photos side by side on his desk and felt a grimness slide in alongside what he could only name loss and grief along with confusion. Why would his brother have lied? His mother? The ripples were seismic. He couldn't begin to understand the what, much less the why.

There was one last hope.

“What day did you have your baby?” he asked, desperately wanting the answer to be something other than the one he knew would be given.

“December fourteenth,” she said, “nineteen ninety-five.”

The truth fell on him like a weight. He had purchased compasses, lariats, radios, boots, and backpacks on that date for years. He still didn't understand the how of it all, but he knew what she was saying had to be the truth.

He sat in silence, one image putting all of this into question— the picture of Sarah, guilt-stained, pregnant with his brother's child.