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

by Pamela Browning

  "Yes, but not today. It's my favorite month of the year. And it's time for Oktoberfest. You and Aunt May are going with me. Aren't you, Aunt May?"

  "What's that?" Aunt May said, wandering in from the kitchen.

  "Oktoberfest," Derek replied loudly. "I've invited you and Eve to go with me."

  Aunt May made a face. "That big German festival in the park? Where they have a band blaring away so that I have to turn off my hearing aid and where everyone drinks beer? Derek, you should know by now that beer isn't my cup of tea." She fluttered her fingers in distaste and tottered through the living room toward the sun room.

  Eve wrinkled her brow, trying not to laugh at Aunt May's mixed metaphor.

  "Eve? How about you? Oktoberfest is really not as bad as Aunt May says. Instead of walking around the block again, why not come with me and do your walking in the park? You must be ready for a change of scene." His smile was engaging.

  "They really should go," Aunt May quavered loudly from the sun room. "Derek so seldom gets away from work. Eve ought to go with him." Louise was humming in the kitchen, so Eve knew Aunt May was talking to herself. It was hard to get used to hearing herself be talked about to no one. This habit of Aunt May's annoyed her this morning more than usual. And not being able to get herself up from the bottom step annoyed her even more.

  "If I can't get up from this step, how am I going to manage Oktoberfest?" Eve asked irritably. "Derek, could you lend me a hand?"

  Derek hadn't noticed her difficulty. "Why didn't you say something?" he demanded, hauling her to her feet.

  "It's embarrassing not to be able to do things for myself," she answered, scowling.

  He'd never seen her disgruntled. For a moment, this new demeanor startled him. Then he grinned. Of course. All pregnant women got this way. Isn't that what popular literature said? He was lucky she hadn't asked him to go out in the middle of the night to buy pickles and ice cream. But that was silly. Eve would never do that, although it was something pregnant wives asked of their husbands. But their situation was not that of husband and wife.

  He cleared his throat. "If you get stuck somewhere at Oktoberfest, I'll help you up. Promise," he said.

  And so, cajoled by Aunt May, urged by Derek, Eve went upstairs and dressed in a pair of rust-colored maternity slacks and an amber-colored mohair sweater with a big cowl neck that almost covered the lobes of her ears. It was the shoes that were a problem. Her feet had swollen so that none of hers fit. She settled on a pair of black corduroy bedroom slippers that looked exactly like bedroom slippers and would fool no one. She, who always wanted colors to match or at least complement each other, who winced when people wore sandals with tailored suits or white shoes with a black dress, didn't really care about this today.

  When she was ready, she found Derek waiting outside in the driveway warming up the Corvette's engine.

  "You look marvelous," Derek said approvingly.

  She folded herself downward into the low-slung sports car and tucked her feet in after her.

  "It's probably out of line for me to mention this," he said, "but haven't you forgotten to put on your shoes?"

  "Unfortunately, these are my shoes," she said. "They're all that fits anymore." She regarded her ill-clad feet as though they belonged to someone else.

  "Your feet are that swollen?" Derek looked aghast.

  "I'm afraid so. These are comfortable."

  "But Eve, you have to have shoes," he said, trying to reason with her.

  "I do," she insisted. "These." She grinned at him just to show him that she didn't think her swollen feet were a serious matter.

  Derek set his mouth in a grim line as he rammed the car into gear and backed out of the driveway.

  Minutes later they rolled to a stop in front of a porticoed shoe store in which Eve had never dared to browse because the prices were so high.

  "Derek?" she ventured as he slammed his car door and came around to her side, yanking the door open.

  "Come on," he said, and then his eyes softened as he looked down at her. His voice was gentle when he spoke again. "We're going to buy you some shoes."

  "I don't need—"

  "Yes, you do. Want help getting up?"

  A gentle tug, and Eve found herself rising out of the seat. She was hastened into the store and fitted with butter-soft leather shoes, pair after pair, by a saleswoman with a well-modulated voice.

  "I don't need all these," Eve stage-whispered frantically when the saleswoman disappeared to look for another size. Derek still held her hand, she realized belatedly.

  "I'll decide that," he said firmly.

  The saleswoman returned.

  "She'd like to try another pair like those suede ones. No, not those, the others. In brown. Or rust, if you have it."

  "Certainly," the saleswoman said, sliding a shoe on Eve's foot. She disappeared again.

  Eve stood up and trod gingerly across the well-padded carpet to the mirror. They were beautifully made shoes of Italian workmanship with hand stitching. She could never afford them in a million years.

  "I can't buy these."

  "I'm buying them for you," he said.

  Before she could object further, he handed over a credit card and signed a sales ticket while Eve stood speechless.

  "You shouldn't have done that," she said when they were back in the car and speeding through streets where defrocked trees raised spindly branches to a piercingly blue windswept sky. "My slippers were all right."

  "Not if we're going to dance the polka at Oktoberfest," he said, slanting a look out of the corners of his eyes.

  "Polka! Dance the polka? Derek Lang, you must be joking."

  "It's a tradition," he said as though that explained everything. He slid the Corvette neatly into a parking space.

  "Wow, that's a nice car, mister," said an admiring kid whose eyes were round as saucers in his coffee-colored face.

  "Thanks," Derek said, hurrying around to Eve's side. He handed Eve carefully out of the car before he knelt to address the child.

  "Do you live around here?" Derek asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

  The boy nodded shyly, pointing at a neat red-brick house across the street.

  "Do you think you could keep an eye on my car for an hour or two?"

  "Sure!" the boy exclaimed, looking overwhelmed.

  "Then here's a couple of dollars."

  "Wow!" The boy's whole face lit up. "I'll watch it real good."

  "You do that, sport." Derek grinned as they walked away.

  "Why did you do that?" Eve asked curiously as they wound their way through the crowd. "Your car doesn't need watching. Not in this safe neighborhood."

  "He was cute," Derek said, dismissing the subject.

  You were so good with that little boy, she wanted to say. It was hard to understand why, when he seemed to have a natural affinity for kids, Derek wouldn't want his own child.

  The brass band blared out German tunes bravely rather than skillfully. The colorful milling throng surged around the park bandstand, barrels of German beer flowed freely, and young men in lederhosen abounded.

  "You didn't wear your short pants," Eve murmured, looking down at Derek's legs.

  "Short pants? You just got me out of a suit, Eve. Don't expect short pants until next year." He laughed down at her, looking genuinely happy.

  Without asking if she wanted it, he bought Eve a plate of apple strudel.

  "I shouldn't eat this." She sighed before digging into it, and her gusto in eating pleased him.

  For himself, Derek bought a bowl of sauerkraut from a vendor, trying to eat it neatly but unable to stop the strings of cabbage from dripping down his chin, and Eve laughed so hard at the sight that she had to clutch her abdomen.

  "You're all right, aren't you?" he asked anxiously, and she nodded, wiping tears from her eyes. The ever-meticulous, ever-proper Derek Lang, allowing sauerkraut to drip down his chin!

  A plump lady yodeled. A dance club performed a German folk dance wit
h accompanying hollering and knee slapping. Afterward couples drifted onto the platform and began to dance. This festival, so ethnic, reminded her of Greek festivals attended in long-ago years with her mother and father and assorted aunts, uncles and cousins.

  "Are you watching them dance? Getting pointers?" Derek asked, taking in the sparkle of her eyes, the tapping of her foot in time to the music. The cool, crisp air had brought a bloom to her cheeks. Was she a good dancer? He would find out.

  "Don't expect me to make a fool of myself," she told him tartly.

  "How about a waltz?" he said when the band began a new piece, a swirling Viennese number. "Come on, let's try it. We might as well test-drive those new shoes of yours."

  She allowed him to propel her toward the dance floor. It was with misgivings that she let him surround what was left of her waist with his arm and hold her hand high with his other hand, moving her to meet the music surely and smoothly.

  And it was amazing how her new bulk flowed along with him, how easily he guided her around the floor, gently, soothingly, making her feel dainty and feminine and, well, like a young girl again.

  "You dance nicely," he said.

  "I have a good partner," she replied easily. He held her far away, not close, which was the correct position for the proper execution of the waltz. As far as her stomach protruded, it did not touch him. She would have been embarrassed if it had.

  "Let me know if you get tired. We can sit down any time you like."

  She smiled at him, the tree branches above them reflecting in the starry irises of her eyes as they whirled around the dance floor. "I wish Aunt May had come," she said.

  "I'm glad she didn't" was his reply, and it was uttered with an intensity that surprised her. But there was no time to answer, because the band jumped without pause into an ear-splitting, foot-stamping polka. And before she knew it, she was dancing the polka, too, slightly out of breath, her face flushed, hanging on to Derek for dear life and loving every minute of it.

  "Are you okay?" he shouted at one point, and she was; she was light on her feet, buoyant in his arms, laughing back at him with an energy imparted by crisp air, good food and energetic music. When the dance was over, Eve, caught up in the spirit of the moment, dropped Derek a ridiculous little curtsy.

  Someone shouted, and a little girl standing at the edge of the dance floor let go of her helium balloon and began to wail over her loss. Derek, seeing what had happened, stopped the balloon vendor and bought the child a shiny new silver one. And Eve thought, He's sensitive to children. He likes them. And she wondered why he didn't want his own child, the child who even now floated free in her womb, dancing to the music that was her heart.

  They ate big, soft, hot pretzels with mustard on them, and Derek drank a beer. Eve listened happily to the oom-pah-pah music, and she, who had been burdened with problem after problem for longer than she cared to remember, realized that she had never had such a good time in her life.

  When the sun dropped behind the lacy branches of the trees and the air cooled accordingly, Derek said, "Let's go," and he held her hand as he led her through the crowd to the car. She knew he held her hand so that he could blaze a trail through the crush of people for her, but she liked the connectedness of it, and when he let go of, she felt a stab of disappointment.

  The little boy they had seen earlier was perched on a tree stump, steadfastly watching the Corvette.

  "Hi, sport," Derek said. The boy regarded Derek as though he were nothing less than a god.

  "Do you know what I want you to do?" Derek asked him.

  "Uh-uh."

  "Go over there—" he pointed to a balloon seller on the edge of the crowd "—and tell that man to give you the biggest, reddest balloon he's got." He slipped a ten-dollar bill into the boy's pocket.

  The boy clutched his pocket and broke into a wide grin. "Gee, thanks, mister. Gee, thanks." He scampered away across the dun-colored grass.

  The Corvette hummed toward Myers Park, and Derek turned on the radio. "It's not oom-pah-pah music," he apologized, "but it's not bad."

  She leaned her head back against the headrest. "Thanks, Derek. I had a wonderful time."

  "It's not over, you know. I'm treating you to dinner."

  She didn't speak for so long that he knew something was wrong.

  "I can't, Derek. I have other plans."

  It hadn't occurred to him that Eve might have something else to do. She was such a homebody; she never went out.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't think you'd be busy."

  "An old friend asked me to dinner, and I said I'd go."

  "That's all right. We can make it another time." But he knew it wasn't all right. Another time wouldn't be this time with their euphoria coasting them along on a natural high for the rest of the evening.

  "I wish we could," she said lamely.

  "It's all right," he repeated a little too sharply. If he couldn't be with Eve, he'd have to stay home alone with Aunt May. The prospect did nothing to cheer him.

  Eve remained silent, staring out the window. The joy in being together had evaporated, and to Derek, the atmosphere seemed depressingly flat. Well, he could call up someone and go out anyway. The Kleinsts—but they'd only try to push Debby Kleinst's sister off on him. Jay Stanley—although Jay would have a date, no doubt, on a Saturday night.

  They barely spoke, and at the house Eve hurried directly upstairs—to dress for her evening out, he supposed. Derek mixed himself a drink and sat in the darkening living room, staring gloomily at Kelly's picture.

  In due time the doorbell rang, and Louise answered it. The male voice that greeted her and sounded pleased when Eve came down the stairs was no surprise. Derek listened with too much interest for evidence of a kiss or a hug. Louise said, "Have a good time, you two," and after the door closed, Eve's clear laughter floated back on the wind.

  Derek poured a healthy splash of bourbon. Then he slumped in his chair and lifted it to his lips.

  "She's a good dancer," he told the picture of Kelly, and then he realized he was becoming Aunt May—talking to thin air. He hoped Louise hadn't heard him. She'd think he was loony for sure.

  Why should he find it so depressing that Eve had gone out to dinner with another man?

  And he wondered if she'd worn the shoes he'd bought her.

  As they waited for their dinner to be served at Hearthside, a popular steak house, Doug said, "I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse."

  "Last time I heard that, I ended up pregnant," she said, smiling ruefully. She helped herself to a dinner roll from the basket.

  Doug grinned. "This is a whole lot easier. I figured that you might want to help with the oral history project. You're good with people, and you might want something worthwhile to do with your time. You'd interview folks around Wrayville and could visit your father at the same time."

  "I thought you enjoyed recording oral histories."

  "It started out as a great hobby, but now it takes more time than I can handle. Plus I'm knee deep in mill-related stuff. A retail outfit wants to buy the mill building from the historic project and turn it into an outlet mall, and I'm doing the legal on our end."

  "That's a new one! They were going to tear down the mill."

  "That was the historic project's plan because they have no money to renovate. The company that wants to buy it has the funds."

  "What's the company?"

  "They haven't said. It's hush-hush so far."

  "What a great idea," Eve said slowly. She knew that similar repurposing of old manufacturing facilities had provided local employment opportunities for other mill towns. One mill's building had been taken over by a college and remodeled for dorm space. Another smaller mill was now a center for craftspeople where they could work and sell their wares. Wrayville had always seemed like too small a town for such an option, but it was close to the Interstate highway and apparently some visionary had finally explored the possibilities.

  "Anyway, Eve, how about
it? Your dad could accompany you when you're in the field. He'd like that."

  She put the mill out of her mind for the moment. "It would give us something to do together," she admitted, liking the idea of spending quality time with Al. She didn't want him to feel neglected.

  "How much time can you volunteer?"

  "Would one day a week help?"

  "Absolutely. Then you'll do it?"

  "It'll be fun. I'd like to start soon." She smiled her thanks.

  "Ada-Lucy McGill will be your first interview. She worked at Wray Mills for forty-two years and has lots of stories to tell. She knows Al, too. She's a spry old gal, and you'll be well-entertained."

  Eve was becoming even more enthused. What better way to stay connected to her roots? She'd lived in Wrayville all her life and already missed Nell and Doug more than she could have imagined.

  "I could come every Monday," she said.

  "Deal, lady!" Doug high-fived her over the table. For a moment she felt a twinge of sadness over what might have been between her and Doug if things had been different. Her pregnancy—and its effect on her life—had changed the way she responded to Doug. Now she couldn't imagine his being anything more to her than he was at this moment—a very close and dear friend.

  "Do you mind if I ask you something, Eve?"

  "Of course not."

  "Are you happy at the Langs'? Do they treat you well?"

  "Derek is—pleasant," she said lamely, wondering how else she would describe him. He had been more than that today, for instance. She plunged on, mindful of the way Doug's eyes assessed her. "Aunt May is a dear."

  "There's no more talk about an abortion?"

  "No," she said and drew a breath to say more, but then she stopped.

  "What is it, Eve?" Doug knew her too well; he sensed that there was more to this story than he'd been told.

  "Derek still hasn't said he'll keep the baby." Her eyes, sad and anxious, met his over the expanse of blue tablecloth.

  "So what happens when it's born?"

  "I don't know." Eve bit her bottom lip.

  "If he doesn't want the baby, do you still intend to raise it yourself?"

  "Yes," she whispered. She let her shoulders rise, then fall helplessly. "I don't know what else I could do."