Sleeping in Eden

by Nicole Baart

  It was Dylan’s favorite, and Meg paused on the landing to see if her mother’s invitation was too tempting for him to resist. But though his smile sagged visibly when the warm aroma hit him, Dylan was already shaking his head no.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Painter,” he started, heading off toward the kitchen. “My mom’s expecting me home.”

  Relieved, Meg left him to make the phone call and sprinted the last of the steps. Steering clear of her brother’s closed bedroom door and the throbbing bass that made the hinges squeak, she locked herself in the bathroom, where she tried to evaluate her injuries. Nothing too serious, but the scrapes on her cheek would soon be accented by a long, purple bruise. Her cheekbone was already beginning to discolor.

  After she had washed her face and held her burning hand beneath a stream of ice-cold water long enough to make it numb, Meg found herself staring at her reflection in the mirror. The girl before her was perhaps a little too thin, with angular features that echoed her slight frame. Her nose was narrow, her eyes wide, her mouth shapely but a bit too big for the rest of her face. Meg’s mother always told her that Painter girls grew into their beauty, and looking at herself now, Meg knew what she meant. In her own face she saw the potential for loveliness, but it was not a present reality. It didn’t make her sad; it made her anxious.

  Raising her hands to her hair, Meg loosed the ponytail that Dylan had clutched only minutes before. Blond locks the color of harvest spread across her shoulders and down the camouflage arms of her heavy jacket. The waves were twisted and tangled, half curly and half kinked. They looked messy and unkempt, too long by a good six inches.

  Meg stepped back from the counter, put her hands on her hips, and sighed. “I need a haircut,” she told the girl in the mirror. “And maybe . . .” She crossed to the top drawer beside the sink and rifled through the flower-print bag containing her mother’s makeup. “This.”

  The sticker on the bottom of the tube of lip gloss told Meg the color was Summer Sunset, but she thought it looked like blood on her mouth. She grimaced at her reflection for a moment, then swiped at the offensive makeup with a tissue. When she found that her lips were still stained with the tint, she washed her face again.

  Dylan had said that he liked her the way she was. She hoped he meant it.

  “What happened to you?” Greg Painter asked Meg when she finally made her way downstairs for dinner.

  “I fell, Dad.”

  His hand found her cheek and grazed the broken skin with a gentle thumb. “How did you fall?”

  Of course, he knew exactly how she fell and who she was with when it happened. The seemingly never-ending parade of cuts, bruises, sprains, and strains she regularly sported didn’t sit well with her father, and Meg had learned early on that he couldn’t stop himself from pointing out the obvious where Dylan was concerned. It was as if he didn’t quite dare forbid her to see her new friend, but hoped that by reminding her of the trouble she got herself into when Dylan was around, she’d change her mind about the relationship entirely.

  “How?” he pressed.

  Meg pursed her lips and tolerated her dad’s ministrations in silence. She only admitted the truth about what happened when her mother slipped into the dining room carrying the final serving bowl.

  “I fell off my bike,” she said then, extracting herself from beneath her dad’s hand and going to take her place beside Linda at the table.

  Greg rolled his eyes. “I’m giving that bike away,” he snapped, dropping into his own chair.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Linda told her husband. “She loves that bike.”

  “Look at what it does to her!”

  Linda turned to Meg and cupped her daughter’s face in her hands. “It’ll heal,” she said. “Not even a hint of a scar.” She smiled a secret smile at Meg, a mother-daughter vow of understanding contained in the private lift of her lips.

  Meg wasn’t completely clueless. She fully understood that her dad bristled at the thought of Dylan because he was older, virtually unknown, and a boy. And she knew that her mom had a soft spot for Dylan because of those very same things. Linda treated her only son with the same mix of adoration and resolve, her affection tempered with an even hand that seemed to say, “I know you need tough love.”

  As if she could read Meg’s mind, Linda looked up from the table and asked, “Where’s Bennett? Did you tell him it was suppertime?”

  “Five times at least,” Meg assured her.

  “Knocking on the door doesn’t count.”

  Meg shrugged. “Then no. I didn’t tell him it was suppertime.”

  “I’m on it,” Greg said with a sigh. He pushed himself away from the table and took the steps two at a time on his way to claim his son from the smelly dungeon that was his room.

  “I want details,” Linda whispered when he was gone.

  “We were doing jumps off the ramp,” Meg started, editing ruthlessly. “I tried to spin the handlebars and fell.”

  Linda bit the inside of her cheek and gave her daughter a stern look.

  “What?”

  “Spill it.”

  Meg picked up her fork and spun it between her fingers like a baton. “Jess had some friends over,” she confessed. “They saw me and Dylan, and . . . it was no big deal.”

  “You were showing off?”

  “Mom.” Meg glared. “I was not showing off.”

  “Proving yourself.”

  “Something like that.”

  Linda looked hard at her daughter for a long moment. Then, sitting back in her chair, she crossed her arms over her chest and muttered, “Mm-hmm.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Linda said, but she leaned over and gave Meg a quick, smacking kiss on the forehead.

  “What?”

  “What, what?” Greg asked walking back into the dining room with sixteen-year-old Bennett in tow.

  “Nothing,” Linda said again. “Sit down, both of you. Supper’s getting cold.”

  Meg watched as Bennett slumped down opposite her. He studied the table with all the disinterest of a stereotypical angst-ridden teen. His half-closed eyes and the way he swiped his hand beneath his nose as if he hardly realized the appendage was attached to his body made Meg giggle. It was all an act. She knew that when the music blared in his bedroom and he was supposed to be staring blankly at the ceiling daydreaming about girls—maybe even her own best friend—he was actually penning advanced calculus homework in his careful hand. More than once she had caught him in the act, and by the way he reacted, Meg was convinced that he couldn’t have been more embarrassed if she had caught him smoking a joint. The thought only made her giggle harder.

  Bennett looked up at her for the first time since walking into the room. “What’s your problem?” he challenged. Then, seeing her cheek, he added, “Another fall, Little Miss Tony Hawk?”

  “He’s a skater,” Meg said, rolling her eyes.

  “Oh, I forgot. You’re a biker.” The way Bennett said the word made it sound as if nothing could be more distasteful. “So lame, Megs. So completely pathetic.”

  Meg was about to bite back when her parents both cut in.

  “It was an accident,” Linda said.

  “Dylan talked her into it,” Greg accused.

  Bennett looked from parent to parent, apparently measuring their words before he turned his gaze to his sister. “This Dylan boy sounds like trouble to me.”

  Meg was incensed. Bennett took no interest in her life whatsoever except to screw it up when given the chance. She longed to leap across the table and yank at his longish curls. She’d call him a wannabe, a poseur. It was common knowledge that she had more nerve, spunk, and spirit than her quiet, straight-A brother. He was a closet nerd.

  But Meg never got the chance.

  Linda grabbed her daughter’s hand forcefully and gave her husband a pointed look. “Pray,” she said, her request a thinly veiled command.

  And though Meg could tell that her dad wanted to follow up Bennett’s
commentary with more Dylan abuse, he obeyed his wife and bowed his head.

  Meg followed suit, but after her father had said a few lines, she dared to sneak a peek across the table at her brother. He was looking at her, and when she caught his eye, he thrust his chin at her in an unspoken challenge. She grinned, and knowing that he wouldn’t make a sound, kicked his shin beneath the table with all the strength she could muster.

  Bennett’s gaze flickered, but he didn’t even wince. Instead, he winked, and mouthed something that looked an awful lot like “He’s using you.”

  Or maybe Meg only saw what she had already started to believe.

  5

  LUCAS

  Lucas woke up with light behind his eyes. The sun was streaming in the window beside the bed he used to share with Jenna, and without looking, Lucas knew that a glowing sliver of gold was pouring itself across the pillow. His mouth was dry. His bones hummed with the ache of a deep, dreamless sleep, the kind of twinge that invited his body to stretch and unfold itself in a morning jog. But instead of rolling out of bed, he rolled over. His years-old routine was becoming more of a memory than a daily habit.

  The house was silent. So far this fall, Lucas hadn’t turned on the furnace, but it was just about time to do so. The air around his face was cool, but underneath the down comforter, Lucas was bathed in humid heat. Too hot inside but too cool outside—he could feel the frostiness of the air nip at his face even as his body radiated an almost sticky warmth. Not time to get up just yet.

  Lucas could almost imagine that Jenna was breathing beside him. She moaned in her sleep—a soft, unconscious sigh that he had fallen in love with long ago. He missed listening to the gentle protest in each exhale, the sweet familiarity of her night sounds, and even the way she curled away from him, her backbone pressing lightly against his arm as he lay facing the ceiling.

  But his bed was cold and empty. Silent as a tomb.

  When Jenna had told him that she was moving out, he begged her to stay. She said she needed time and space, a place where she could untangle the mess that her life had become.

  “We can do that together,” Lucas said, his voice low and husky, desperate.

  “No, Lucas, we can’t. I think the last several years have proven that.”

  “Why don’t we try counseling again?”

  Jenna suppressed a little shudder.

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Look, I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to dredge up everything that happened and try to come to terms with it all. I just want to move on.”

  Without me, Lucas thought. But he said, “Stay. Please. I’ll move into the attic room. You’ll hardly know I’m here. Just please don’t go.”

  Jenna had shrugged, and the conversation was over. For an entire week Lucas hoped that she had abandoned her plan entirely, that somehow in a stunted, brittle conversation he had managed to convince her that their marriage was worth fighting for. But when he replayed their dialogue again and again, he realized that there were no fighting words contained in their exchange at all. He hadn’t shouted a battle cry, a bold declaration of the war he was willing to wage in the campaign for his wife. He had whimpered a plea.

  It had unnerved Lucas not to know what to do. He was the sensible one, strong and levelheaded and dependable. At work and at home, he specialized in doling out solutions, answers to problems both simple and sophisticated. But losing Jenna had crept up on him in the night. Her gradual disentanglement from their relationship, from their life together, had come on so slowly and stealthily, he didn’t realize it was happening until the day she walked into the attic and became little more than the woman who shared a house with him.

  One night almost exactly a week after she told him she was going to move out, Jenna brushed her teeth in the bathroom like normal, but instead of crossing the hall into the bedroom they shared, she mounted the steps to the attic. Lucas hadn’t even noticed that she had moved her clothes out of the closet and taken her favorite pillow. Or that the wall between them had been mortared with an extra layer of bricks. He couldn’t even form a single coherent thought as he watched her walk straight-backed up the stairs and out of sight, and when the slim curve of her ankle finally disappeared, he stood in the hallway, watching the spot where it had been, heartbroken and longing. He was bereft, holding all the frayed edges of the ties that bound them to the house, to each other, to all that they had shared and known, and hoping he could somehow weave them back together. He didn’t know how to begin.

  Lucas knew that he should have called after her. He should have at least tried to make her take the master bedroom. Better yet, he should have marched up those stairs and carried her back down like a child. Laid her on their bed. Made love to her.

  Or just held her.

  He did none of those things.

  And in the murky light of a fall morning, he wished for nothing more than that he had done something. Anything.

  I took the ring, Lucas thought. It was too little, too late, and maybe not the right gesture at all. But he had done it, and now he had to live with the ramifications.

  Lucas both wanted and didn’t want to give Jenna the ring. He leaned over the side of the bed and took it from the nightstand where he had placed it the night before. It felt warm in the palm of his hand, the coil of gold an obvious and almost painful sphere pressing against his skin. Tell her, he thought. Go upstairs, lift her from sleep, and look into her eyes. Tell her what you saw. But now that he was home, away from the crime scene, the bustle of DCI agents, and all the questions, he was speechless. Maybe Jenna wouldn’t understand his gift. Maybe it would hurt her more than it helped. And although he believed with all his heart that the body beneath the floor of the barn was Angela Sparks—and that DCI would quickly and easily determine that fact—it didn’t erase what he had done.

  Sane, trustworthy, respectable men didn’t steal evidence from a crime scene. And straitlaced, idealistic, reliable Lucas Hudson didn’t either. At least, not until he saw the glint of the ring.

  The telephone was far enough away that when it rang, it was more a dream than reality. Lucas finally turned his head so that his ear was angled at the door, and after a moment of lying perfectly still, he heard it. Quickly, he swung his feet to the floor and slithered out, grabbing his robe off the chair and gliding to the bedroom door on the balls of his feet. The door made the tiniest creak at his touch, but when he looked back to see if he had disturbed Jenna, he remembered that he slept alone. He flung the door open.

  Taking the stairs two at a time, Lucas reasoned that he had probably already missed the call. The answering machine would get it. He should have stayed in bed. But it was too late to turn back. He had committed himself to the chore and now he wanted to make it worth his while—no lousy hang-up. The kitchen tile bit his bare feet as he sprinted across the floor, but Lucas did reach the phone in time. The answering machine clicked on just as he swept the phone out of its cradle.

  “Hello?” His voice was groggy with sleep and accompanied by a tinny, mechanical voice insisting that the Hudsons were not able to take the call. “Hang on a second, let me turn that off.”

  “Lucas? You’re such a slacker—were you still in bed?” Alex was loud enough that Lucas had to yank the phone away from his ear.

  “No,” Lucas lied. “Jenna and I were just having a lazy morning.” He spun around to look at the clock on the stove, which read 8:30. Surprised, he used his free hand to massage his face and ended up hiding a wide yawn, even though he knew Alex couldn’t see him through the telephone.

  “You’re a bad liar, Lucas. Always have been,” Alex ribbed.

  “Okay, caught me.” Lucas yawned again. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve done that—slept so late, I mean.” He lowered himself into one of the kitchen chairs.

  “Hey, I’m glad you did. Kids wouldn’t let me—Lily jumped into our bed at five freakin’ thirty this morning, ungodly—but I envy you. Do it every day if I could.”

 
Lucas held his tongue. People often didn’t realize how seemingly benign comments like that cut Jenna to the quick. Him, too. Five freakin’ thirty sounded pretty fantastic if it meant that a child had been the alarm clock. Lucas couldn’t help wondering how different his whole life would be if he could laugh with Alex about the so-called chore of children.

  “We’re starting with interviews this morning,” Alex went on. “We’ve been calling since seven o’clock, and have a few appointments lined up already.”

  “On Sunday? I’m surprised the fine residents of Blackhawk are willing to part with their Sunday-morning routine.”

  “Oh, everything has to be before or after church, but not during dinner with Grandma or anytime in the three-hour afternoon nap slot.”

  Lucas laughed in spite of himself.

  “When can I count on you?”

  “Me?”

  “You need to give an official statement, Lucas.”

  “With you?”

  “DCI will interview you.”

  Massaging his face with his free hand, Lucas thought about the ring that he’d left on the nightstand when he ran to catch the phone. Did they suspect that he’d taken something? Were there imprints of the ring on the paper of Jim’s suicide note? Could the naked eye determine that sort of thing?

  “You there?”

  “Nine o’ clock,” Lucas said. “I can be there at nine.”

  “We’re set up at the station. Just park around back and let yourself in the back door.” Alex hung up without saying good-bye.

  Upstairs, Lucas plucked his jeans from the floor where he had discarded them and pulled a fresh T-shirt from the dresser drawer. He tucked the ring in his pocket, stabbed with a moment of guilt so intense that he almost convinced himself he would turn the ring over to DCI as soon as he saw them. But then he heard the creak of Jenna’s feet on the floor above him. She was probably pulling the curtains tight, trying to eliminate any gaps where the light creeped in. Jenna wasn’t a morning person, and she liked to be gentled into her day. It killed him to think of her up there. Without him.