Ever Since Eve (The Keeping Secrets Series, Book 1)

by Pamela Browning

  It was what he would have to make Eve understand. That the road he had chosen when Kelly was alive was not the one he would choose now. That it wasn't too late to backtrack and start over again, taking another route.

  Was Eve capable of comprehending?

  He pictured her brown eyes, her intelligent face. Yes, she was capable. He was sure that eventually he could make her see the folly of continuing this pregnancy.

  Who would have thought that Eve could be so stubborn?

  * * *

  "Al, don't be pigheaded !"

  Eve's patience with her father was wearing thin. She didn't want him to get upset; if he did, he'd only have another coughing spell, which would sap his fragile energy. And it was obvious to her that Al was going to have to muster all the energy he could. The Wray Mills Historic Project had ordered them to vacate their house by the end of the week.

  By the end of the week? Impossible.

  Al's phone call with the news that he was about to be evicted had brought Eve back to Wrayville immediately. Anyway, she'd needed to get out of the Myers Park house. She hadn't wanted to talk to Derek because she knew he'd only pressure her.

  "I'm glad you're staying," Al said, his features brightening with his first smile since Eve's arrival that morning. "It'll be like having you living at home again."

  But of course it wasn't. Could you ever go back home? Eve wondered as she walked down the narrow Cotton Mill Hill street after dinner, waving to the neighbors and stopping now and then to chat with those she knew well. She inquired about their relatives who had moved away and expressed sympathies to those who were still looking for work in a town where there wasn't much of it.

  Yes, she said repeatedly, she enjoyed her new job. Yes, she told an interested Nell Baker, she liked living in Charlotte. People sympathized, Eve knew. Most of them were lucky enough to own their homes, and they had sympathy for Al. He hadn't been able to buy the house when the mill offered it to him because he'd lost his wife's income when she died. Eve had been eleven years old then. Wray Mills had retained ownership of the house all these years and donated it along with the other property to the historic project after the mill closed.

  At the bottom of the hill, she recognized the lanky jean-clad figure of Doug Ender. He hailed her with enthusiasm, smiling as she approached. Doug had grown up here, and his family had been mill people, but they were all gone now. Doug had worked his way through law school at the University of North Carolina and returned to Wrayville to start a modest practice.

  "Eve," Doug said, his face lighting with pleasure. He looked genuinely happy to see her, and she was glad to see him. "I heard you found a job." He fell into step beside her.

  Eve nodded. She was unsure whether to discuss her "job" with Doug; she worried about his reaction. She and Doug were close—close enough, she'd thought on various occasions, for their relationship to deepen into something more. But it never had, mostly because Eve had always held back, waiting for that special chemistry. Now that she was pregnant—well, if chemistry was going to happen between them, it would have to wait.

  She asked about his mother and his sister, who had moved to Atlanta. He told her about his volunteer work. In his spare time, he visited community old-timers and recorded their reminiscences of life in a mill town.

  "Pretty soon they'll all be gone. Even though working in the mill was a hard way of life, it supported lots of folks and our local economy. An oral history is the way to honor those people." He went on to tell her that he'd approached his relatives first, then moved on to tracking down others who had stories to tell.

  "What happens to the recordings?"

  "They'll be archived by the historic project. In years to come, scholars will access them to learn about the textile industry and the way the people lived. Do you think your dad would contribute?"

  "I bet he would. He loves talking about old times."

  "I'll ask him about it." He paused. "I'm sorry he's going to have to move." Doug's free legal advice had postponed the inevitable for years.

  "I appreciate your help in convincing the historic project to let him stay this long. I guess we're out of runway now. We expected it, but it couldn't have come at a worse time."

  "Yeah, I wish I could do something more." He turned toward her. "Say, Eve, let's have dinner together tonight."

  It was entirely natural that Doug should invite her, and a few weeks ago she would have accepted. Now, with her mind in turmoil about Derek's demand that she have an abortion and with her worry about where Al would live, how could she say yes?

  "Oh, Doug," she said, "I'm only here for a few days, and I should spend my time with Al. He hasn't been feeling well, and we need to figure out where he can go now that he can't stay in the house." Her father could no longer drive and couldn't conduct a search for a new place alone.

  "I understand," Doug said evenly, and Eve sensed that he really did. He was a nice-looking man, sandy-haired with hazel eyes that crinkled at the edges when he laughed; she'd always thought Doug was attractive.

  They reached the house, and he walked her up the front path.

  "I'd like to see you some other time," he said, looking down at her and smiling that comfortable smile of his. "Maybe we could go to a movie. Or we could have dinner together in Charlotte. I have to go into the city sometimes."

  "Okay," she said. "Call me when you're ready."

  She told Doug goodbye and hurried inside, feeling a little sad. Did her feelings mean that she cared more about Doug Ender—and in a deeper and more meaningful way—than she'd ever admitted to herself?

  After dinner, Eve said to her father, "I'll clean up the kitchen while you rest." Al gratefully went to sit on the rusty green metal glider on the front porch where he watched the fireflies and chatted idly with a few old cronies from the neighborhood.

  Eve couldn't help feeling nostalgic as she worked in the familiar kitchen. How many of these blue-willow-patterned dishes had she washed in this sink as she was growing up in this house? After her mother's death, she'd assumed the responsibility of running the house, of arranging blue willow dishes in shining rows in the cabinets, taking pride in managing household money, and seeing that mops and buckets and vacuum cleaner were lined up neatly in the broom closet.

  The financial responsibility hadn't hit her until Al could no longer work. He received a small pension from the mill but had managed to run up a lot of medical debt. Eve had been proud of her ability to support the two of them.

  But that was in the past. Right now she had to figure out what to do about the future.

  * * *

  "Eve! Eve?" Derek stomped through the lower hall, calling up the stairs. Where was she, anyway? He'd expected her to be right there, the way she always was, standing silently in the background, a gentle presence watching him greet Kelly with a kiss.

  "She's gone home for a few days." Aunt May came and peered down at him, her round, wrinkled face hanging over the upstairs banister. "Is everything all right?" she ventured.

  "Yes. I mean, no, how can it be all right?" he shot back impatiently. What a question to ask someone whose wife had just been killed! The old girl didn't have much sense, never had. But she was Kelly's aunt, and he'd always been polite. It was going to be difficult without Kelly to act as a buffer between them. Well, perhaps Aunt May hadn't heard his remark.

  It was too much to hope for. "Oh. Well. I see." Aunt May pulled her head back in from the stairwell. Now he knew he had hurt her feelings. He could hear her retreating down the hall toward her room. She was probably in tears. Oh, damn, was anything ever going to be all right again?

  He ran upstairs and burst into their bedroom, the pale blue haven he'd shared with Kelly. He had to find Eve, and he'd forgotten where Eve said she lived before she moved in with them. Kelly's cell phone with all its contact information had disappeared at the time of the accident, but Kelly kept a tan leather address book somewhere. He sat down at Kelly's small secretary and started pulling out drawers and diggi
ng in cubbyholes. Where the devil was it?

  He dragged out a bunch of papers until they all sat in a heap in front of him. Bills for Kelly's charge accounts, a bunch of personal correspondence, but no address book. The book would have Eve's address in it, neatly inscribed in Kelly's round handwriting; he knew it would. But he couldn't find it. He tried her laptop next. Nothing there, either.

  Kelly's raw silk jacket, the one she had worn when they went out to dinner last Saturday night, hung over the back of the chair where he sat. He fingered the silk fabric for a few moments, lost in memory. A hint of Kelly's favorite fragrance wafted from it, bringing her back to him in a strangely haunting way.

  "When does the hurting stop?" he asked himself brokenly, and then he buried his face in the raw silk, wishing he had Kelly, wishing he could find Eve, wishing without hope that everything could be the way it was before the accident.

  * * *

  "And so they gave me an extra week to stay here while I look for another place to live!" Al declared triumphantly. He'd gone to see someone at the historic project office while Eve was buying groceries.

  Eve sighed. "The extra time might come in handy." Al thought she was living temporarily with a girl friend while searching for an apartment for herself in the city.

  "Evie, I never wanted to be a burden to you," Al said quietly, his expression clouding over. Eve knew what a blow to Al's pride it was to have the woman of the house taking care of him.

  "Never think that," Eve told him firmly and with a smile that she hoped didn't look forced. She patted him awkwardly on the shoulder, like a parent comforting a child. When had he become the child and she the parent?

  Eve knew she could remain at the Myers Park house with Derek and Aunt May for the next week. She needed that time to bargain with Derek and talk him out of this idea about her getting an abortion. Surely when the first pangs of grief had faded, he'd realize what he was doing and agree that the baby should be born and that he should be its father. He was the father, after all; nothing could change that.

  But it was going to be difficult. And she couldn't stay at the Myers Park house with Derek after she'd convinced him that the baby must be born; it would be better for everyone if she moved out.

  There was one problem, though. Money. She had several hundred dollars in her savings account, a cushion against calamity, and if these didn't qualify for hard times, she didn't know what did. Her small hoard probably wasn't enough to rent a place, and she knew that Al didn't have as much saved as she did. If she could get a job—but she'd already tried that, and she hadn't been pregnant at the time.

  Actually, there was more than one problem. If she and Al lived together, she'd have to tell him even sooner about her pregnancy. It would be difficult to hide so telltale a sign as morning sickness from her father.

  "Don't worry, Al," she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. Even as she said it, anxiety gnawed at her stomach. She knew, in that moment, that in trying to alleviate their problem, she had only added to it. Things had been bad before; their future had been bleak. But now, now! They were being evicted, and she was pregnant besides. She still didn't know how she was going to tell Al.

  And yet, given the same chance all over again, Eve knew she would do exactly what she had done—contract to bear a child for Kelly and Derek Lang.

  That was what, despite everything, she still intended to do.

  Chapter 4

  Eve, dragging her feet but determined to tackle Derek once more, went back to the Myers Park house on Monday.

  Louise admitted her with a hug. "About time you came back. We've missed you. This is a gloomy house without you and Kelly."

  "I'm glad to see you, Louise."

  "Stay for lunch? We could use the company. We're having turkey-avocado wraps."

  "I don't know," Eve said, hedging. She hurried upstairs to see Aunt May.

  "Oh, Eve, it's so good to see you," said a mournful-eyed Aunt May when Eve tentatively tapped on her bedroom door and announced that she had returned. Aunt May pursed her lips. "Derek's been absolute hell to live with."

  Eve smiled a sad smile. "I can imagine" was all she said.

  "Well," Aunt May said, rallying. Today she wore her hearing aid; that was a relief. "I'm glad you're here, Eve. I want to bake cookies. Will you help?"

  Eve was surprised, then pleased. Baking cookies with Aunt May would get her mind off her own problems, and it would give her something to do until Derek came home and they embarked on their inevitable discussion. She knew that Derek would not postpone it; he would want to get it over with.

  "I'll be glad to help," she told Aunt May warmly.

  After lunch, the two of them chased Louise out of the kitchen, and Louise gladly relinquished the space.

  "What kind of cookies are we making?" Eve asked as she helped assemble the ingredients.

  "Chocolate chip," Aunt May said. "They're Derek's favorite. Now Kelly, she always prefers—" And then Aunt May stopped, her round pink face dissolving into distress.

  "That's all right, Aunt May," Eve said, choking up herself. "It's hard to realize that she's really gone, isn't it?"

  Aunt May nodded before turning her back and busily sifting the flour. Eve allowed her the privacy of silence for a while.

  "Here, Eve, you measure the chocolate chips," Aunt May finally said, and Eve did.

  "Does it bother you to talk about Kelly?" she asked Aunt May.

  "Some," Aunt May said. Her faded blue eyes rested on Eve's face, and there was sorrow in their depths. "You know, Kelly was always so good. She let me mess around in the kitchen. She made sure Louise wouldn't mind my cooking before she hired her. Kelly turned down three perfectly fine housekeepers because they didn't want to allow an old lady in the kitchen. That shows how much Kelly cared about me, don't you think?"

  Eve nodded, unable to speak.

  Aunt May relieved Eve of the chocolate chips and dumped them into the stiff dough. She stirred rapidly, then stopped. "Kelly kept me from being a lonely, dried-up old woman. Now I don't know what will happen to me." After a moment she smiled shyly at Eve. "But with you here, I won't be lonely, will I?" she continued with forced briskness. "Now hand me that spatula, will you, please?"

  Eve put the spatula in Aunt May's wrinkled hand, sorrow welling up inside her. This wasn't the proper time to defeat Aunt May's expectations, yet she doubted that she would be living at the Myers Park house much longer.

  In midafternoon, Derek called to tell Aunt May brusquely that he wouldn't be home for dinner and to eat without him, only Aunt May thought he said he had his feet about him and hung up, vaguely puzzled, the thought never occurring to her that Derek hadn't given her a chance to tell him that Eve had returned.

  That was why Derek was surprised to stumble upon Eve unawares at nine-thirty that night when he arrived after several hours of misspent time at the country-club bar. Eve was sitting in the comfortable wing chair in his study, knitting what appeared to be a yellow bootee. The sight of her, looking so domestic and content in the pool of light from the desk lamp, irritated him.

  "Knitting little garments, I see," he said with annoyance.

  Eve startled at the sound of his voice. She hadn't heard him come in. The color drained from her face. This wasn't the Derek she knew; he was in his shirt-sleeves and had tossed his suit jacket carelessly on his desk, and his eyes were bloodshot.

  "They're for the baby," she said firmly, knowing that this would be a perfect lead-in for the conversation that was to follow. She didn't see any sense in postponing it no matter what kind of mood Derek was in. It was a problem that needed to be confronted head-on, full-out and immediately.

  "There isn't going to be any baby," Derek said just as firmly.

  "Derek—" Eve began. She drew a deep breath and rested her knitting in her lap. "Now that you've had a few days to think it over, you must see that you can't destroy Kelly's and your child. It's part of both of you, and there's no reason why you can't approach fatherhood
with the same eagerness you had when Kelly was alive. You wanted this baby. You know you did."

  Derek set his lips in a grim line. "I wanted it then because of Kelly. I don't want it now."

  Eve spoke slowly, and her voice flowed, mellifluous and unafraid, into what had been a menacing silence.

  "You're denying it right now, but I think you want this baby."

  She was wise and so sure. He resented her intrusion into what should be his decision alone. "It wouldn't be fair to bring a baby into this world without two parents," he said gruffly.

  Too late, she realized from his slurred speech that he'd been drinking, but she didn't see anything to do but go on with it. "Derek, it's all you have left of Kelly," she reminded him gently. "This baby, this child, that she wanted so much. You know how she longed for a baby; she spoke of her yearning to have a child so often. She was overjoyed about the baby. I'm sure that after you think it over, you'll change your mind."

  A lump rose in Derek's throat, choking off words. Why did Eve insist on making this difficult? Why didn't she just have the abortion and be done with it? It was cruel of her, cruel and heartless, to remind him of his beloved wife's longing for a child. Damn, damn, damn! Why didn't she just go away, this woman who was gazing at him so implacably with eyes as gentle as a gazelle's, the pupils so large that they gave her face a kind of openness that Kelly had remarked about, that Kelly had liked.

  "Oh, God," he said, clenching his hands into fists and throwing a look of pure anguish in her direction. He wished he'd had more to drink. To Eve's despair, he threw open the French doors to the terrace and flung himself out into the night.

  Eve dropped her knitting and ran after him. She didn't trust him now, didn't trust the misery he was feeling, didn't know what the misery would make him do. If she missed Kelly, Derek missed her a hundred times over and in many more ways.