Chapter Twenty-six
“EDEN,” Brad said, reaching for her hand. He was half reclining on the cushioned swing in front of his house, a cane propped against the wall. Summer had finally come to Arundel, and the unusually cool spring was over.
Eden didn’t take his hand, acting as though she didn’t see it. Holding on to her glass of sweet tea, she looked out at Arundel. She now had absolutely everything that she’d ever dreamed of having. It was as though she’d spent her entire life as a tightly wrapped flower bud, and now she was at last blossoming. When she was a child and had lived with her repressive parents who told her that everything in life was bad, she’d looked at the other children at her school with longing. She used to listen to them talk about their parties and their dates, and she imagined what it would be like to be one of them.
When she’d become pregnant and had been discarded by her parents, thrown out, tossed aside like so much rubbish, she’d been terrified beyond comprehension. She’d been too young to think clearly, but the question Why me? had filled her mind.
Mrs. Farrington had been the first person who had really cared about her, and Eden used to imagine what it would be like to be Mrs. Farrington. She daydreamed about growing up in that beautiful house, with that beautiful garden, and belonging to a group of people whose friendship extended back hundreds of years. To belong! she thought. To belong to a group of people who never threw you out.
In the last weeks since Melissa had been kidnapped, Eden had found out that a lot of people knew about Drake Haughton’s mental instability. The young man hadn’t been kidding when he said that all he’d done was draw Brad’s ideas. Eden found out that Drake had never wanted to be an architect. Just like Tyrrell Farrington, Drake had wanted to study fine art. But Drake’s father, like Tyrrell’s father a century before, had forbidden his son to do something so bohemian. If Drake wanted his father to pay for his education, if Drake wanted to receive his inheritance, then he’d have to get a proper degree in a proper subject, and use his education. Out of friendship, Brad had given Drake a job, but the young man had been driven nearly insane with longing for a different life.
Now Eden looked out at the perfect little town of Arundel, and it seemed different to her. In the years that she’d had to raise a child by herself, memories of this pretty little town had kept her going. It was what she strove to achieve. She’d never had much money, but she’d taught her daughter the good manners that Mrs. Farrington had taught Eden. Melissa knew how to converse, how to say please and thank you. She knew how to act at a party. No, Eden thought, her daughter hadn’t been raised to be a kid who wore blue jeans and ate fast food. Her daughter—
“Eden?” Brad asked again. “Are you here with me?”
She took a sip of her tea and smiled. “Of course I am. I’m just thinking, that’s all.”
“You’ve been through a lot,” he said.
“We have.” She drank more of her tea and looked back at the town. Yes, she’d been through a lot in the short time that she’d been back here in Arundel. She’d returned to a town that she’d known as a child, but now she was an adult. And as an adult, she saw things that she hadn’t seen before.
“Want to talk to me about anything?” Brad asked.
“Not yet,” she said, still smiling. She knew what he meant. Two days after the FBI had taken Jolly and his men away, Brad had asked her to marry him. “You were magnificent,” he’d said.
Eden had wanted to explain about her and Jared and what that odious Jolly had said in the icehouse, but Brad had put a finger to her lips. “We’re adults,” he said. “We’ve both made mistakes. We’ve hurt each other. I think we should start over, don’t you?”
At the time, Eden had agreed with him, but later she thought that she didn’t want to start over. It wasn’t right to go through what they had and learn so much, then discard it and pretend that it hadn’t happened.
In the last weeks, Eden had seen that it was at last time to let go of her daughter. No more tug-of-war. No more tearing Melissa down in the middle and making her choose between her husband and her mother.
After everything had calmed down, Eden had sat down with her daughter and a huge bowl of popcorn and they’d talked. Not with all the boundaries that mother-daughter placed on them, but as woman to woman. Eden was shocked to hear what had been going on among her and Stuart and Eden. Eden realized that she’d caused her daughter many tears by not letting her grow up, by not letting her leave. “But you’re all I have,” Eden said.
“Don’t you think I know that? I am your entire life! You have nothing else but me! And all I’ve ever had is you!”
Melissa told her mother about the call from Minnie and the information about her father. Melissa had called him immediately and had paid for his plane ticket to fly to Greenville.
“But all he wanted was money,” Melissa said. “And he tried to make me believe that you had seduced him.” With tears running down her face, Melissa told what the man had said, that Eden had ruined his marriage, ruined his whole life. “He blamed you for all his problems. He…” At the end, Walter Runkel had run his hand up Melissa’s arm in a way that had made her flee the airport and run into Drake Haughton’s arms.
That talk changed them. Melissa said she wanted her husband and child, but she was afraid to leave her mother alone. After much hesitation, Eden at last admitted that she had no idea in the world what she wanted.
“But you’re a rich woman now,” Melissa said. “You have this house and this town that you’ve always loved, and Brad adores you. You could marry him and live here forever. I can see you as the Grande Dame of the whole town.” She was teasing her mother. “I can see that ambitious young women would fight to be invited to your parties. What you wear will be reported in the local newspaper.” She waved her hand about the house. “You could have a New York interior designer come here and drape this place in silk. You could get into Architectural Digest. Wouldn’t that be something for a little girl who was thrown into the streets? Mother! Maybe you could get on Oprah and tell your story.”
Eden didn’t smile at Melissa’s vision. It was nearly the same vision Jared had given her, except that this time it was presented in a way meant to entice. “Mrs. Farrington said that this house was dead until I put a baby in it.”
Melissa clasped her mother’s hand. “Stuart and I and the baby will visit you often. Every long weekend and every holiday. Did you know that Remi has asked Stuart to handle the books for his new landscaping business?”
Eden smiled. After the police and the FBI arrived, Brad told them that Remi had saved his life. One of Jolly’s men had wanted to kill Brad, but Remi had quickly said that he knew where all of the paintings were and he’d tell if they didn’t hurt Brad. In the end, Remi had hoisted his wounded father-in-law across his shoulder and carried him to the car.
When Brad was in the hospital and thanking Remi, the young man said, “I want my own landscaping company. I don’t want to work for you or anyone else.” His eyes were defiant and he was standing up to his full height, his shoulders back.
“You have it,” Brad said, “and if you need—”
“I have everything else that I need,” Remi said, his arm around Cammie’s shoulders.
Since that day, Eden had seen Brad’s morose daughter smile a whole two times.
“Somebody’s gettin’ some,” Minnie had said, and poked Eden in the ribs.
Minnie had spent quite a bit of time begging Eden to forgive her. Eden was sure it was small of her, but she couldn’t forgive Minnie for what she’d done. Minnie had hurt people over her imagined involvement with Jared McBride.
Eden didn’t answer her, but she’d told Brad that he had to free Minnie from her obligation to him. “I don’t care if you do hate living alone, we all do, but you must give that girl her freedom.” He deeded the overseer’s house to Minnie, and now she was Eden’s neighbor.
Minnie liked to pretend that nothing had happened between her and Eden, but Eden couldn’t do it. She spoke to Minnie, but she wasn’t warm, wasn’t friendly.
And then there was Jared. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since he went off in a helicopter with Mr. Jolly and his men. That night he’d been angry at her. “I told you to stay put,” he said, his eyes blazing, “but you went up and down the stairs. You could have been killed!”
His tone said he was furious with her, but his eyes looked as though he wanted to pull her into his arms and cry in happiness that she wasn’t hurt. But he hadn’t touched her. By then they were surrounded by people, all of them wanting to ask a thousand questions.
Jared had raised his hand in farewell to her as the helicopter lifted off the ground. She didn’t know if she’d ever see him again.
The next day some art experts arrived and they wanted to take all the paintings away with them, but Eden wouldn’t let them. They’d already lost one of Tyrrell’s paintings in the shower. She wasn’t going to lose the rest of them. She wouldn’t release the paintings until a document, written by Brad, was signed by them saying that they’d make a complete photographic recording of Tyrrell’s family pictures before the underlying paintings were uncovered.
In the end, only four of the paintings turned out to be valuable. One minor, three major. But, historically, the paintings that Tyrrell had preserved were worth a fortune. She’d already been approached by two authors who wanted to write about what the paintings told about the time of the Impressionists.
As Melissa said, Eden was now very wealthy, or would be as soon as the paintings were restored and sold. The art world was excited about the find, and Christie’s auction house expected two of the paintings to go for millions.
“Eden?” Brad asked again. “You don’t look well. Is it the heat? Would you like to go inside to the air-conditioning?”
“No,” she said. “I like it out here.” She looked at him. “Have you ever wanted something so much that you thought you’d die without it, then when you got it, it wasn’t as good as you thought it was?”
“Of course. Anyone over the age of three has experienced that.” His face was serious. “What is it you wanted so much?”
“Mrs. Farrington’s life,” she said. “I thought that if I’d had what she was given, I wouldn’t have made a mess of it. She married the wrong man and had the wrong child. She conducted herself in some very unladylike ways. I didn’t realize it, but I was always criticizing her in my mind. I was thinking that if I had had loving parents and I had had a good school and birthday parties and—” She looked at him. “Did you know that I’ve never had a birthday party in my life? It’s been something that I’ve fantasized about all my life. Whenever I watch TV, see a movie, or read a book, and someone gives a birthday party for someone else, even a child, I get teary-eyed. Isn’t that silly?”
“I don’t think wanting affection and celebration is silly,” he said seriously. “Eden, you’re trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what it is.”
She set down her glass of tea. “I wanted Mrs. Farrington’s life, but now that I can have it, I find that I don’t want it. I don’t want to live in that old house alone—” She put up her hand when he started to speak. “I don’t want to live in it with a man and ‘drape it in silk,’ as my daughter says. That house deserves life. Young life.” She didn’t add that her daughter had the “wrong” name, so she’d be safe from all that Eden had grown to dislike about Arundel.
When she started to stand up, Brad caught her arm. His leg was still in bandages and it hurt him a lot. He grabbed his cane and tried to stand, but Eden gently pushed him down in the swing.
“No,” she said. “Don’t get up.” She walked to the edge of the porch. “You know something, Brad? I don’t know anything about myself. I lived as a prisoner when I was a child, and went from childhood to motherhood in one night.” She turned back to face him. “I’ve worked hard at giving my daughter all that I could. I gave up my life for her.”
“But she’s grown-up now,” Brad said.
“Yes, she’s grown now and about to be a mother herself. She went to dances as a teenager and she—” Eden waved her hand. “What I’m trying to say is that I want to find out about myself. I want to find out what I’m good at, what I can do, and what I like. I don’t want to be Mrs. Farrington. I want to be me. It’s just that I’ve experienced so little in my life that I don’t know who I am.”
Sitting on the swing, Brad looked at her. “You want to leave here, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “I’ll go with you. I’ll live on a sailboat, if it means that I can be near you.”
“No,” Eden answered. “You belong here. This is your town. And you know something? It’s my daughter’s town too. I’m going to give her and Stuart and my grandchild Farrington Manor. They belong there. Stuart can open an accounting firm here in Arundel. It’s a good place to raise a child.”
“It’s a good place to live,” Brad said, his voice pleading with her, his eyes near to tears.
“Brad, you’re a wonderful man, a little controlling for someone as independent as I am, but a good man. But I need to try out my wings. I need to…to see some of the world before I get to be too old to enjoy it.”
“Wherever you want to go, I’ll go with you,” Brad said, struggling to stand up.
She stepped down a step. “Give me a year,” she said. “One year.”
“A year,” he said in agreement. “Then I’m going after you wherever you are in the world.”
“A deal,” she said, then she turned and ran down the porch steps before she could change her mind.