Jude Deveraux (4 page)

As Eden
looked in the mirror, she could see herself as she was when she first met Mrs.
Farrington. So young, so inexperienced in the world. Eden had never been
anywhere, done anything. Her parents . . . The less said about them, the
better. Eden had tried to contact them three times after Melissa was born, but
each time she'd been rebuffed. She went to her father's funeral, but her mother
had told her to get out.

But
Mrs. Farrington saved me, Eden thought, smiling. It had been difficult after
she left Mrs. Farrington's house, but she and Melissa had had five whole years
of warmth and love, so they made it. That house, which had taken her all those
years to straighten up, was Eden's 'happy place.' When things got to be too
much for her, from Melissa's hateful third grade teacher, to Steve, a man Eden
had almost married, to all the years of financial terror she'd lived through,
Eden's escape was to put herself back in that old house with Mrs. Farrington.

Closing
her eyes for a moment, Eden could remember every inch of the place, every
floorboard, every stick of furniture. What was the house like now? she
wondered. Had it changed much? The letter said that she'd inherited house
and
contents.
Was there any furniture left, or had Mrs. Farrington's son taken
whatever they hadn't been able to hide?

Smiling,
Eden remembered one day when they'd been burying a stack of plastic shoeboxes
full of everything from old coins to children's wooden toys — actually, she
buried, and Mrs. Farrington directed. They feared that the items would rot
before they could dig them up, but there wasn't much choice. All the hiding
space inside the house had been used. Mrs. Farrington leaned on her shovel
handle and looked back at the house. 'It ends with me.'

At
first Eden didn't know what she meant.

'Did
you ever wonder how I kept the name Farrington? For centuries my family
produced an eldest son, so the name stayed with us. But not my father. After
being married for ten years he produced only one puny daughter, me. And don't
give me that women's lib look. It
was
my father's fault. My mother was a
widow and had had three kids by her first husband. She was twenty-six years old
and had already produced three healthy boys. But she married my father and
didn't conceive for ten years. When I was born I was so tiny they didn't think
I was going to live.'

Mrs.
Farrington looked across the fence that enclosed her beloved flower garden.
'Maybe I should have died,' she said. 'Maybe . . . '

'So how
did you keep the name?' Eden asked, not wanting her friend to dwell on sadness.

'Married
my cousin. He was a distant cousin, but he had the Farrington name. My mother
begged me not to do it. She said that the strain of our family was already
fragile and a cousin would further weaken it. But I didn't listen. If I had —
if I hadn't been so enraptured with the Farrington legacy and hadn't felt as
though I
had
to carry on the name — I would have married one of those
great strapping Granville boys. My! But they were good-looking. Born ten months
apart, strong as field hands, and smart. But I didn't listen to anyone.'

'Haven't  
changed   much, have   you?'   Eden asked,
straightening up. They had six more boxes to bury before sundown.

'No.
I've always done what I wanted to, when I wanted to do it. Spoiled. Always was.
So I married a man who I thought was good enough for me, meaning I married
another Farrington.' She pointed at the next place Eden was to dig. 'I was a
fool. The man I married was a weak, foppish coward.' She took a deep breath.
'My husband was what you call today a bisexual.'

Eden
concentrated on the hole she was digging. Part of her wanted to tell Mrs.
Farrington to stop remembering such dreadful things, but she knew that her
friend had a point to make.

'My
husband was an awful man, truly awful, and the only child we had together
turned out to be worse than he was.' She looked up at the sky again, her hands
making fists so hard the knuckles turned white. 'So I'm the last one. The
Farringtons end with me.'

'But
your son could have children.'

'No, he
can't. The last time I got him out of jail, I only did so if he got fixed. Like
a horse that's no good. The world doesn't want his seed spread around.'

'Oh,'
Eden said, her head down, not knowing what to say. Vasectomy. As much as Mrs.
Farrington cared about family, she had demanded that her only child be 'fixed'
so he could have no children.

'But
the good news is that I found out that I'm bisexual too.'

Eden's
head came up as she looked at Mrs. Farrington in shock.

'I
had  affairs  with  
both 
of those 
beautiful Granville boys.'

Eden
laughed so hard she had to sit down on the ground and hold her stomach.

Now,
even thinking about it, she chuckled. Two days after that, she'd been in town
and had seen one of the Granville 'boys.' He was ninety if he was a day, but he
still stood up straight and still had a twinkle in his eye. When Eden stopped
him to say hello, he asked after Mrs. Farrington, and Eden couldn't keep a
straight face. 'Why don't you visit her?' she asked, then a devil got into her.
'Maybe you two could have lunch under the old willow tree down by the river.'
That's where Mrs. Farrington said that she'd made love with both boys,
separately and together.

Mr.
Granville laughed so hard that Eden began to fear for his heart. 'Ah, Alice,'
he said. 'Alice, Alice, Alice. What beautiful days those were. Give her my
love,' he said, then walked away, his shoulders back and his head up.

*   *   *

Yes,
those days with Mrs. Farrington were good ones. The best days. The happiest of
her life. And now Mrs. Farrington was gone and had left Eden that old house.
She wondered if any of the boxes they'd buried were still there. Or had that
son of hers taken them all? While it was true that Hden had had no direct
contact with Mrs. Farrington after she left, she had kept in touch for a few
years through Gracey. They'd exchanged a few letters, and Gracey had never
asked why Eden left — in a small town everyone knew about everyone else, so
they knew what the son was guilty of. Gracey had written Eden of the sale of
pieces of furniture that had been in the Farrington family for centuries. One
letter said Alester Farrington had gone to a Realtor and said the old house was
for sale, but Mrs. Farrington went right down after him and said it wasn't. She
owned the house, of course, so it wasn't put up for sale. For a while everyone
in town feared for Mrs. Farrington's life, but her lawyer spread the word
around town that if 'anything' happened to Mrs. Farrington, the house would go
to charity.

Eden
had felt bad when she'd read those letters, but there was nothing she could do.
She had Melissa to take care of, and she couldn't take her child back into that
mess, not with Mrs. Farrington's son there. Eden was so afraid of him that she
wouldn't even send a letter to Mrs. Farrington for fear her son would get her
address.

Gracey
died when Melissa was eleven, and after that Eden lost contact with the town.
Over time she just assumed that dear Mrs. Farrington had died and that Alester
had finally got his hands on the lovely old house. Yet, somehow, Mrs.
Farrington had outlived him.

Eden
looked down at the letter. It was short, stating only that Mrs. Farrington's
son had died 'a number of years ago' and had left no issue, so Mrs.  
Farrington   was   willing   the  
house   and contents to Eden Palmer. When Eden saw that the letter
was signed by Mr. Braddon Granville, esquire, she smiled. The grandson of one
of the 'beautiful Granville boys.'

Of
course Eden couldn't possibly keep the house. Too much to maintain. Maybe she'd
will it to a historical society so they could lead tours through it. Yes, that
was a good idea. In the 1700s there had been hundreds of plantations along the
river, but the houses had been pulled down, burned down, and bulldozed over the
centuries. Now there were few houses like Farrington Manor left. It was, for
the most part, an untouched house. Yes, there were two bathrooms in the house,
and electricity too — but the paneling remained untouched from the time the
house was built in 1720.

Or was
it? Eden thought. Was the house the same now as it was those many years ago?
What had been done to that beautiful old house in the past twenty-two years?
Maybe she'd ask for some time off from work and go to North Carolina to see the
house. Just see it, then fly right back to New York so she'd be here when
Melissa had her baby. Heaven knew that Stuart wouldn't be any good in the
delivery room. He'd leave Melissa by herself to sweat and cry and . . .

'If I
weren't there, maybe he
would
go into the delivery room,' Eden whispered
aloud. Maybe if she wasn't there, always between the two of them, maybe they'd
make themselves into a family. Maybe if Stuart
had
to support his wife
and child he'd get the courage to go to his boss and ask for that promotion.

Eden
sat down hard on the chair by her bed. The problem with being a single mother
to an only child was that your lives got entwined with each other's in a very
deep way. Right now, she couldn't believe what was going through her head.
Leave Melissa? They'd been separated only once, and that was when Melissa went
to New York to be near Stuart. During that year there had been endless phone
calls, and Eden had flown to the city three times. Every extra penny she'd
earned had gone to the airlines. Eden's attachment to Melissa was what had
ultimately caused her breakup with Steve. 'She's a grown woman,' Steve had
shouted. 'Let her live her own life!' 'She will always be my baby,' Eden had
answered. She'd returned his ring the next week.

But now
Melissa was married and going to have her own child. And Melissa was caught
between her love for her mother and for her husband.

Suddenly
Eden could see her own part in what must be great stress to Melissa. Stuart
tried to get his wife to eat healthy food while she was pregnant; Eden filled
the refrigerator with pastries and chocolate. Did Stuart not look in the
refrigerator because he knew what was in there?

Eden
disliked Stuart because he made no effort to get them their own place to live,
but now Eden remembered one night of hearing soft sobs from Melissa. Eden had
been about to knock on their bedroom door when she heard Melissa say, 'But
she'd be so lonely if we left her. You don’t understand that I’mall she has.
I'm her whole life. And I owe everything to her.'

At the
time, Eden had smiled at what she'd heard and gone back to her own room. But
now she didn't like the memory. Had it been Melissa who'd kept them from moving
into their own apartment?

Epiphany.
It was one of those blinding moments when people truly see themselves as they
really are — and Eden didn't like what she saw. Yes, Melissa was her whole
life. All of it. But now there was Stuart. Had Eden treated him as a usurper?

'The
book!' Eden said aloud, the memory startling her. When she'd moved to New York,
out of the back of a closet she'd pulled an old file box that she hadn't looked
inside in years. In her frantic haste in leaving Mrs. Farrington's house on
that night, she'd accidentally picked up the box she'd labeled PERTINENT
INFORMATION. In her five and a half years of cataloging and listening to Mrs.
Farrington, Eden had filled many notebooks with interesting facts about the
family. There had been some beautiful letters written by a bride to her new
husband who was serving in the Confederate Army. She wrote him one last letter
after she found out he'd been killed, put it with their letters, and tied them
up with ribbons. Even though she'd only been a teenager, Eden had realized that
what she was reading could be made into a biography of the family, and she
intended to write it, once the cataloging was done. She'd put all her notes and
hundreds of photocopies into one box, which she'd accidentally taken when she'd
left. But she never opened the box until many years later, when she got to New
York. Eden had at last opened the box and started reading the notes she'd made,
as well as looking over the huge pile of photocopies. Before she knew what she
was doing, she was putting all the material in chronological order and writing
introductions to each section. She spent several Saturdays in the New York
Public Library, looking up facts so she could tell what was going on in the
world at the time of the events in the lives of the Farringtons.

One day
in her second year at the publishing house, Eden had stopped by the office of
one of the nonfiction editors and asked her to have a look at what she'd
written. Three days later the editor said she'd like to publish the book but
couldn't because they'd all be sued. 'You can't say those things about living
people,' she'd told Eden. 'Wait until they're dead, then you can say anything.'

Disappointed,
Eden had taken the manuscript home with the intention of taking out all the
things that could get her into trouble, such as Mrs. Farrington's love affairs.
After hours of dulling the book down, she'd put her laptop aside and turned on
the TV. The book was ruined, lifeless, and she knew it. But after Jay Leno's
opening monologue, she had an idea. What about turning it into fiction? A
novel? She picked up her laptop again and began a 'search and replace' for the
names and other identifying information. The sun came up, and she was still
writing.