Chapter Two
AS Eden walked down King Street in Arundel, North Carolina, she thought that the best thing about historic towns was that they looked better the older they got. It was twenty-two years since she’d been here, yet the town had improved with age. The brick sidewalks were more bowed from the roots of the trees that had buckled them, and the old houses were even more precious and rare.
Smiling, feeling better than she had in years, Eden turned the heavy brass knob of the door to the law office of Mr. Braddon Granville and went inside. There was a small reception area, decorated in reproduction Colonial furniture, and a huge multipaned window that looked out on downtown Arundel. No one was behind the desk, so Eden stood in front of the window and looked out at the pretty little town, the water of the sound glistening to her left.
She’d arrived in Raleigh last night, had rented a car and driven to Arundel. She was staying in the restored Tredwell house at one of the many bed-and-breakfasts in town. It had been a lovely, warm spring evening, and part of her had wanted to go outside and look around, but she hadn’t. She was still in shock over the way the news of her leaving New York had been received by her daughter. Eden didn’t like to think so, but Melissa had seemed almost glad that her mother was going. It seemed that all the things that had been a revelation to Eden had been part of her daughter’s life for some time. Melissa, seemingly so young and still seeming to need her mother, had been quietly thrilled that she was at last going to be mistress of her own household. She was going to live alone with her husband, and he was going to start being her baby coach.
The minute Eden told them she was moving, Stuart got out pen, paper, and a calculator and started figuring out the rent they’d pay her for the apartment. There was no question that they’d remain. After an initial show of tears and some hugs, Melissa began to talk of curtains and wall paint.
Fifteen minutes after she had made her announcement, Eden crept back to her bedroom, feeling as though she was the only one who hadn’t understood what was going on. After a restless night, she went to her publishing house the next morning and told them her news. As she’d known there would be, another editor was ready and more than willing to take over her stable of writers. It took only a week to sort things out. Eden would become a freelance reader for her publishing house, and a freelance copy editor too. They would send her manuscripts, and she’d comb through them to make sure the author didn’t have someone wearing a wristwatch in 1610. Or, more likely, that a character went to a party wearing a red dress, then left wearing a green pantsuit.
It had all been amazingly easy. Eight days after she’d received the letter, Eden was packed and ready to leave. She’d called Braddon Granville’s office to ask him if the house was livable.
“Yes, quite livable,” he’d said in a deep, pleasant voice. “Mrs. Farrington did some major renovations after her son died. It seems that a teapot she owned had been made by Paul Revere, so she sold it for quite a lot of money. Sorry, but none of the proceeds are left. She spent every cent renovating the house. Between you and me, Ms. Palmer, I think she wanted to leave the house in good shape for you.”
Eden had nearly started crying on the telephone. At least someone loved her! She could hear her daughter and Stuart in the living room talking in low whispers. They had four wallpaper books and eight fabric sample books on the floor and were planning what they were going to do to the apartment as soon as Eden left.
“Ms. Palmer?”
“Yes, I’m here. It’s been an emotional time for me to hear that my friend died. We didn’t see each other for years, but I cared a great deal for her.”
“She was a wonderful woman, but she’d had a full life. My grandfather cried like a baby at her funeral.”
“He’s still alive?” Eden asked, wiping at her eyes with a tissue.
“Yes and no. Alzheimer’s. He can’t remember yesterday, but he remembers fifty years ago quite well. Unfortunately, some of his memories are, well, of an embarrassing nature. We caught him telling his twelve-year-old great-granddaughter about his trysts with Alice Farrington under a weeping willow tree.”
Eden couldn’t help but laugh.
“So you heard the story too.”
Eden could hear the smile in his voice. She also heard something else. Was he flirting? Just then one of Melissa’s giggles came from the living room; Eden had never felt more unwanted in her life. “We’ll have to compare notes of what we heard,” she said, her voice lowered.
“I’d like that very much. Perhaps over dinner one night.”
“That would be perfect,” Eden said in her softest voice, just as she heard Melissa say, “Stuart, quit that! She’ll hear us.”
“I’ll look forward to meeting you on the sixth,” he said, and they hung up.
“Well, well, well,” Eden said. One of the descendants of the beautiful Granville boys had asked her on a date. After a moment’s elation, Eden sighed. “He’s probably married and has six kids,” she mumbled. “And dinner is purely professional.”
“Are you Ms. Palmer?” Eden turned to see a young woman, about Melissa’s age, with a file folder in her hand. She looked Eden up and down hard, as though scrutinizing her.
“Yes, I’m Eden Palmer.”
The girl held out her hand to shake. “I’m Camden Granville.” She nodded toward the closed door behind her. “He’s my father.” Again she looked at Eden hard. “He’s fifty-four, in perfect health, and he has been a widower for three years now. He has all his teeth, doesn’t smoke, and he’d like to meet a woman who can talk about something outside this town.”
Eden blinked for a moment, then laughed. “I’ll see what I can do, about talking about something outside of this town, that is. Maybe I should mention Madison Avenue, or complain about taxi service. This jacket has a Bergdorf’s label. Think I should show it to him?”
The girl didn’t smile. “How are your teeth?”
“All mine, as is my hair.”
“Good,” the girl said, still not smiling, then she opened the door and motioned for Eden to go inside.
Behind the big mahogany desk sat a very good-looking man. He was broad-shouldered with a thick chest, and his suit fit him perfectly. He had a thick mane of salt-and-pepper hair. Very handsome indeed. He got up to shake her hand, then motioned her to a seat across from his desk.
“Did my daughter put you through it?” he asked.
“Completely. I’m to show you my teeth and the label inside my jacket.”
“I can do without the jacket, but I’d like to get a much closer look at your teeth.”
In spite of herself, Eden blushed. She’d meant to make a joke, not a sexual innuendo. It had been a long time since a man had made a pass at her. In New York, she’d had about three dates, each leading nowhere. The city was full of young, beautiful, young, gorgeous, young women. Eden felt that she’d never had a chance.
“So,” he said, looking down at a file folder on his desk. “Mrs. Farrington left you everything. Did you know that it took me over a year to find you? You did a good job of disappearing. It was Henry Walters who said it was his guess that you were in publishing.”
“Henry,” Eden said, smiling. “He always was impressed with my ability to spell.”
“Henry was impressed with everything about you. You were a young girl in a terrible situation, but you managed to make the best of it. He said you cataloged all the Farrington papers and became a good friend to cantankerous old Mrs. Farrington in the process.”
“No, not cantankerous. She was kind and generous and easy to love.” Eden looked down at her hands on her lap. This man’s compliments and his open appraisal of her as a woman were making her feel shy. He really was very good-looking. And she was also cursed with her memories of what Mrs. Farrington had told her about the Granville boys. Was this man as good a lover as his grandfather and great-uncle had been?
He was smiling. “I heard she used to greet trespassers with a shotgun.”
Eden lost her smile. “She was a woman alone, and that house is well off the road. You can’t imagine the number of drunken fishermen who would show up there at three on a Saturday morning, wanting to put their boats in the river at Mrs. Farrington’s dock. And of course there were all those stupid stories about the sapphire necklace that was supposed to be hidden on the property somewhere. Mrs. Farrington had a lot to deal with.”
Braddon Granville was looking at her with interest. “I see,” he said, then smiled when Eden lowered her head, her face turning red. “Unfortunately, I didn’t get to know her until after you had left.”
When he reached into his desk and pulled out a set of keys, Eden felt her heart leap. There was the little silver angel that she’d seen in Mrs. Farrington’s hands so often.
He held the keys for several moments, seeming to be reluctant to pass them on. “If I didn’t have clients coming down from Virginia today, I’d drive you out to the house myself, just to make sure it’s safe.”
“Have things in Arundel changed that much?” She wasn’t serious in her question. As far as she’d seen, very little had changed.
“You remember the cabin near the old house?”
Cabin? she thought, then smiled. “The washhouse?”
He smiled back. “Yes, the washhouse. You sound like one of the old-timers around here.” All the buildings around the plantations kept the names of their original uses, no matter what had been done to them. “After Alester Farrington died—” He looked up when Eden drew in her breath.
“What happened to Mrs. Farrington after I left? I had to leave because…” She didn’t finish her sentence. She didn’t want to disparage Mrs. Farrington’s son.
“Yes, I was told why you left. I think your daughter is a few years older than mine. Cammie is twenty-four.”
“Melissa is twenty-seven and about to have a baby in a few months.”
“Grandkids are wonderful.”
“I’m looking forward to my first one. But what happened to Mrs. Farrington and her son?”
He looked down at his desk for a few moments. “It was all rather unpleasant. There was an incident in town. A child…”
Eden’s mouth hardened.
“The child wasn’t hurt, just scared. She had some scratches on her, and her clothes had been torn, but she was okay. She said she escaped from an old shack by pulling a board off the wall. She identified the man who took her from the street by his photograph.”
“Alester Farrington?”
“Yes. The police went after him, but when they got to Farrington Manor, they found out that he’d fallen off the pier at the back of the house, hit his head, and drowned.” Mr. Granville lowered his voice. “I can tell you that there wasn’t much investigation into that accident.”
“No, there shouldn’t have been,” Eden said. She knew in her heart that Mrs. Farrington had stopped her son from ever hurting another child.
“She lived alone out there for years after that. Waiting to die, my grandfather said. She wouldn’t see anyone. She hired someone to bring her groceries, but that was all. I used to go check on her every other week, but I can’t say that we ever became friends. She was my client only because my father had retired.” He smiled. “She said I wasn’t nearly as handsome as my grandfather was.”
“Yes, she’d say that.” Eden wanted to change the subject or she’d start crying. “You said on the phone that the house is in good shape. What about the furniture? I’m afraid that what little furniture I own I left in New York with my daughter and her husband.”
“Ah, the things we do for our children. The house is fully furnished, but I know that the son sold off the best pieces.” He was still holding the keys, turning them around in his hands. “You wouldn’t like to stay in town until this afternoon, would you? I could go out to the house with you then.”
“No,” she said, then leaned forward and took the keys out of his hands. Eden knew without a doubt that she was going to start crying as soon as she saw the place, and she didn’t want anyone to see her. “What about tomorrow?” she asked. “I’ll get groceries today and make some soup. How does homemade soup and some fresh bread sound?”
“Great,” he said, smiling, and Eden smiled back. She gathered her things and stood up. “Tell me, Mr. Granville, is your daughter for or against your dating? I couldn’t tell by her expression.”
“Very much for it. She says that I’m a helpless man without a wife, so she wants to marry me off.”
He looked at Eden so hard, with so much intention, that she blushed.
“Well, ah…” she said nervously. “Uh, I’ll…come tomorrow at six. I’ll probably have a hundred questions to ask you by then.”
“Great,” he said, standing and walking her to the door. “I look forward to it.”
Eden thought that he wanted to say more, but there was someone waiting to see him, so he had to let them into his office. She gave a quick glance at the unsmiling Camden, then hurried from the office. She didn’t want to give the young woman time to ask her any more questions.
Once outside, Eden got into her cheap rental car and headed toward the grocery store. But things had changed in twenty-two years, and the grocery she used to go to had been replaced by a car dealership. She thought she’d just stop in and ask for directions, but two hours later she’d leased a small SUV. By the time she’d had lunch (North Carolina barbecue) and had explored a few shops downtown, it was nearly four o’clock. After she’d filled her new car with groceries, it was growing dark. She wondered if she’d purposefully postponed seeing the house until late just so she wouldn’t be able to spend much time there. She thought she’d put the groceries away, then go back to spend the night at the bed-and-breakfast. She’d not even asked if the electricity had been turned on in the house, so it would be better to postpone staying.
Even though Farrington Manor had once been the plantation house for a farm that covered over a thousand acres, the house was very close to downtown Arundel. Eden drove to the end of King Street, took a left onto Water Street, drove past the lush Braddon Park, then turned right over the narrow wooden bridge that took her to Farrington Manor. As she drove she saw two small houses on the left, built since she’d lived there and now pretty with flowers and ten-year-old trees. She saw that the old house that had once been the overseer’s had been completely renovated.
On the left lay open fields that were leased to local farmers to grow peanuts, cotton, milo, or soybeans, but on the right was parkland of enormous, mature hardwood trees. Some of the trees that she’d come to know were now missing, felled by hurricanes. “God’s way of pruning,” Mrs. Farrington used to say. The high winds used to terrify Eden, but Mrs. Farrington and Melissa took them in stride, playing endless games of checkers by candlelight.
When Eden got close enough such that she knew in the next moment the house was going to come into view, she turned off her headlights and coasted forward, her arms on the steering wheel. First a chimney, then the roof came into view. Right away she saw that the house was in better repair than it had been years ago. Eden remembered the story of the silver teapot by Paul Revere. Had Mrs. Farrington known that she had such a teapot? Or had she pulled everything from under the floorboards and taken it all to a dealer?
Smiling with happy memories, Eden looked at the house in the moonlight. It was two stories, flat fronted, with two rows of seven eight-paned windows. At one point in its long history, the house had had double porches and a door out from the second story, but when a hurricane had badly damaged the top porch, Mrs. Farrington’s father had removed it. Now there was one wide porch along the lower front.
Still smiling, Eden moved forward, her tires barely rolling. Suddenly, she stopped. There was a light moving about upstairs. A flashlight. Someone was inside the house!
So now what do I do? she wondered. Call the sheriff? And what if he comes out to the house, sirens blazing, only to find out that the person inside the house was a neighbor? Or maybe it was Braddon Granville. He’d had time enough to finish with his clients, so maybe he’d decided to visit her. The thought made Eden smile. She’d liked him and had been flattered by his frank admiration of her. In the years she’d lived in New York she’d spent many hours in a gym in order to give Melissa and Stuart time alone. Movies, the gym, and working on her book. Those things had taken up a lot of her time in the last years, but today Braddon Granville had made her glad of every sit-up and leg lift. She was proud of the fact that she was the same size as when she’d lived in Arundel so long ago. Having a baby when she was so young and her skin so elastic meant that she’d been able to regain her twenty-four-inch waist.
Eden parked her car under a tree, out of sight of the windows of the house, and quietly made her way to the front door. She tried the old doorknob. It was locked. Maybe he went in through the kitchen door, she thought as she used her key to silently unlock the door. She could call out to the person as she set her things down, but she well knew how isolated the house was. No, it would be better to be cautious. Above her head, a floorboard creaked then stopped, as though the person making the sound didn’t want to be heard. That sneaking made her forget her good thoughts. Whoever was in the house shouldn’t be there—and knew it.
Eden stepped out on the porch and pulled her cell phone out of her handbag. She didn’t think about what she was doing when she called, not the sheriff, but Braddon Granville. He answered on the first ring.
“Eden!” he said, his voice full of pleasure at her call. “Did you change your mind about tonight? We could have dinner at—”
“Someone’s in my house,” she said.
“I’m sorry but I can’t hear you.”
Eden tiptoed down the porch steps and went toward her car. “Someone is in my house,” she said louder so she could be heard above the frogs. “He’s upstairs with a flashlight.”
There was a pause on the phone, then the voice of a man in charge. “Get out of there right now,” he said in a tone that was not to be disobeyed. “Get in your car and return to town. I’m going to call the sheriff, and he’ll be there as fast as possible, but I want you out of there. Understand me?”
“Yes,” she said, her heart pounding. She already had the door to the car open but then realized that she’d left her car keys inside the house. She started to tell Mr. Granville that, but he’d already hung up to call the sheriff.
Now what? Did she crouch in the bushes and wait in silence for the cavalry to come and save her? Or did she go back into the house, get her car keys, then roar away in a torrent of gravel?
Turning back to the house, Eden looked up at the windows and saw nothing. No moving light. What if all she’d seen had been a reflection of the moon? Had she been so spooked by Braddon Granville’s story of Mrs. Farrington’s evil son that she’d made something ordinary into something sinister? She called Mr. Granville’s office again but got his machine. She was going to look really stupid when half a dozen police cars arrived and the only intruder was a reflection on the windows of a creaking old house.
Okay, better to face this on her own, she thought, or she was going to be the town’s source of laughter for years to come. Taking a deep breath, she went up the stairs to the front porch and opened the door. She had intended to call out and ask if anyone was there, but as soon as she was inside she again heard the floorboards creak, only this time, the sound came from the living room.
On tiptoe, Eden crept toward the doorway. Thank heaven that most of the furniture had been sold or she never would have been able to make her way in silence. If the house were still as full of furniture as when Mrs. Farrington was alive, Eden would have had to crawl over and under surfaces to get there.
As it was, when she got to the doorway, she crouched down low, then looked around the doorframe. She could see a man’s silhouette clearly outlined. He had a small flashlight, just a penlight really. If he were on the up and up he’d have a full-size flashlight, wouldn’t he? Eden’s intuition told her that this man was looking for something. For the silverware that she and Mrs. Farrington had hidden inside the walls? For that blasted necklace that had been in every Lost Treasures book ever written?
Suddenly, from some primitive instinct, she knew he was aware that she was there. In spite of all her precautions, she was sure he’d heard every sound she’d made. Had he come downstairs to greet her?
Truthfully, she didn’t care why someone was in the house. Now all she wanted to do was get out of there and let the sheriff handle him. She just had to turn away, take three steps, get her car keys, then take another two steps to the front door. Once she was outside, she could run. And once she was inside her car, she’d be safe. But when she turned, she must have made a noise, because the man’s head came up and he saw her. One minute he was on the other side of a couch and the next he was leaping toward her. “Wait a minute!” he said as his hand shot out in her direction.
Maybe he had a reason for being in the house. Maybe he was an innocent person. Maybe when he reached for her all he wanted to do was talk. But whatever his intentions, when Eden saw the hand come out of the dark and reach for her, she panicked. She wasn’t forty-five years old with many years of life experience, she was seventeen, she was walking home from choir practice, and a man’s hand was reaching out to grab her. Back then she’d been so innocent, so sheltered from what went on in the world that she didn’t know what the man’s intentions were until he tore her blouse and grabbed her breast. After that, she didn’t clearly remember what was done to her.
For over twenty-seven years, Eden had been eaten with the thought, What if I’d fought back? What if she hadn’t been such a frightened little ninny that all she’d done was cry and plead with him not to hurt her? When he’d told her he wasn’t going to hurt her if she kept quiet and still, she’d been so young and innocent that she’d been reassured by his words. What if I had fought? was the question that had plagued her all these years.
Now, it was as though she was back in that park again and was being given a second chance. This time she was going to fight. In an instant, she dropped her human persona and became a bundle of fighting fury. She kicked and she clawed; she bit and she hit with her fists. The man kept trying to hold her and he was saying things, but she couldn’t hear him—and wouldn’t have listened if she could. That other man on that night so long ago had talked to her too. He’d said that he wasn’t going to hurt her. But he had hurt her. He’d hurt her in her mind, her body, and in her life. In one act of cruelty, he had taken away her future.
When the sirens sounded outside, the man didn’t let go of her but kept trying to hold her to him, and Eden kept fighting him with all her might. She felt her teeth sink into skin and muscle. She heard his sounds of pain when her fists hit him. She felt her nails plow deep furrows into his skin.
She was still fighting when the front door burst open and men started yelling. The man was pulled away from her, but Eden was still too blind with memory and fear to stop fighting.
When Braddon Granville tried to touch her, she fought him too. She couldn’t understand what he was saying when he called her name and told her his. She hit the man in the rescue uniform as he held her down so his partner could give her an injection. She fought until her body succumbed to the drug injected into it and couldn’t fight anymore.