by Karen Rose
“I’m sorry,” he repeated with more force. He swallowed, then kissed her finger again. “Really sorry, Sydney.”
It was her finger today. It had been her hip last time, because he’d held on too tightly and left a bruise. The time before he’d “made her” knock a wineglass from her nightstand to the floor, staining the carpet red.
How he’d wished it had been her blood.
Each time there was something he’d done. For as long as he could remember. Each time he’d dutifully apologized. In the beginning he’d even meant it.
In the beginning he hadn’t known anything. In the beginning she’d held all the power. In the beginning she’d been in control.
Not much had changed. She still had the upper hand.
She patted his cheek. “I forgive you,” she said as she always did, then relaxed into a mountain of pillows. “I’ll have it fixed by the manicurist tomorrow. Lock up on your way out and set the alarm. Paul won’t be home until late.”
And he was dismissed. No thank you. No words of affection. She never uttered them. Not that he’d have believed them anyway.
He stood up and tucked his shirt in his pants, stuffing his tie in his pocket and grabbing his shoes and socks from the floor, his rage beginning to boil. “Yes, Sydney.”
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 10:20 P.M.
Daisy leaned into Gideon’s arm, peeking at his painting. “You’re not half bad for a G-man,” she teased. “Getting rid of the tie allowed oxygen to the creative area of your brain.”
He laughed gruffly. After much encouragement—and a little bullying—on her part, he’d finally picked up a brush and begun to cover the canvas she’d set up on one of her easels with cheerful daisies, which made her happy.
He’d added a little girl to the painting, but she wasn’t blond with blue eyes. She appeared very young, with dark hair pulled into pigtails. And green eyes. “Stop peeking,” he said, “or I’ll stop painting.”
She knew it was a real threat, despite his delivering it in an equally teasing voice. She returned to her own easel, back to back with his. She’d started a portrait. She didn’t normally do portraits, but at the moment, his face was all she could see. Literally. Because he was standing in her field of vision, his head bowed, his handsome face set in a scowl as he concentrated. But when she closed her eyes, it was also his face she saw and that brought her comfort. Earlier in the evening it had been Carrie’s face she’d seen when she closed her eyes, and that hurt. So goddamn much.
She’d been waiting for him to begin his explanation of Eden, but he’d been so silent she worried he was never going to. “So,” she prompted quietly. “Eden.”
He cleaned his brush, then started with a new color. “I don’t like to talk about it.”
“I gathered that.”
One side of his mouth lifted, but only briefly, and then he was scowling again. “My mom . . . She thought she was raising us right.” He painted furiously for a full minute before his arm went still. “She was a single mother with two kids and no husband. Her family had shamed her, told her to leave. So she did.” His throat worked. “She didn’t have a high school diploma and ended up hooking, but she had a few friends. Other hookers she’d met. They shared an apartment and would watch each other’s kids while they worked.”
Two kids. Gideon had a sibling somewhere. She thought of the dark-haired girl with green eyes that he was painting so soberly. A sister? “Co-op daycare,” Daisy murmured.
He nodded. “Everything changed when a social worker visited one evening. Someone in the building had called, worried that we were being neglected. But we were clean and fed. My mom hadn’t gone far from home, still in the same city, so she still had a library card. She checked out children’s books for all of us and was teaching us to read.”
“She loved you.”
His swallow was audible in the quiet of her apartment. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely, then cleared his throat. “My mom was on duty the day the social worker came. She was so scared the woman would take us. It was close. She didn’t, but she did report my mother for operating a daycare without a license. She had too many kids. The social worker threatened to take us if my mother didn’t get a better job.”
“Could she have?”
“I don’t know. Neither did my mother. But she was scared, so when the other moms came back the next morning, my mom took us and ran. She had enough money saved to get two bus tickets, so she held my sister on her lap for two and a half days.”
Daisy wanted to ask more about his sister, but held her tongue and let him continue.
“We started out in Houston. Ended up in San Francisco because that’s where she thought my father was, but he’d given her a fake address. Maybe a fake name, too. So she was alone in the city at nineteen with two kids and no one to help her. No resources.”
“How old were you?”
“Five.”
“Wow,” she whispered. “Your mom was a very young mother.”
“She was only fourteen when I was born. She told me that my father was a salesman who passed through, that she’d told him she was eighteen.” He shook his head. “I saw photos of her when she was fourteen. No man on earth would have believed she was eighteen. The fucker was a pedophile, plain and simple.” He cleaned his brush again and changed colors. “We lived with her parents until she told them she was pregnant again.”
“With your sister.”
“Yes. By the same man. She kept sleeping with him, every time he blew into town. He’d bring me a cheap toy and leave her some cash. I think she really loved him. Or thought she did. I mean, she was a child. My grandparents made sure we got food and took me to church. We were always going to church. They hoped to stamp me with family values so that I wouldn’t ‘turn out like her.’ Their words. Not mine.”
“They gave up any right to family values when they threw out their daughter and her two babies,” Daisy said, trying to keep the anger from her voice.
Gideon’s eyes lifted and met hers over their easels. “I agree. But my mother was a churchgoing girl and so she sought out a church for help and for a while things were okay. The people there were nice. I remember that. They fed us and gave her some clothes to keep us warm because it was San Francisco in July. She hadn’t thought to bring jackets.”
“But things changed?”
“One of the men in the church gave my mom a job cleaning his house.”
Daisy’s brows went up. “Just his house?”
A nod. “He told her that he was renting, but I think he was a squatter. Anyway, he told her that he had a farm with a nice house, that he’d take her there and she could find work. That there would be fresh air and vegetables for us. That she could make a life there.”
“Which must have sounded like her prayers being answered.”
“It did. My mother was smart, but trusting. The kind you’d say, ‘Oh, honey,’ to.”
“Was there a farm?”
“Yes. The whole community was a farm. It was a commune of sorts. Really it was a cult, built around the personality of Pastor.”
“Pastor what?”
“That was his name. That’s what everyone called him. Pastor. My mother was accustomed to that. That’s what all the members of her parents’ church had called their minister. The man who brought us there was gone after the first night. He’d come back from time to time with new families. Sometimes single moms like mine, sometimes whole ‘nuclear’ families. They were given housing until they could build their own. Sometimes they were just young women with no family. Never a young man alone. If a male entered the community, he was older. He either had a family or a skill.”
He dropped his brush in the cleaner and stepped back from the canvas. She watched him go into the kitchen, where he searched the drawers, returning with the deck of cards she’d found there when s
he’d moved in. Cards he must have left there.
He sat on the sofa, shuffling cards and laying out a game of solitaire. Mindlessly he began playing. Finally, she turned her back to him and continued working on the portrait.
Behind her, he shuffled again. “We were only there for one day when Pastor came to meet us. He was . . . unassuming. Like a regular person. He smiled and joked, then sent me outside to play. I remember thinking how pretty it was. You could see Mt. Shasta in the distance. A little girl came over to me, offered me a cookie.”
Daisy wanted to turn around and look at him, but she didn’t dare, fearing that he’d stop talking. “Eileen.”
“Yes. She was the first person my own age who I met there. We ended up the best of friends. But eventually I was called back inside. My mother was pale. Trembling. She told me she was getting married.”
“To the guy who’d brought you there?”
“No. To a stranger. She said that Pastor had informed her that single women weren’t permitted in Eden. Too much temptation to the men.”
Daisy couldn’t stifle the sound coming out of her throat. She jabbed her brush at the canvas a little too hard. “Sorry. Go on.”
“My mother had been raised with similar values. Don’t wear this, don’t do that, don’t be a harlot, all those things. She didn’t fight it. She was given to Amos.”
She turned around at that. “Given to?”
“Yes.” He didn’t look up from the cards. “He wasn’t a bad man. Strict, but not . . . evil.”
Evil. Like Ephraim. Who’d beaten him until he’d nearly died. “Were you happy?”
He shrugged. “I was five years old. I got a toy, a bed of my own, hot food, and a dog.”
“What was his name? The dog?”
He looked up. “Boy. I wasn’t an original child.”
She smiled at him. “I think it’s nice.”
He nodded, not smiling back. “He was a good dog.”
Her smile faltered. “What happened to him?”
His gaze dropped back to the cards. “I don’t know. He . . . stayed behind.”
“When you escaped.”
“Yes.” He drew a deep breath and released it on a shudder. “I loved that dog. I don’t know how much longer he lived. He was old when I was thirteen. White muzzle. He was a golden.” He sighed. “My mom got her locket the next day. It was her wedding day.”
“She got married two days after arriving?”
His broad shoulders shrugged. “A day and a half, technically. We moved into Amos’s house. Men couldn’t marry until they’d built a house, and then it was a lottery of sorts. They put their names in a hat and Pastor picked one whenever a new woman arrived or a girl came of age. Older men were allowed to put more slips with names on them than the younger men, so the deck was stacked against the younger men. Amos had been waiting for quite some time for his name to be chosen from the hat.”
It was . . . barbaric. But Daisy bit the words back. “Tell me about the locket.”
“Every female was given one on her wedding day. But the chain was different than the one you yanked off your attacker last night.”
Last night? Had it only been last night? Daisy felt like she’d lived a month of Fridays. “How was it different?” she asked when he didn’t elaborate.
“Stronger. You never would have been able to pull one of those chains off. The Hulk wouldn’t have been able to, not without strangling the woman. They had to be cut off. The locket sat in the hollow of the wearer’s throat. The chains were forged right there in Eden.” He chuckled bitterly. “Metaphorically and literally.”
“So it was more like a mark of ownership.”
“That’s exactly what it was. A photo of the happy couple was placed inside.”
“Like Eileen. Even though she was only a child.” My God.
“She was twelve. That was the normal marrying age.”
Daisy remembered the details of the locket’s engraving. “Twelve branches on the olive tree.”
His gaze flew up, locking on Daisy’s. “How did you know that?”
“Trish took a photo of the locket before the police got there last night. She took photos of me, too, my throat, the scene, all that.” Her smile was small and rueful. “She watches a lot of cop shows on TV. Anyway, I asked her to send it to me. I wondered at the twelve branches. I thought that it was maybe the twelve tribes of Israel.”
“That may have been one of the meanings. But it was the age of womanhood.”
Daisy sighed. “Twelve. Just babies.”
“We grew up fast in Eden.”
“I guess you must have.” She dropped her brush into the cup of cleaner. The face in the portrait she’d been painting wasn’t recognizable yet, for which she was grateful. She wasn’t sure she wanted Gideon to know she was painting him. Not yet, anyway. She didn’t want to scare him away by appearing too eager. “I’m going to sit down now, but I can sit in the chair if you need your space.”
He held her gaze for a very long moment. “No,” he finally said. “Sit next to me.”
She did, folding her hands in her lap. “What happened to boys when they turned twelve?”
“Nothing. Manhood was achieved at thirteen.”
“Bar mitzvah.”
He shook his head. “They adopted some elements of Judaism, but they weren’t Jewish. They called it ‘ascension.’”
“Got it.”
She stole a glance at him. “Sasha said you had the locket’s design tattooed on your chest, but that you covered it up with a phoenix.”
He frowned. “Sasha was awfully observant for a girl who didn’t like boys.”
“She liked you. You’re like her brother.”
“So you said at dinner.” He was sitting on the sofa’s edge, his knees spread wide, leaning toward the cards he’d dealt on the coffee table. He began a new game, sorting and pairing, the muscles of his back rippling with each movement.
She hesitated, then figured she’d go big or go home. Easy to say, since she was home already and she knew he wouldn’t leave her, not until he had someone to take his place so that she’d be safe. So maybe I’m a horrible person for pushing this, but . . .
She wanted to touch him. So she did, spreading her fingers wide over his back and caressing him gently. He didn’t jerk away. Didn’t react at all. She guessed he’d been watching her from the corner of his eye, so she hadn’t surprised him. She kept up the soft touch, and after a few tense seconds, he relaxed under her palm and returned to his game.
“Tell me about the first tattoo,” she murmured.
“I got it on my thirteenth birthday. Happy, happy,” he added sarcastically.
“Did it hurt?”
“Like a fucking bitch. But I’d lived in the community for most of my life and I knew what happened to sissy-boys. I did not want to be a sissy-boy.”
Not stopping her caress, she asked, “You said you were thirteen when you escaped. How long was it after your birthday?”
“The very next day.”
She wondered which of the questions swirling in her mind she should ask next. How? Why? What about your sister? What about your mother? Why were you beaten? What happened to make you cover up the tattoo with a phoenix when you were eighteen? Why was the man who beat you not punished? Where was this place?
Finally she simply said, “Tell me.”
ELEVEN
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 10:45 P.M.
Tell me. Gideon’s gaze was angled at the cards he’d dealt, but he’d closed his eyes, absorbing the feel of Daisy’s hand on his back. He wondered how much to tell this generous woman who wore her heart on her sleeve. She’d looked up at him like he was some kind of hero, had trusted him to keep her safe. Had grounded him when he needed her most. What would she do if she knew the truth?
>
She would say you were thirteen and did what you had to do. She would be happy that you protected yourself. That you made it out alive. She would say you shouldn’t feel guilty. And she wouldn’t look at you any differently.
All of that was probably true. Probably. He wasn’t sure if he was willing to risk it, though. To risk her looking at him like he was a monster. Or worse. With pity.
“I’m a vault,” she murmured. “I will keep your secrets.”
He didn’t doubt that. But would she still look at him like he was a hero?
He wasn’t sure what he’d tell her when he opened his mouth. But he had to tell her something. She was connected to this mess through that damn locket and the man who’d attacked her.
“The thirteenth birthday marked the rite of passage to manhood. We were assigned to a craftsman in the town as an apprentice. I was given to Edward McPhearson.”
Her hand paused for a second at the word “given,” but then resumed the caress.
“He was the smith. He forged the chain. Made the lockets. He was one of the founders.” He swallowed hard. “He’d been given Eileen in marriage the year before.”
“He’s the man in the first photo. The one you said was dead.”
“Yes. Eileen was his fourth wife.”
“What happened to his other three wives?”
“They were still around. It was a polygamist community.”
She released a slow breath. “I see.”
No, she really didn’t. “He’d had his eye on Eileen for a while. She cried the night before her birthday. He terrified her. Watched her like a wolf. I was old enough to understand why and I was afraid for her, too. We plotted together, she and I, on how we could get away, how I would save her.”
“But you couldn’t,” she said softly.
“No, I couldn’t. She got her locket and married McPhearson. The next day, after the wedding, my friend was gone. She was still breathing and existing, but her eyes were dead. I thought about the other girls I’d seen after their wedding nights. Some had worn that same vacant expression while others had seemed okay. But not Eileen.”
