Tempting Eden (11 page)

As soon as the car stopped, Eden tore out and ran to the man. I followed, unsure of what was going on, but very sure that nothing would happen to Eden on my watch.

“Mason, you can’t fucking come here. You know that!”

“I just wanted to see her. She’s half mine, you know.” Mason stood, revealing a lanky frame underneath his dirty t-shirt and jeans.

“You’ve
never
wanted to see her.”

He slid his gaze up and down Eden’s body in an obvious manner. “It sure is nice to see you again, Edie.”

She crossed her arms across her chest. I took a step closer, hovering behind her and sizing up Mason. I knew I could drop him easily. I already wanted to, just from the way he spoke to Eden.

He flicked a glance at me. “Who’s your boy? Doesn’t seem like the company that the grand old Rochesters usually keep.”

I felt my spine tense at his choice of words. “Boy” was only one half-step up from the infamous word favored by white supremacists the nation over. Mason used it with a sneer and an air of superiority that I wanted to beat out of him. Anger roiled inside me, but I tamped it down. Not here. Not now. Not until he made the wrong move. And then, all bets were off.

“He works for me. You need to fucking leave, Mason.”

Mason smirked. “Makes sense. Anyway, I didn’t get a check last month, Edie, and you know how that upsets me.” He reached out to touch her face, but she ducked away.

I took another step, now standing right next to her. I balled my fists at my sides, and I waited. If he tried to touch her again, I would lay him out.

“Leave.” Eden’s voice shook.

He gave a shit-eating grin. “You know I can’t do that, Edie. I have to pay rent and buy groceries. How am I supposed to live? I thought we had a deal. If we don’t, just say so, and we can take this whole song and dance to court.”

Eden made a choked noise. “Don’t.”

“You know what you have to do then, Edie. By Tuesday, or I’ll be back when I know your mom’s home. Or maybe I’ll show up at Adele’s school. How would you like that? Just show up and say hi?”

“You heard her. Leave.” I met his eyes. They were beady, calculating.

“Or what? You gonna get me, attack dog?”

Eden put a hand on my arm. “It’s okay. Mason’s leaving. Tuesday. You’ll have it by Tuesday.”

“Now was that so hard, Edie? It wasn’t, was it? See, you do things like forget to write the check and make me show up here. I don’t want to, but you make me do it. Don’t make me do things you’ll regret. And don’t think I’ve forgotten about our little side bet, either. Get me that payoff and we can go our separate ways.” He jumped the two steps off the front porch and sauntered to his shiny Mercedes.

The only thing that kept me from grabbing him by the throat and choke-slamming him on the cobblestone drive was Eden’s hand on my arm. He started up the engine, a smooth purr, and tore off down the driveway.

Our driver, who I didn’t realize had walked up behind us, said, “Want me to call the cops on him?”

“No. It’s a private matter. Please don’t mention it to anyone.” Her words were clipped, but she was still shaking.

“I had half a mind to stomp a mudhole in his ass for you, Ms. Rochester,” the driver said.

That makes two of us.

“That won’t be necessary. Please just bring my bags.”

The front door swung inward, and an elderly woman in a maid’s uniform appeared. She moved with a little difficulty even in her support hose and white nurse shoes. Eden sprinted up the steps and hugged her.

“Rosa! Are you all right? He didn’t hurt you, did he?” Eden ran her hand around the old lady’s face, smoothing her hair back.

I peeked past them. The house beyond was plush and ornate. The staircase was wide, wider at the bottom and narrowing as it ascended. Glittering chandeliers and polished marble floors as far as I could see.

“No. No. He never came in. Just sat on the steps and demanded to see you.” Rosa launched into a series of Spanish curses.

“Thank God. Did Adele hear?”

“Did Adele hear what?” A girl of about eleven hurried around from behind the staircase. She was tall and had Eden’s face, but with blonde hair. “Oh, hey! You’re back. Good, I need help with this new book project I just got.” She walked up and hugged Eden, who clung to the girl as if she were the most precious thing in the world.

When she pulled away from the hug, the girl said, “Mom, what’s the matter?”

Mom?

Eden gave me a furtive glance. “I just, well, I’m just happy to be home. That’s all.”

The girl crossed her arms over her chest. She was the spitting image of Eden. “Okay, what’s going on? You’re acting weird.”

Eden looked like she might cry, she was so badly shaken. I hopped up the last step and into the house. “Hi. I’m afraid Eden is feeling a bit frazzled because we had such a crazy trip. I’m Jack, her assistant.”

“Oh.” Her raised eyebrows lowered a bit. Then she gave me a long look, a smile growing at the edges of her mouth.

I held out my hand. She took it, either buying my story or allowing the distraction. Eden turned and mouthed “thank you” to me.

Adele smiled demurely, the setting sun glinting off her braces. “I’m Adele.”

“Pleased to meet you. Your mother’s told me so much about you.” I narrowly stopped myself from giving Eden a side-eye over that little lie.

Adele didn’t seem to sense my subterfuge. Her smile grew even bigger. I disentangled my hand from hers, though she was reticent to release me. The foyer got awkwardly quiet.

“Well, on that note, I’d best be going. Eden, I’ll see you at work on Monday.” I turned to leave.

“Stay for dinner.” Adele piped up.

“Adele, honey,” Eden frowned. “Jack’s had a long trip. He needs to get home to see his family.”

“Is that true?” Adele’s style of questioning was straight from Eden’s handbook—terse and to the point.

I hesitated at the doorframe. “I should probably get home. That’s true.”

“Why don’t you stay for dinner?” She came around and linked her arm in mine, pulling me away from the entryway.

“Adele! You can’t just invite someone for dinner at the last minute. What if Jack has plans? What if Rosa didn’t make enough food?”

I couldn’t help but smile at Eden giving someone else lectures on manners. Adele grinned up at me.

“He wants to stay. Don’t you, Jack?”

“Well, I don’t think I should.” Getting involved in what was obviously a mother/daughter power struggle didn’t seem like a good idea at this point.

“Look, Mom, you scared him off.” The “happy now?” was implied.

Eden crossed her arms over her chest. “I did not. Jack can stay if he wants. I don’t care either way.”

“If you don’t want him to stay, I guess he should go…” Adele let go of my arm and gave a noncommittal shrug.

Eden threw up her hands. “Fine, Adele, fine. You win. Stay, Jack, if for no other reason than to entertain my badly behaved daughter.”

Adele squealed in triumph and started pulling me farther into the house.

“I’ll get another ride home,” I called over my shoulder to the driver. “Drop my bags at my address.”

Adele led me through a room with a black grand piano, then a hallway lined with huge canvas portraits. I wanted to stop and examine them, but she dragged me along through another series of doors, all dark and solid. Eden disappeared behind us. I wondered if I’d ever figure out how to navigate the maze back to the front door.

We entered a library, books lining the walls from floor to ceiling. The room was bigger than any house I’d ever lived in. She hurried to a corner with cushy chairs and pillows. I could tell this was her little den from the selection of books scattered on the tables and floor. Tons of teenage tomes—vampires in love with humans, deadly tournaments where children fought to the death—many of which I’d read, though I would never admit it to another soul.

She flumped down onto a threadbare but comfortable-looking couch. After scooting aside a stack of
Seventeen
magazines, I sat across from her in a tufted armchair.

She gave me a thorough once-over, smiling a little before settling her gaze on my eyes.

“So, you want to know why I invited you for dinner?” Her tone was conciliatory as she tucked some unruly blonde strands behind her ear.

“My sparkling personality?”

She slipped her feet up under her. “Because you are the first person I’ve ever met who’s not afraid of her. You actually call her Eden!”

I refused to think about how it came to be that I called her Eden, given I was in the presence of her daughter. “Well, yes.”

“She’s just so…” She rolled her eyes, looking even more like a miniature of her mother. “You know, stiff and stuff. Like, everyone’s afraid of her, so they say Ms. Rochester this, Ms. Rochester that. Blah blah. But you aren’t scared of her, are you?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer her question. Fear was something I had been intimately acquainted with for a number of years. I knew it inside and out, just like it knew me. The fear she was talking about was not the truest sort, the kind I’d lived with and worried I’d die with. But I supposed it was all relative. And I was glad fear for her was different than it was for me.

“Hmm, you actually think before you speak. I never do that.” She put her pinky nail in her mouth and began chewing the tip.

I laughed. She was somehow both precocious and endearing. “It’s a skill. Just takes practice. And no, I’m not afraid of your mother. She’s just a person. Just like we’re people, sitting here talking. You and me.”

“But what if she fired you? Isn’t that scary?”

I shrugged. “I’d land on my feet.”

She blew air out her nose in a huff. “I want to be just like you. Cool and calm, no matter what.”

I shook my head. “Sometimes being cool and calm, as you said, comes on the other side of being rash and fiery. Then again, sometimes people are just different from the get-go.”

She stopped chewing her pinky. Unbelievably, she had even more intensity in her than her mother. “What kind are you?”

I cleared my throat. “What book report was it you said you had due?”

“Oh.” Her eyes opened wider as she perused me harder. “Oh!” She leaned over and frantically started digging in the nearest pile of books. After more than a few tomes landed with loud thunks against the wooden floor, she dragged out
The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison.

I stifled my groan. Great book? Yes. Hit a little too close to home? Definite yes.

“This one.” She handed it to me. “Have you read it?”

“I have. Seems kind of heavy reading for an eleven-year-old?”

She frowned. “I’m almost twelve, and it’s not. It’s an AP class. I mean, it’s got some stuff in there that’s, well…” She looked away. “That’s dark, but it’s realism, you know?”

“I do. So you’ve read the whole thing, then?”

“Yeah. I’m supposed to give a report on the themes and write a paper from an opposite perspective.”

“What themes have you identified?”

She moved over to me and perched on the arm of my chair. “Oh, that’s the easy part. Racial identity. The impossibility and perniciousness of European notions of beauty.”

Impressive
. “And what sort of opposite perspective were you thinking about?”

Her brows drew together in thought. “Well, my teacher wasn’t clear, but I was thinking of doing something like pretending the book was about a white girl who wanted beautiful brown eyes, and like, writing maybe a creative piece in that light.”

I thumbed through the pages, though I had no need to read them. I’d become quite familiar with them during my breakneck education with Ms. Temple and again in college. “I think that’s an interesting viewpoint to take, but can you pull it off? Are you able to imagine a world where brown eyes are just as beautiful, or more so, than blue?”

She blushed and looked down at me. “Well, there
are
beautiful brown people.”

“Right, but it’s not person-specific. It’s the idea that, in totality, brownness is the preferred look. Kinky hair”—I ran a hand through mine—“left in its natural state, is the height of beauty. The darker the skin, the browner the eye, the better. I’m not the best example since I’m mixed, but you get the idea—”

“Oh, I think you’re perfect.” She covered her mouth with her hand like she’d cursed.

“Look, Adele. The way things are now, being dark-skinned makes you more likely to be jailed, to be killed by police, to be any number of things that are highly disfavored in our society. You’ll have to turn that notion on its head. Make black beautiful. Make it virtuous. Make it the default. Do you think you can put yourself in that head space?”

“I can try. I mean, I know I live, like, here. Very white. Very privileged. And I go to school with a bunch of other kids just like me. And there aren’t, you know, a lot of kids who look like…” She faded off into a hum and went back to work on her pinky nail.

“Who look like me?”

“Oh, the boys my age definitely don’t look like you.” She grimaced and tapped her foot against the chair cushion. “Um, I mean, the boys at my school. They don’t—don’t have your looks. But I don’t mean the color, but yeah, that’s true, we only have a few minorities, but they don’t look as good as—well, I mean, you know…”

The color in her cheeks heightened until she looked faintly sunburned.

“I definitely think you should give the creative writing idea a try.” I smiled up at her in a way I hoped would put her at ease.

“Right,” she said a bit too loudly. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

When she smiled back, braces and all, adoration was writ large across her face. I knew that look, remembered the same look in Helen’s eyes all too well. I didn’t deserve it then and still didn’t now.

I handed her the book. “And that’s a great start. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.”

“Do you think you could read over it—”

“I should have known you’d drag him back here to your messy pile of books.” Rosa stomped into the room. “Dinner’s on the table in the small dining room.
Vámonos
! Wash up and get on in there.”

We followed Rosa to the dining room through an entirely different set of heavy wooden doors.