Finding Eden

by Sheridan, Mia

  "Uh oh," I joked, one side of my mouth quirking up.

  She laughed. "I know, right? No, really," her expression went serious, "I know we haven't had much opportunity to talk about that water thing from yesterday, and chances are it's a coincidence, I guess. But I can't help but wonder if Hector not only passed through here, but . . . oh, I don't even know." She pursed her lips. "I thought maybe we could go to the local library and just look up a few things."

  I frowned. "What kind of things?"

  Her expression became pensive and she chewed on her bottom lip. "I don't know. But I think it's worth a try. If nothing comes up, nothing comes up. But we're the only ones who know about this possible connection to French Lick, Indiana. The police aren't going to look into a hunch about spring water. If we don't try, no one else will. And who knows if we'll ever be back here."

  I smiled across the table at her. "My little knowledge seeker," I said.

  She let out a breath and then laughed softly. "That's your fault." She winked. "What do you think?"

  I considered it for a minute. "Yeah. Okay." I crossed my arms in front of my chest. It suddenly felt chillier.

  My phone dinged and I looked at the text:

  Xander: Dude, Pluto Water? Sounds like our holy water. ???

  Me: I know. We think so too. Not sure what to make of it. Looking into a few things. Will let you know.

  Xander: Okay. You all right?

  Me: Better than ever. You good?

  Xander: Yeah

  Me: Talk soon

  Xander: Later

  We asked the waiter about the nearest library and then gathered our things. It was within walking distance.

  Less than ten minutes later, we were walking through the doors of the public library.

  "What are we hoping to find here?" I asked in a hushed tone as Eden looked around.

  She headed toward a librarian unloading a cart and I followed. "I'm not sure," she said. "Like I said, maybe nothing. I thought we'd look back at some newspapers from the time when Hector took me from Cincinnati and brought me to Indiana, maybe even someplace close to here."

  I furrowed my brow, but followed her.

  Thirty minutes later, we were looking through the library's internal computer system, going through the local paper for what, I wasn't sure. The librarian had explained that back copies of other papers could sometimes be found online, but they were such a small town, the newspapers were only catalogued there. Eden sat and scrolled through the top stories as I sat beside her, just watching. I was happy enough just to sit and stare at her. Plus, the quiet was nice as I considered the many things we'd need to do when we got back to Cincinnati.

  After a while, Eden huffed out a breath and turned to me, a small, embarrassed smile on her face. "I don't even know what I'm doing, or what I'm looking for. I'm wasting our vacation."

  I leaned back in my chair, taking in her disappointed expression. I shook my head, thinking for a second. "Okay, wait, let's go over the timeline. That one you had on the back of your door? Do you have it memorized?"

  She laughed a soft laugh. "Sadly, yes. Why?"

  "Okay." I leaned forward and put my elbows on my thighs. "So, we're looking at articles that came out about the time you were abducted. But," I considered things for a minute, "Acadia was formed years before that. Wouldn't it be safer to assume if something happened that, I don't know, inspired Hector to form Acadia, that that event would have happened right before?"

  Eden looked upward, considering my words. "You might be on to something there. So, from what we know from the police and when the land was purchased, Acadia was formed a year before you were born, whether you were born there or not." She glanced at me and then away again. "So, maybe we should look back at articles from the few months prior to that?" Her eyes were shining. I couldn't help but to feel like it was a bit of an adventure, too, despite the topic.

  "Let's do it."

  Eden looked forward at the computer again, concentrating, and I sat back in my chair while she scrolled.

  As she focused on what she was doing, I glanced around the library, people watching for a few minutes. There was a young couple at one of the computers arguing in whispered voices. There was a mom picking out bright-colored cardboard books with her toddler. My eyes lingered on the child who was excitedly reaching for the books his mom handed him, hardly being able to believe we'd have one of those little people soon. I wondered if we'd have a boy or a girl . . . who he or she would look like. When I glanced back at Eden, she was leaned into the computer, focusing intently on something. When she looked over at me, her face was drained of color.

  "Hector's real name was Thomas Greer."

  My whole body froze. I immediately looked around and then stood and moved my body to protect Eden as if Hector would somehow materialize because of what she had just said. "How do you know?" I whispered harshly, leaning my head in toward hers.

  "This," she squeaked out, pointing at the news article on the screen.

  I leaned in and looked over her shoulder. My eyes scrolled quickly through the article and then I went back and read it more slowly, something icy filling my veins.

  There was a picture of what was very clearly a younger Hector at the top of the page, with short-cropped hair and wearing a dress shirt and tie. The title of the article said, "History Professor's Family Murdered in Robbery."

  "Oh, God," Eden croaked out, her eyes not leaving the screen. She brought her fingers up to her lips as we both read on.

  The family of Indiana University Southeast Greek History professor, Thomas Greer, was found murdered early Sunday morning. Professor Greer returned home from a conference to discover his wife, Alice, and five-year-old daughter, Danae, stabbed to death in their home. Police don't have any suspects at this time, but are speculating it was a home invasion robbery. Our source at the police department is telling us the Greer home could have been targeted because Thomas's wife, previously Alice Lockwood, was the heiress to an Australian mining fortune and the thieves most likely anticipated the presence of money and jewelry. The family had planned to accompany Thomas Greer on his trip, but his daughter became sick at the last minute and they stayed behind.

  We scrolled forward, our eyes glued to the screen. We came upon a few, short articles, but no more information was offered. After a couple months, the case had grown stagnant. The police didn't have any suspects and Thomas had a foolproof alibi. He'd been at the conference the entire weekend and presented several times.

  My mind raced. An Australian mining fortune. Well, that answered the question of where Hector's money came from.

  I watched as Eden did a search for Greer's name, but no more articles came up.

  "Look at this," Eden said quietly, pointing her finger to the bottom of a short article on the screen. I looked closer and read aloud. "Alice Greer (née Lockwood), and Danae Greer will be laid to rest this Saturday at Our Lady of Mercy cemetery."

  "No, this part," Eden said, moving her finger down.

  I read quickly through "survived by" names, most with Alice's maiden name and then stopped when I got to her mother-in-law's name. Willa Greer.

  "Willa . . . she was his mother," I said softly, picturing crystal blue, ageless eyes.

  Go to the far, left corner. It's the only place where you'll live! And somewhere in my barely lucid mind, those words had come back to me. And because of it, I had survived.

  "Yes," she said, a disbelieving note in her voice, "and look at this."

  I squinted at the screen again, to another article where they had taken a statement from Willa Greer. She was standing in front of her business, a Fortune-telling shop in downtown French Lick right next to another small tourist store. "Madam Willa, Past, Present, Future Told. Come Inside." I swallowed hard, not completely understanding what it meant. Another sign on her shop window declared, "Holistic medicine sold here - treat ailments of all varieties."

  There is room for me here. Here I'm useful.

  I snapped back
to the present as Eden pressed print with shaking hands, stood up quietly, and grabbed the article copies as they came out of the printer. She folded them and shoved them in her purse and then shut everything down and grabbed my hand. She pulled me out of the library.

  When we stepped outside into the crisp fall air, we stopped and I took a big breath. I leaned back against a column in front of the building and wrapped my arms around her and hugged her close. "Hey," I whispered. "You have to stay calm. You've got a little life inside of you."

  Eden nodded her head. "I know," she whispered against my chest. "It's just a shock. Seeing him . . . hearing about his past. I don't even know what to feel. Oh my God, Calder, we found him."

  "I know," I said quietly. "And I don't know how to feel either."

  She tilted her head and looked up at me. "None of that . . . none of that makes it okay what he did."

  I shook my head, staring unseeing at the parking lot in front of me. "No, it doesn't. In fact, it might make it worse—making victims out of others, taking you from your parents when he knew what it felt like to lose a little girl, causing your miscarriage." My hand automatically went down to her still-flat belly.

  Eden was quiet for a minute. "Did he," she bit her lip, "just go crazy after what happened to his family, or . . .?"

  "I don't know. Maybe the police can look into it when we give them his name."

  She shivered against me and I pulled her tighter. "Yeah, maybe." When she looked up at me again, she asked, "Should we call them from here and tell them what we found?"

  I furrowed my brow. "We're heading back tomorrow. Let's let them know when we get back. The very last thing I want is for a bunch of media to show up while we're still here. It's the very thing we needed to get away from."

  "True," Eden said. "Hector . . . Thomas is dead anyway. I guess it's nothing that can't wait another day. We need to call Xander, though. He needs to know about this."

  "Let's bring all this to him tomorrow, too. That way we'll be able to show him all the articles. Plus, we should be there in person to drop this bomb on him."

  Eden nodded. "Yeah, you're right." We stood there for a few more minutes holding each other. I glanced down at Eden's purse, half of Willa Greer's face showing on a small corner of one of the articles sticking out of the top. Thank you, I said in my mind, pulling Eden closer.

  We headed back to our room and we took a bubble bath together in the large tub, soaking in the warm water, just enjoying the intimacy, but mostly lost in our own thoughts. "Danae," Eden whispered. "It's unusual. I bet it's a Greek Princess or something like that."

  I kissed her shoulder. "Probably. You were right. All the Greek stuff . . . he was a Greek History teacher. God, my girl is smart." I smiled against her skin and rubbed my nose over it, trying to make her smile, to make a little bit of the melancholy that had been surrounding us since we'd left the library dissipate.

  Eden laughed softly. "Think the police have a position open for me?"

  I laughed. "If they're smart, they do."

  Eden rolled over in the water and brought her hands to my face and kissed me softly. After a few minutes, the water began to cool, and my blood began to heat. We got out of the bath and dried off and I made love to her in the spacious hotel room bed.

  We ordered room service after that, content to spend our last night there wrapped up in each other. Personally, I felt like I needed that after what we'd found out earlier in the day. I needed to reset my emotions and find my equilibrium again and there was no better way to do that than to block out the world and focus solely on Eden.

  The next morning as I was drying off from the shower and throwing my stuff back in my bag, Eden sat at the small desk scrolling through the Internet on her laptop. She turned to me. "What would you think about driving through the town Indiana University Southeast is in? The college Thomas Greer worked at?"

  I paused. "Why?"

  She tilted her head. "I don't know. I thought I might recognize something there . . . maybe the house where he kept me? I went out into the yard every now and again . . . What do you think?"

  I went over to her and squatted down next to her chair. She turned toward me and took my hands in hers. "Eden, if you need that, I'll do it. But I don't want this to upset you. I don't want to risk your health in some way—"

  "I'm stronger than that, Calder," she said. "And besides, knowledge, information, it has always made me feel more powerful, more in control. Plus, we're so close. I don't know if we'll be back this way, you know? Once life gets underway," she put her hand on her stomach in an unconscious gesture, "we won't want to focus on any of this. We'll want it behind us in every sense."

  I breathed out and smiled gently at her. "Yeah." I paused. "Sure, we'll drive through the town a little bit and then we'll head home."

  She nodded. "Okay." She tilted her head, obviously thinking. "Do you think . . . well, Hector tried to recruit my father as the first council member and he was basically local. You were among the first people who lived in Acadia. Do you think maybe you were local, too? I mean, obviously he came back and forth between here and Acadia, and then he brought me here."

  I shrugged. "Yeah, but he gathered the other people who lived at Acadia from all over. I could be from anywhere. I'll probably never know." A feeling of loss squeezed my chest, even though I had no idea who I was grieving for, if anyone at all. Perhaps it was mostly because I knew no one was grieving for me.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Calder

  We drove in silence for a while, headed toward New Albany, Indiana. The radio played softly as we watched the beautiful fall scenery go by. I marveled at the vibrant colors of the trees. This was the first year since I'd lived in the Midwest that I had the heart to appreciate the beauty of nature, and all the ways this part of the country was so different than the desert landscape I'd known all my life. There was beauty there, too, but it was such a different kind. Looking through the windshield now at the reds, yellows, and golds of the trees passing by, something about it felt intensely familiar. My mind had been in a completely relaxed state when the feeling came to me and I furrowed my brow, not understanding what it meant exactly, if anything. Maybe I was just finally at the point where the Midwest felt like home. And I was sure that was directly related to the woman sitting next to me. I grabbed her hand and smiled as I brought it to my lips.

  "What names do you like?" I asked.

  Eden looked over at me and worried her brow.

  "For the baby," I prompted.

  She still didn't answer for a minute and then, "I think we should wait until we know everything is okay before we plan anything." She looked over at me.

  I squeezed her hand. "Everything's gonna be okay," I said.

  She nodded. "Hopefully. I just—"

  "You don't want to get attached yet," I said quietly. I understood because deep inside, I felt the same way, even despite the fact that I had only found out about Eden's first pregnancy after it was already gone. My heart squeezed at the memory of that moment in Hector's jail. A flash of anger lanced down my spine, making me sit up a little straighter in my seat.

  "I'm already attached," Eden said. "I just think maybe I shouldn't get any more attached."

  "I understand," I said, kissing her hand again.

  She smiled softly. "I know you do."

  When we pulled in to the town of New Albany, we plugged the address of the university into the GPS on my phone and then headed in that direction. We cruised slowly through the residential neighborhoods close to the college. We didn't have what had been Thomas Greer's address and so we didn't exactly have a location, so we just drove aimlessly. After about an hour, Eden huffed out a breath and said, "Nothing even looks vaguely familiar about this town. And all these houses are starting to look the same to me. I mean," she lifted her arms and let them drop, "even if he did bring me here, to this place, even if we drove right past the house I lived in, the yard might be completely different now. It's been fourteen years."
She took a deep breath. "Oh well, at least we tried. I'm sure the police will be able to get his address and they can show me a picture. Maybe I'll recognize it. Maybe it doesn't even matter." She smiled over at me, but it seemed forced.

  "Why don't we stop by the university?" I suggested. "It's lunch time. We could get some college cafeteria food and pretend like we're just two kids from suburbia who spotted each other across the bleachers at a football game and fell in love at first sight." I grinned over at her and she laughed, leaning over and kissing my cheek.

  "Okay. I like that plan."

  As I thought about it, I realized that it would have been true. No matter where Eden and I had been placed together in this world, we would have fallen in love. Whether we'd been two college freshman, two farm hands, two gypsies—two anything—the falling in love part of our story would have been the same. She would have pulled my heart from across a gymnasium, or a cornfield, or a traveling caravan.

  We parked in the visitors lot and held hands as we strolled through the campus. It was a strange feeling. On one hand, I loved just being with Eden, and blending in among the other people close to our age, all walking around. It made it feel like we really were just two average college students, and that we fit in here just like anyone else. For that moment, we didn't have a past that was much different than any other average American kid's. For that moment, we hadn't lived through heartbreak and struggle and trauma. But on the other hand, this was the place where Hector had worked . . . where he had taught students and perhaps where the idea of Acadia was hatched. A small chill went down my spine when I thought about the fact that right here, this was the place where the idea that would change my and Eden's life forever was born.

  And yet.

  This was also the place where the idea that would bring Eden and I together came to be. It was hard to know how to feel about that. Sometimes it seemed so much of the beauty in life resulted from the ugly. And how did you make sense of such things? How could you be thankful for something when so much suffering was necessary to bring it to you? Or was that the very thing that defined real beauty–light after darkness? And maybe that was the whole point. If you constantly sought beauty in the most obvious places, in only the brightest of circumstances, perhaps you weren't really looking for it at all.