In Search of Eden (8 page)

Sarah flung herself at Ruth. The arms opened and the two of them clung together and wept.

“Where is he?” Ruth finally asked when most of their tears had been spent.

“This way,” Sarah said and punched open the door. “He doesn't look like himself,” she started to explain, but she realized how futile the words were. Nothing spoken could prepare her.
Help her, Jesus. Help her, Jesus. Help.

The crowd had thinned in David's room. She could see just two nurses in there now, one adjusting intravenous lines, the other charting. Sarah introduced Ruth to the charge nurse, and her mother-in-law went inside. Sarah waited in the hallway. Only one allowed in at a time. She watched for a moment as Ruth took David's hand and smoothed his hair, and then it was too hard to watch any longer. She sat back down in her chair, lowered her head again, and closed her eyes.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
was the only thing she could think of to say.

chapter
7

J
oseph drove to Fairfax and followed the directions his mother had given him to David's house, then let himself inside after retrieving the key from the neighbor, as he'd been instructed. It felt strange being in his brother's home. He had never been here before. Not once in twelve years, and he looked around with a sense of unreality. It felt as if he were watching something on television or at the theater. He felt a little guilty, as if he'd done something wrong, but he was only waiting for Eden to be returned from another friend's house so he could take her back to Abingdon.

He looked around slowly and felt himself slip into cop mode—gathering evidence as to what kind of people David and his wife had become.

Someone was artistic. He knew it was Sarah. She had always had a flair for making things beautiful. The walls were deep colors—the living room red, the kitchen gold. He wasn't well versed in interior design, but the furnishings and decorations looked expensive and had been put together with care. Everything was either red, gold, or dark green, with flashes of purple here and there. Something about it reminded him of royalty.

The house was decorated for Christmas, but with excruciating care. The tree was artificial and done completely in purple and gold. Even the presents underneath were all wrapped in the same gold foil with purple bows. He couldn't help remembering his mother's Christmas tree, a live, noble fir covered with mismatched ornaments—evidence of thirty years of teaching elementary school and twenty summers of running a camp. Ma had a homemade quilt underneath it, and the presents were covered in a motley assortment of wrappings. He turned away and walked back into the kitchen.

He lifted an eyebrow at the scattering of something on the kitchen floor. He bent closer and examined it. Seed husks. He looked up. There was a hook in the ceiling. So there had been a bird. It was gone. Neighbors were taking care of it, most likely. And Sarah had left in a hurry, so there'd been no time to sweep the floor.

He went near the photo wall in the front hallway. There were studio stills and black-and-white candids, all tastefully matted and framed. Sarah's handiwork again, he supposed. He scanned the pictures. There was Eden as a baby. Pretty eyes, button nose, pink mouth, and a thatch of dark hair. He looked at the photograph of Sarah holding her in the next shot, looking blond and tanned and happy. There was a set of what seemed to be mother-daughter pictures taken each year, probably on Mother's Day or some such. Sarah wearing a pink dress and holding Eden as a baby. The passage of years was evident mostly in Eden as she progressed from drooling infant to toddler to child. He calculated how old she was and then realized with a familiar flood of emotion that he didn't have to calculate. He knew. The day his brother had taken Sarah and left plus nine months, give or take six weeks or so.

He felt his jaw clench but released the tension when he thought of Eden the person rather than Eden the symbol. For the real flesh-and-blood child had wrapped him around her heart from an early age. He'd called her Annie Oakley since she was
five. He talked to her weekly. She phoned his mother every Sunday night without fail, and he just happened to be stopping by most of those nights. She e-mailed him twice a week or so. She was in the midst of writing detective stories now and frequently would post her latest installments to him via e-mail. He recalled yesterday's missive. It was a fast-paced whodunit, liberally salted with exclamation marks and parenthetical asides.
“Do triggers click?”
she had asked.

He'd sent back his reply last night, not knowing he would see her before she read it.

Dear AnnieO: Your bad guy is most likely using an automatic weapon, in which case the trigger does not need to be pulled back to fire. However, the sound the daring investigative reporter might hear is the release of the safety catch. Would that work? Keep me posted. Uncle Joe.

She was a bright spot in his life, which was funny, since he had been determined not to love her.

From the time she was small, David and Sarah had let her come every summer to visit his mother. He had managed to avoid her for the first five years of her life except for pats on the head and brief drooly encounters. He remembered the day that had all changed. Eden had been five years old.

“You're baby-sitting,”
his mother had announced, leading his niece into his office.
“I have a hair appointment I can't miss, and this is just plain silly.”
She gave him a glare that said,
“Don't you dare ask what I'm talking about.”
With that, she had left.

Joseph had sighed and sized up his adversary. About forty-two inches tall, with no tattoos or visible markings except the brown freckles dusting her nose. Dark hair cut in a bowl shape with crooked bangs.
“She won't hold still! It's like wrestling an alligator!”
Maisy at the Beehive had complained to his mother. She was small and quick—too quick, it had been alleged. She was prone to running off. She had small hands with chipping red fingernail
polish, at that moment planted on her hips. She was wearing rolled-up jeans, the cuffs showing the red plaid lining. A red plaid flannel shirt, a gun belt complete with two western pistols, and a cowboy hat.

“These shoes ain't right,”
she'd said, looking with disgust at her pink tennis shoes.

“No. I can see that,”
he had agreed.

In the end he had taken the small hand and led her down the block to Larry's Western Shop. There just happened to be a pair of size ten Tony Lama boots, black with black stitching, just like his. They had been fast friends ever since.

She had come to the office every day after that. She drank Dr. Pepper out of a chipped white coffee mug on which he wrote her name with black permanent marker. He put her to work separating Wanted posters from crime reports and shrugged off his mother's objections.

“She can't read the gruesome stuff,”
he said.
“Besides, it keeps her busy.”

They had lunch together every day at the Hasty Taste. Elna knew to bring Eden a grilled cheese sandwich and chocolate milk, and after that she spent the afternoon at the office. He returned her to his mother's for supper. They had done it every summer for six years now. The visits had gotten longer, too, from a few weeks to a month or two.

He got a kick out of her.

Now, at eleven, she was still feisty and funny and not afraid of anything. Her hair was still short with crooked bangs. She had a cowlick that never lay straight. She still had the freckles and so far had disdained covering them up with makeup. She was still prone to running off.

She sent her stories off to
True Crime
and
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
They always came back with printed rejections, which she cheerfully threw away. She seemed immune to discouragement.

He barely remembered whose child she was, and when he
did, he put it out of his mind. She was his buddy. That was all. Besides, you couldn't blame the child for the sins of the father. Or the mother.

The doorbell rang. He started guiltily. The door opened and he saw Eden, followed by a woman and another girl. She ran for him and threw her arms around his waist. He smoothed her hair, nearly covering her head with his hand. He realized again how very small she was. Introductions were brief. He barely listened. Murmurs of condolence were made, and the friends left.

When the door closed behind them, Eden pushed herself away and glared at him with a defiant expression, a poor cover for the fear he could see in her eyes.

“What's going on?” she said. “Nobody will tell me anything.”

He frowned and looked at her with confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean Mom left and just said she'd be back as soon as she could. She said she had to go meet Dad and that you would come and get me. I know something bad's happened, and everybody knows but me.”

He felt a flush of anger, followed quickly by one of bitterness. Sarah had never liked to deal with messy emotional situations. It looked as if nothing had changed. He reached down and took Eden's hand. It was bigger than the day he had first clasped it, and there was no chipped red fingernail polish today. The nails were small and rimmed with white and tipped slightly upward. She wore a bracelet of braided thread, a hooded purple sweatshirt, and jeans. Her dark hair still flew every which way. Her pretty blue eyes were worried, the freckles standing out sharply against her pale face.

“Tell me,” she ordered.

“It's your dad,” he said gently. “He's been hurt.”

She cried a little while, and he held her. She dried her eyes, went into her room to pack, and came out with a backpack, a small suitcase, and her notebook. He had to suppress a smile at that. She never went anywhere without her writing utensils.

She stood there in front of him, backpack and suitcase in hand, and lifted her chin. “Uncle Joseph,” she said, “I want to go see my dad. Will you take me?”

Joseph hesitated. His instructions had been explicit. Take her back to Abingdon, and Sarah would decide what arrangements to make before Christmas vacation was over. Suddenly it made him angry that Sarah had walked out on someone else who was left holding the sharp-edged pieces.

He sighed. “I'm supposed to take you to Abingdon.”

She jutted out her chin.

He softened. “If we go, it will only be for a day or two,” he warned.

Eden's face lit with hope, for she knew the battle had been won. “All right. I won't argue. I promise.”

She had a right to see her father, he told himself as he booked the tickets and drove to the airport. They climbed onto the 6:20 flight from D.C. He called Sarah when they were irrevocably committed. She sounded upset at first but quickly lapsed into passivity. He remembered that about her, that tendency to let go too easily.

“How is he?” Joseph asked.

“Holding on,” she answered briefly.

They arrived in Minneapolis not long after eight and took a cab to the hospital. They found the Trauma Intensive Care unit after a few minutes of wandering.

Joseph didn't go into the waiting room with Eden right away after seeing Sarah there with his mother through the doorway. He sent his niece in alone, saying he would be along in a minute. He felt guilty, as if he were not doing the right thing, as if he were focusing on trivialities of the heart while a life hung in the balance, but somehow he could not make himself go into the room. At least not without preparing himself first by getting a look at who she had become. Eden gave her mother a quick hug, threw herself at her grandmother, then gestured toward the hall. He saw his mother nod and knew they had asked about him. Then Sarah
faced him and he was forced to walk toward her.

She looked smaller than he remembered, or maybe it was the oversized sweater she was wearing. It looked like one of David's, and he wondered if it was. She hugged herself as if she were cold. Her face looked thin, the angles of her cheeks standing out in sharp relief. Her blond hair was chin length, not long, as he remembered. There were dark circles under her eyes, and suddenly he felt ashamed of himself, hovering like a lovesick schoolboy while his brother—yes, even as Sarah—was suffering. It was wrong, this hesitation, and he quickly covered the remaining space between them before he could think further.

He expected her to take stock of him, but she didn't, just stepped toward him in a brief hug, then stepped back quickly and draped her arm around Eden, who looked miserable and small. His mother came and took his hand, and he wasn't sure if she was trying to draw strength from him or impart it.

“Nothing has changed in David's condition since I spoke to you,” Sarah told Joseph briefly.

“I want to see him,” Eden said, and Joseph saw Sarah hesitate.

“He doesn't look like himself, honey,” Ruth soothed. “Why don't you wait a day or two?”

“I want to see him!” Tears threatened; her voice tightened.

“Let her see him,” he said, surprising himself and the rest of them, as well. Eden looked at him with gratitude, and oddly, so did Sarah, who seemed relieved to have someone make the decision for her.

“Will you come with me, Uncle Joseph?” she asked.

He looked at Sarah, who nodded permission. So the three of them went to the desk outside the ICU and waited while Sarah called. Permission was given for him and Eden to come in for five minutes. “Room 910,” Sarah said, back to hugging herself.

Joseph hit the button on the wall, and the doors opened slowly. They walked through. Joseph looked for the numbers above the doors. They were headed in the right direction, and he couldn't help but glance inside as they passed each room. This
was the Trauma ICU, and each bed looked like a morgue slab with a limp sprawled body snaked with tubes and crowded by machines. Man or woman, all were ground down to the elemental here, and he wondered if he had been wise to advise that Eden see her father like this. Maybe his mother and Sarah were right. If David should die, maybe it would be better if his daughter did not remember him in this state. He glanced down at her face. It was set, and her eyes were frightened. He felt compassion for her.