Eddi considered the play . . . the weeks left of practice and performance . . . the scenes where she had to calmly interact with Dave. “How in the world am I going to do it?” she moaned and thanked the Lord there were no kissing scenes.
With a groan she rested her forehead in her hand. Her cell phone emitted an upbeat tune, and Eddi glared at her purse. Thinking a funeral dirge would be more appropriate, she recalled turning the phone on yesterday when she called Jenny. At the time, Eddi felt as if turning on the phone for even a few minutes opened her up to a call from Conner.
“I must have forgotten to turn it back off,” she mumbled. “How brain-dead can I be?”
Eddi retrieved her phone and winced before checking the screen. After ducking out on Conner last night, Eddi hadn’t given the guy another thought. She examined the number. Her suspicions were well founded. She started to toss the phone back into her purse but decided the time had come to move from being firm to being blunt. She pressed the talk button and spoke her greeting.
“Eddi! What happened to you last night?” Conner’s high-pitched voice took on an accusatory edge.
“I just needed to get away,” Eddi said and then reminded herself such an evasive answer would accomplish nothing. She gulped a generous swallow of the acerbic coffee, grimaced, and plunged forward.
“Actually, Conner, we need to have a heart-to-heart talk here.”
“Really?” he said with a positive lilt.
“What I mean is,” Eddi said in a no-nonsense tone, “I’m going to tell you exactly how I feel, and I’m certain you are not going to like it.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. It’s been very clear to me that, from our first meeting, you have been . . . interested in a lasting relationship. I’ve tried to be nice, and I thought you’d get the hint. But apparently you need a more direct approach.” She snatched a breath and continued before he could interrupt.
“Conner, this is a hopeless case. In the first place, I—I think it’s really weird to date or marry your own cousin,” her words took on a desperate shrill as she mashed a button on her sleeveless shirt. “I know people have done this for centuries, but it’s just not for me, okay?” Eddi didn’t add that Conner was not and never could be her type, even if he weren’t her cousin. Being blunt was one thing. Being cruel was another.
“But in the state of Texas—”
“Yes, I’m aware of the laws,” she snapped. “I’m a lawyer, remember?”
“I know,” he confirmed. “But your mother told me you were interested in meeting me.”
Eddi closed her eyes. Nothing Conner could say about her mother would surprise her. “My mother has a tendency to create scenarios that fit her plans,” she said.
“You know, Edwardia,” he began with a condescending tone.
Eddi plopped her cup on the desk and stood straight up. “Don’t call me Edwardia!” she demanded as a slosh of hot liquid burned her fingers. She shook her hand and reached for the tissue box.
“Okay, sorry,” he said, and Eddi imagined Conner rolling his eyes. “Whatever . . . I was just going to say that you need to be aware that if you pass up this opportunity, there are many other women who’d be thrilled to grab it.”
“I imagine there are.” As Eddi mopped up the spilled coffee, she thought of Cheri. “If there’s someone else who’s interested, by all means I urge you to encourage her. Frankly, you are wasting your time with me.”
“I know what’s going on,” he huffed. “Do you think I don’t have eyes?”
She tossed the tissue into the wastebasket. “What are you talking about?” Eddi shook her head.
“You’ve got a thing for that Dave person, don’t you?”
Eddi’s mouth fell open, and she stared at the corner Ficus tree as if it had spoken the words. Everyone from Mrs. DeBloom to Conner seemed bent upon projecting romantic motives upon her.
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
“You have never been further from the truth,” she blurted.
“I know what I saw!” Conner insisted. “And I think you must be losing your sense of judgment or something.”
“Why would you say that?”
“It’s beyond me why you would go after a half-baked cowboy type when you could have the vice president of an international oil company.”
Eddi couldn’t stop the laugh. “That half-baked cowboy owned the home you were in last night and is listed in—” She stopped herself before blurting the Forbes 500 secret. Eddi had promised Dave in the dugout she wouldn’t share that information with a soul.
“We’ll just say he could probably buy Boswick Oil,” she said.
“Humph. Could have fooled me,” Conner said resentfully. “He looked like he didn’t have a dime to his name.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Eddi said.
“So, that’s it, then?” Conner accused. “You’re dumping me for somebody who has more money!”
“I’m not after Dave, and I’m not dumping you,” Eddi insisted and picked up her coffee mug. “We never were in a relationship, Conner.” She sipped the hot liquid and wondered if she should have made it triple the strength.
“Maybe we weren’t in a relationship as far as you were concerned, but—”
“I had no intention of hurting you,” Eddi soothed and sensed that the man had finally gotten the message. Even though he wasn’t her type and had driven her nuts, she still hated hurting him. After all, Conner Boswick was as valuable a person as she.
“I hope you never thought I was leading you on,” Eddi continued.
“Not in the least.”
“Good. As a matter of fact, last night when Cheri Locaste—
“Cheri is a very nice lady,” Conner admitted.
“She thought you were really nice, too,” Eddi said. “I think the two of you might have a lot in common.”
“I think you might be right,” he said with a hint of bitterness.
“Good then.” Eddi turned toward her computer and floundered for something else to say.
“Well, I guess I’ll delete your numbers off my cell phone then,” Conner continued.
Eddi imagined his mouth settling into a pout.
“That’s fine,” she said and booted up her computer. As the machine began a series of hums and clicks, a faint tick floated over the phone line. Eddi looked at the phone screen and read, “Call Ended.”
With a long sigh, she dropped the phone into her purse and didn’t bother to turn it off. For the first time in weeks, Eddi no longer felt the need to look over her shoulder for Conner.
“What a relief,” she mumbled and turned on her computer screen. Within a few minutes, she was receiving her emails. Eddi chuckled as the computer finished screening her messages. “I guess I came to the office just to drink coffee and check email.” Oh well, she thought, it beats sitting around the house playing animal referee.
Her first message was from Jenny. Even though Jenny was far from an email enthusiast, the few messages Eddi received from her the last several weeks mentioned Calvin. This one was no different. “I know it’s crazy because we were barely getting to know each other, but I miss him, Eddi.”
“Of course you do,” Eddi wrote back, her brow furrowed. “He treated you like a queen.” And then heartlessly dropped you, she added to herself. “What woman wouldn’t miss that?” She added a few more chatty details and hit the Send button. As soon as the message was on its way, Eddi scanned the list of other messages in her box. Her gaze riveted on the last one, labeled Dave Davidson. Eddi clicked her mouse once on the message line and stared at it for thirty seconds. Her rigid index finger hovered over the mouse as Eddi debated whether to delete the message unread or actually open the thing.
I’m not interested in anything he has to say, she thought and detected Conner’s petty tone in her own words.
“Okay,” Eddi relented, “everyone has a right to a fair trial. Maybe all testimonies aren’t in yet.”
Twenty-Five
S
he double-clicked the message line, and his single spaced email filled the screen. As usual, some witnesses aren’t short on words, she thought. She hadn’t expected Dave to be the long-winded variety. Eddi rubbed her left palm against her shorts and told herself she still didn’t have to read the message. She began reading anyway.
Eddi,
I’m not going to bore you with unnecessary details, so I’ll just get to the point. First, I wanted to clear up some stuff about what you said about your sister and Calvin. The night we were all at Huntington House, I overheard your mother tell your father that Jenny was engaged. After that, she said something to the effect that she was thrilled Jenny was encouraging Calvin because Calvin had way more money than Jenny’s fiancé. Frankly, that alone would have made me inform Calvin that he should back off. But the fact is, despite what your mother said, I couldn’t agree that Jenny was actually encouraging Calvin. The whole time they were together, she acted as if Calvin were her brother and nothing more.
I care a lot for Calvin. He’s like a brother to me. A few years back he caught his fiancée with another man a week before the wedding. After seeing him get two-timed like that, I didn’t want to see the whole process repeated. Honestly, Eddi, after watching your youngest sister arrive with two men and watching the way she acted with them, I wasn’t convinced that Jenny wasn’t perhaps more inclined toward Linda’s values than your own. If I have been wrong in this matter, please let me know. Was I in error to assume that your mother would be an authority on your sister’s engagement?
“Yes, you were,” Eddi stiffly asserted. “Why didn’t you ask Jenny or even me? We would have gladly told you Jenny has never been engaged and that our mother jumps to conclusions!”
She glared at the screen. “And how dare you belittle Linda like this? No, she might not be the most mature person on the planet, but she’s my sister! The least you could have done is had the decency to—”
Twisting her lips, Eddi hit the Delete button with the message only partially read. She wanted no more of Dave Davidson’s opinions.
“Anybody who’d blindly take the word of somebody without verifying the evidence doesn’t deserve any more of my time,” she stormed.
Eddi strode back to the kitchenette, dumped the coffee down the drain, and flung open the door of the tiny refrigerator. She pulled out a Diet Dr Pepper and a jelly roll, leftover from last week. Eddi popped the top on the soda, unwrapped the jelly roll, and eyed the thing. Speckles of green verified that the treat was not safe to eat. She dropped it on the counter and guzzled the soda, welcoming the sting that banished the bitter coffee taste.
She eyed the half-dead ivy sitting on the window’s ledge. Eddi grabbed the clay pot, shoved it under the water spout, and turned on the hydrant. All the while, one question hammered at her: What’s in the rest of that email? When the water overflowed the pot, she blurted, “It doesn’t matter!”
Eddi deposited the plant back in its place, and scooped up the jelly roll and dumped it into the trash can under the sink. She drummed her blunt fingernails on the countertop and considered finishing the real estate closing. Still, the email plagued her. Her fingertips rested atop the cool counter.
Despite her best efforts to stop herself, Eddi hurried back to the computer. All the while, Dave’s logic chipped away at her initial exasperation. If I had never met Linda and saw her show up with a man on each arm, what would I think? Eddi didn’t bother to answer.
Neither did she deny that Jenny wasn’t the most demonstrative woman when it came to men. She was, in fact, the exact opposite of Linda. Cheri even commented on that the first night we practiced at Huntington House, Eddi admitted as she slipped back into the chair.
And what would I have done if I overheard Calvin’s mother mention that he was engaged? Eddi downed another swallow of the soda. “I’d probably have told Jenny she needed to back off,” she admitted with brutal honesty.
“Okay,” she whispered, “maybe he’s got a point or two.”
Eddi plopped the Dr Pepper on her desk. She made a series of clicks that accessed her deleted files and found Dave’s email. Eddi skimmed to the place where she’d left off and continued reading.
Concerning your comments about Rick Wallace, I think it’s time for me to tell you what I have resisted repeating to a living soul. I will admit that part of my reason for remaining silent has involved my own pride. But another issue involves family honor and what I know would have been the wishes of my grandfather. From my earliest memory he drilled me to protect our family name. Nonetheless, I believe for my own peace of mind as well as defending myself, the time has come for me to tell you the whole story.
Eddi snatched the soda and downed a fourth of the can. She rubbed her fingers along the desktop and eyed the email. Some unexplainable precognition warned her that she was about to encounter information that might alter her life, and maybe the life of her younger sister.
Already, she was wondering if she had been blinded by her own prejudices against Dave. Maybe I was too ready to believe anything Rick Wallace told me because I was looking for more reasons to dislike Dave. She guzzled the rest of the Dr Pepper and gripped the empty can. With a mixture of dread and anticipation, Eddi dared encounter the next lines.
I don’t know if Rick has told you, but he is my foster cousin. My uncle and aunt—my father’s brother and his wife—took Rick to raise when he was only 10. He never went back to his biological parents, but he was also never adopted by my aunt and uncle because his parents refused to release their rights. My whole family, including me (I was 11 at the time), welcomed Rick into the family with open arms. My father encouraged my grandfather to treat Rick the same as he treated me and my brother. We even had a family meeting, where the four of us—my mother, father, my younger brother, and I—agreed to make an extra effort to show God’s love to Rick.
Things rocked on that way for years. Ironically, my younger brother and Rick hit it off better than Rick and I. I say it was ironic because Rick was a full three years older than my brother and only one year younger than I. Rick and I were together a lot at school, although he kept to himself somewhat.
The end of my senior year of high school, I learned that Rick had been playing around with drugs and alcohol. Specifically, I received word from a friend that Rick was at a party where he got drunk and disappeared into a room with a girl who, we’ll just say, wasn’t known for her virtue. Frankly, I refused to believe the story and defended Rick. He had just made a profession of faith at church and was saying he thought he should go into the ministry. But the negative reports came more and more often until finally I couldn’t ignore them.
One night, the year after I graduated from high school, Rick came by the house for a while—we lived just down the road from each other—and he told me he was going to the library to study. I decided to follow him. What I witnessed was Rick buying marijuana and then picking up a woman who was much older and far from being a lady.
Strangely, he had just begun to send out applications to seminary and was saying God had called him to be a pastor. See, our grandfather had died and left money for Rick to attend seminary. I guess Rick figured it was his free ticket to college, I don’t know. Anyway, when I found out about Rick’s true character, I did the only thing I knew to do. I told my father, who did the only thing he knew to do. He made the seminaries Rick had applied to aware of the issues. Needless to say, Rick wasn’t able to get into the seminaries, and I believe the ministry at large was saved a scandal.
Eddi squeezed the soda can until it crackled. Her breathing was unsteady, and her heart pounded in her chest. She scrolled toward the end of the message and assessed the wealth of information waiting to be digested. Eddi didn’t question the veracity of Dave’s story. While the man might not be the most socially agreeable, her gut instinct insisted he was not a liar.
Which makes him a man of integrity, Eddi thought with a conviction she could not shake. And that makes Rick a liar. And it would mean I have misjudged peop
le. Eddi compressed the can until it collapsed. She looked at the smashed aluminum as if she’d never seen it. She dropped the can in the trash basket near her desk and reminded herself she had yet to absorb all of Dave’s email.
“No jury makes a decision until its heard the whole story,” she begrudgingly admitted.
Eddi hated the idea that she might have been wrong. Her whole career was based on her abilities to ascertain evidence and defend the innocent. She wrestled with how to acknowledge Dave’s honesty while maintaining her grudge against him.
After resting her elbow on the desk, she pressed her fingers between her brows. Engulfed in a fountain of confusion, Eddi continued reading the email. If the last section weren’t as convincing as the first, she would be able to maintain her negative opinions of Dave. If the last section were as credible as the first, then Dave would prove himself unworthy of many of last night’s insults. While a part of Eddi hoped the final section validated her, a rebel voice rooted for Dave. Consumed by conflict, she peered at the rest of the email.
Soon after this happened, my parents were killed in a car wreck when they were on a mission trip to Mexico. I was nineteen. My little brother, George, was fifteen. Rick was eighteen, and just out of high school. By this time, he realized he wasn’t going to seminary and why. He verbally attacked me at my parents’ funeral. It didn’t matter to Rick that I was facing my parents’ deaths and wondering how I was going to console my brother. Really, I think Rick was drunk. When we were alone in the church, Rick swore he would get even. Little did I know he would stoop to such low levels to do it.
My brother moved in with Aunt Maddy, and she gave me a place to come home to during college breaks—that was my freshman year. I didn’t finish that year, of course, as you well know. When I moved from Aunt Maddy’s and pursued a career in computers, George begged me not to leave. I was convinced I needed to try my wings, and I have regretted that decision in ways you will not understand until you get to the end of this email.
First Impressions: A Contemporary Retelling of Pride and Prejudice Page 22
