The River Girls

by Melinda Woodhall

  The kitchen door swung open and Duke trotted in, pulling Sage Parsons behind him. The morning was already hot and humid, and Sage’s pink tank top was damp and clinging to her smooth, tan shoulders. Her curly black hair had been pulled back into a ponytail under a Florida Gators baseball cap.

  “Morning kids!” Sage called out as she knelt and unhooked Duke’s leash from his collar. “Anything special going on today?”

  Eden smiled over at Sage, grateful to have her help, along with her always cheerful attitude. She knew her own fluctuating moods could be hard for the kids to understand, so Sage’s calm and happy demeanor meant a lot.

  “It’s only the last day of school,” Hope responded with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.

  “And the best day ever,” Devon added, a smile splitting his face from ear to ear. He had just turned ten and hadn’t quite reached the stage when it was considered uncool to show too much excitement.

  “It may be the last day, but you still need to get there on time,” Sage said, picking up the empty glasses and handing each of the kids a napkin. “Finish your breakfast and get those teeth brushed so we can get going.”

  Once Sage had herded the kids back upstairs, Eden’s cell phone vibrated. She saw at a glance that the call was from Nathan Rush, her business partner. Or was he technically her ex-partner? She was tempted to let the call go to voicemail but knew she shouldn’t avoid the inevitable. She needed to tell Nathan that she had decided to sell her shares in Giant Leap Data, the start-up company they had founded together after graduate school.

  Giant Leap had been an almost immediate success, attracting the interest of several venture capitalist firms, and going public six years ago. Since then the shares had soared and both Eden and Nathan had reaped the financial benefits. But Eden hadn’t participated in the day-to-day management of the company since Mercy had been killed.

  Now, after more than four years, Nathan had asked her to rejoin the company’s executive management team. But Eden knew she could never go back; it was time to make a clean break. She would sell her remaining shares to Nathan. She just had to figure out how to tell him.

  “Nathan, what are you doing up so early?” Eden asked, realizing it wasn’t quite six o’clock in the morning on the West Coast.

  “I wanted to catch you before you head out to your office. Otherwise I know you’ll ignore my call, as usual,” Nathan teased, his familiar voice making Eden smile.

  Good old Nathan, he had always stayed in touch, despite everything that had happened. She knew that he had tried to be there for her, but in the end, he couldn’t find a way through her grief and guilt, and she’d left San Francisco, left the company, left him. As she’d told him many times before: it wasn’t him, it was her.

  “You know I’d never ignore your calls, Nathan, but it’s been crazy busy…” Eden’s voice faded away as she saw a breaking news bulletin appear on the television’s small screen.

  The volume was still muted, but she could see a young, female reporter in a fitted, red dress holding a microphone. The reporter gestured toward a stark white crime scene tent that had been erected at the edge of a river. Tall cypress trees gave little shade to the people moving in and out of the tent. Some wore police uniforms, and a few had on white protective coveralls complete with hoods and booties.

  The headline that displayed in capital letters across the bottom of the screen prompted Eden to disconnect the call without another word. Her knees threatened to buckle as she grabbed the granite kitchen counter for support.

  She stared at the words, knowing her worst fears may have come true: BODY OF TEEN GIRL FOUND IN WILLOW RIVER.

  Could the girl in the river be Star? Eden closed her eyes, wanting to pray, but knowing from experience that the most fervent prayers wouldn’t make the dead come back to life. Of course, it could be Star. She disappeared by the same river two nights ago. Who else would it be?

  She flinched at the shrill ring of her cell phone.

  “Sorry, Nathan, I can’t talk now,” she said into the phone, her eyes still on the television screen.

  “This is Detective Nessa Ainsley calling, Ms. Winthrop.” Eden recognized the southern drawl immediately, but she looked down at the phone in confusion, her mind reeling, struggling to make connections.

  “Ms. Winthrop are you there?” The kindness in Nessa’s voice terrified Eden. It was the sympathetic tone that people tended to use when delivering bad news.

  “I’m here, Detective,” Eden said, walking to the kitchen table and sinking into an oak-backed chair. “Is it Star? Is the girl in the river Star?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Nessa replied. “We haven’t identified the, um…the body yet. As you’ve probably already seen on the news, it’s a female. A teenager from the looks of it. Blonde hair, visible track marks.”

  “Oh God, I knew she needed help,” Eden cried, her raised voice waking up Duke who had been napping near the backdoor. He scrambled over to sit next to her, one paw lifting to rest on her leg.

  “Ms. Winthrop, um, Eden…can I call you Eden?” Nessa interjected.

  “What, oh, well, yes, of course,” Eden responded, leaning down and hugging Duke to her.

  “Eden, we’re hoping you can come down to the Medical Examiner’s Office to see if you can identify the body. We need to know if it’s the same girl you reported missing two days ago.”

  Nessa’s voice sounded far away. Eden realized she was getting dizzy. She closed her eyes to stop the room from spinning. Mercy’s lifeless face, her eyes bruised and swollen shut, flashed in her mind. The medical examiner had needed her to identify the body then, too. It had been the worst day of her life. Nothing had ever been the same since.

  “I don’t think I can do that,” Eden whispered into the phone. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I’m not sure that’s possible.”

  “Eden, we need to know who this poor girl was…so we can find out what happened to her. I know it’s hard, but we need you to help us.”

  When Eden didn’t respond, Nessa spoke again. “Isn’t that what your foundation is all about? Helping women? Isn’t that why Star came to you? She was seeking help. Now you just might have a chance to help her.”

  “I’ll…I’ll try,” Eden said, her hand groping for Duke’s soft head, her eyes still closed against the reality of what had happened. “I’ve got to take care of the kids, make some arrangements, but I’ll try to come down later this morning.”

  “Thank you, Eden.” Nessa sounded relieved. “You can go straight to the M.E.’s office. It’s a stone’s throw from the police station. Can’t miss it. Just ask for Iris Nguyen. She’s the Chief Medical Examiner for Willow Bay.”

  Eden disconnected the call and rested her head on the table. What had she agreed to do? Last time she’d seen a dead body she’d ended up in the emergency room. She was convinced that finding her sister’s battered body had been the catalyst of her subsequent anxiety disorder, although she still couldn’t remember everything that had happened that day.

  Reggie had ultimately diagnosed her with dissociate amnesia. She said the condition had been caused by emotional trauma, and that Eden’s memory would return once she had time to come to terms with what had happened.

  After struggling for years to overcome the frequent panic attacks and bouts of worry and depression, Eden felt that she was finally getting better. She’d been hopeful, even arranging the vacation away with the kids. Now the world seemed to be folding back in on her.

  Footsteps on the stairs reminded her that the kids needed to leave for school. It was their last day, and she didn’t want anything to ruin it for them. Pulling herself upright into a sitting position, she called over her shoulder, “Hope and Devon, you guys had better get going or you’ll be late.” She waved as they carried backpacks out the door.

  Sage stopped at the door and looked back. A rare frown appeared on her perpetually cheerful face. “Everything okay, Eden?”

  “Yes, everyth
ing’s okay. I’ve got to go to Reggie’s, so I won’t be here when you get back. I’ll take Duke with me.”

  She watched the young woman leave, grateful she had someone reliable to help with the kids. She had a feeling she was going to need all the help she could get to make it through the rest of the day.

  “Reggie,” she said in a small voice. Duke looked up at her with worried eyes. “I need to talk to Reggie.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The renovated farmhouse sat on a five-acre plot alongside Little Gator Creek. An ancient wooden bridge that spanned the shallow creek groaned under the weight of the big Expedition. Heart thumping, Eden avoided looking down into the slow-moving water.

  She knew it would eventually merge with the muddy water of the Willow River on its hundred-mile journey to the Gulf of Mexico, and she fought back a sudden, irrational fear that if she looked down, she would see Star’s body floating there, bruised and bloated.

  Breath in…breath out…breath in…breath out.

  She just needed to get to Reggie. Once inside the safety of Reggie’s house she would be able to relax. She looked in the rearview mirror at Duke, who was enjoying the open window and the warm but steady breeze that ruffled his fur and swept his ears back from his grinning face. The sight made Eden smile despite herself.

  As the Expedition rounded the bend, she could see the two-story house nestled among the wide-spreading branches of flowering dogwood trees. Pink blossoms, the color of cotton candy, sprinkled the ground, giving the house a fairytale feel.

  Reggie was already standing on the front porch, clad in a royal blue wrap dress, holding a huge cup of what Eden assumed would be herbal tea.

  I need something stronger than Chamomile today, Eden thought as she brought the SUV to a lumbering stop in the circular drive. I’m going to need caffeine, and lots of it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Reggie watched Eden and Duke climb out of the silver SUV and walk toward her. Her heart broke a little as she saw the all-too-familiar slump of Eden’s shoulders.

  Always one step forward, two-steps back, Reggie thought, fixing a smile on her face. Will this fragile woman ever get the chance to fully heal?

  Duke trotted up the steps and greeted Reggie with a few licks of her hand. She crouched next to the big dog and hugged him tight. “Hey Duke, how are you? You taking care of our girl?”

  Reggie watched Eden mount the steps more slowly. “I’ve seen the news, dear,” Reggie said, the smile slipping from her face. “Do they know if the girl in the river is the same girl? The girl that came to Shutter Street?”

  “Oh Reggie, it’s so awful.” Eden’s voice was thick with emotion. “They don’t know who she is, not yet. They want me to come down and try to identify the body. Tell them if it’s the same girl I reported missing.”

  This was worse than Reggie had feared when Eden called that morning sounding desperate to see her. Asking a woman with an anxiety disorder and a history of panic attacks to view a dead body? Not a good idea.

  “Let’s go inside and sit down. I’ll put on a pot of coffee and we can talk this through.” She opened the door and let Duke and Eden walked past her into the cool foyer, before following them down a long hall, walls adorned with framed photos of Reggie and her late-husband, Wayne.

  Most of the pictures had been taken as Reggie and Wayne travelled the world together during their twenty-year marriage. In the early days following Wayne’s unexpected death, it had been impossible for Reggie to walk past the photos without feeling physical pain. But she couldn’t bear to pack them away, and so they had stayed.

  Now the photos reminded her of how lucky she was to have found Wayne, to have found her soulmate, even if he had left her far too soon. Her work at the foundation during the last four years had shown her just how rare that was.

  Eden sank into a white wicker chair, cradling her head in her hands, while Reggie filled a coffee pot with water and turned on the brewer. Duke settled in on the floor close to Eden’s feet.

  “I don’t know if I can do this, Reggie,” Eden said softly, looking down at her hands as they twisted on the polished wood of the kitchen table. “I don’t think I’m strong enough.”

  “It’s not about being strong, Eden,” Reggie said, taking a seat at the table. “Most people would be fearful of having to view a dead body. Especially the body of someone they met recently. Someone they tried to help.”

  Eden’s hands clenched into fists as she dropped her head to her chest in frustration. “If only I hadn’t left her in the room alone! If only I’d been there to stop her from leaving. She’d be alive, safe somewhere, instead of dead in the morgue.”

  “First of all, we don’t know for sure if it is the same girl.” Reggie rose and moved across to Eden, wrapping a thin, firm arm around her shoulders. “And second of all, even if it is Star, what happened to her isn’t your fault. You can’t do this to yourself again, honey.”

  Reggie looked down at Duke, who sat with both his paws touching Eden’s topsiders. She’d taken in the golden retriever as a puppy after hearing success stories about ESAs helping patients with anxiety disorders. She thought having a dog in the office of her private practice could have a positive impact on her patients.

  Duke’s worried eyes now matched her own concern and stirred up memories of the first counseling session they’d had after Eden had suffered a full-blown panic attack and ended up in the emergency room.

  Duke had been drawn to Eden immediately, somehow sensing that the nervous, trembling, shadow of a woman needed him. When Eden stood to leave after their hour was up, Duke had followed her to the door and then trotted over to the window to watch her drive away.

  That day he’d looked back at Reggie with those same serious eyes, and she’d known just what to do. Duke and Eden had been inseparable ever since.

  “I shouldn’t be complaining, I guess,” Eden sniffed and raised red-rimmed eyes.

  “I wanted to help women in need. I wanted Mercy Harbor to be the place abused women could come to when things got bad. Deadly even. That’s what I signed up for. But now that it’s so…real…I don’t know if I can handle it.”

  Reggie opened her mouth to offer further reassurance, but then closed it again. She was suddenly torn between her feelings of friendship for Eden, and her responsibility as the director of Mercy Harbor.

  In her role as director, how could she not ask Eden to assist in identifying a girl that had been on the foundation’s premises before possibly turning up dead in the river? Wasn’t the foundation now involved, whether voluntarily or not?

  But then again, as a friend, how could she ask Eden to put herself in a situation that might instigate an acute relapse of her anxiety disorder? What if the stress caused her to suffer a major panic attack? It had been over a year since Eden’s last episode. Was it fair to ask her to risk her emotional health?

  Eden was no longer officially Reggie’s patient; they had agreed it would no longer be appropriate once they’d started working together at the foundation. But Reggie still tried to help Eden manage her anxiety and prevent a reoccurrence of the panic attacks she’d suffered after Mercy’s murder.

  For the first time Reggie felt as if her professional and personal interests may be at odds.

  “Before Mercy died, I was always frustrated with people who were indecisive, or who saw everything in gray, instead of black and white,” Eden said, her voice trembling. “It seemed so easy back then to decide what was right, to know what to do.”

  Eden rose from the table and began pacing around the big kitchen. “Now there are so many questions I can’t answer. Should I spend my time helping the women at the shelter, or taking care of Mercy’s children? Should I help an unknown girl in distress, or protect the women that are already in our care? Should I save my own sanity, or try to identify a young girl’s body, and perhaps provide her family with closure?”

  Reggie also stood up and faced Eden. “Take a deep breath, honey. Don’t get yourself worked up. Th
at’s the last thing you need.”

  “I know, Reggie. But I’m scared, and I don’t know what to do.”

  Eden stopped pacing, standing in front of the French doors that led out to the back garden. She folded her arms around her body.

  Reggie joined her, looking through the glass panes as if an answer could be found in the bright day beyond. The June sun sizzled down onto an explosion of red, pink and white perennials. A monarch butterfly lazily dipped in and out of a huge purple blossom.

  “The butterflies always seem to prefer the Lily of the Nile for some reason,” she said to Eden. “They must want to spend the little time they have surrounded by the biggest, most beautiful thing they can see.”

  Eden nodded, contemplating the flowers outside. “Can’t blame them for that. The world can be a very ugly place.”

  “Which is the very reason you started the foundation in the first place,” Reggie gently chided. “To try and make the world a better place. And we’ve just got to keep on trying.”

  “I knew there was a reason I came over here,” Eden said, squeezing Reggie’s small, delicate hand. “You can always make me feel brave. Or at least feel like I should be brave. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  Reggie squeezed back. “Well, you’re going to have to do without me for a little while at least. Our last room at Shutter Street will be occupied later this afternoon. I got a call this morning from social services. So, I’ve got to get over there now and make sure everything’s ready. You and Duke can stay here for as long as you want, of course.”

  “Thanks, Reggie,” Eden said, her eyes returning to the garden outside. “I think I know what I’ve got to do. I just have to work up the courage first.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Willow Bay Medical Examiner’s Office occupied the first two floors of a bulky concrete building that sat across the street from the police station. The building’s gray exterior matched Nessa’s mood as she pushed her way into the lobby and nodded at the sleepy-looking clerk sitting behind a reception window.