Finding Eden(12)

Carolyn's faces crumbled and she shook her head vigorously. "No, none of it should have happened. None. It was all my fault that Hector took you. All of it."

"Carolyn," Molly said, "we've all told you that's not true."

She continued to shake her head. "No, it is true. It is."

"Carolyn—" I said.

"Mom," she interrupted, "please call me mom. You always called me mom."

I felt the words flow through my insides, a cool summer breeze calming me, setting me at ease. "Okay, Mom." Emotion swept over me as the word fell from my lips. I was still loved. I belonged to someone again. Perhaps I wasn't going to be alone after all. I breathed out and smiled, trying to keep a hold of my emotions. "Mom, will you tell me what happened?" I asked. "How Hector—"

"Yes. I'll tell you all of it. But Molly, will you get a bottle of white from the wine fridge? I think this requires it. Eden, would you like something to drink? Water? Pop? Apple juice! You always liked apple juice." There was almost a pleading in her expression.

I nodded my head, keeping the confusion I felt inside off my face. Did grown-ups drink apple juice? "Uh, sure. That sounds . . . good."

"Oh, and how rude of me. I didn't even offer you dinner—"

"No," I said, "just the juice, please. I ate before I came here." Molly stood up and walked toward the French doors off the patio.

"Okay," Carolyn said. "Well, if you change your mind, of course, this is your house, too." She reached out and took my hand. "You'll move in tonight, of course."

"Oh . . . I, well. We'll talk about that—"

She shook her head vehemently. "No, Eden, please. I can't bear it. I won't be able to sleep another night if you're not under the same roof." She started to cry quietly again. "Now that I have you back, I'll die if you don't stay."

"Carolyn . . . Mom," I said, "I'm not going anywhere." I smiled at her. "I'm back, and I'll never go away again."

"Promise me," she said, her voice cracking.

"I promise." I smiled up at Molly as she handed me a glass of apple juice and set a glass of wine in front of Carolyn.

Carolyn took a big sip of her wine and leaned back. She looked away from me, out over the pool. "Your father helped build an investment firm from the ground up. It was very successful. We suddenly lived a lifestyle we had never dreamed of . . . cars, houses, vacations . . ." She waved her hand in the air. "We learned that all the material things meant nothing in the end. But of course, at the time, it seemed like everything we'd ever dreamed of." She was quiet for a minute, looking lost in thought. "Anyway," she looked back at me, "one of your father's co-workers was caught stealing money he was supposed to be investing. There have been higher profile cases like it on the news in recent years, and everyone has heard of those, but back then, I barely understood it."

"So my father wasn't the one stealing?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No, but he had looked the other way. He knew what was going on and his failure to act allowed it to continue. His failure to report what he knew resulted in hundreds of people losing their life savings. In the end, the whole company, they were all disgraced." She waved her hand through the air again. "The details don't matter so much, Eden, trust me, I knew them all and they still didn't help me make sense of it, other than to say that it came down to greed—levels of it, yes, but all greed in the end." A brief look of pain skittered across her features as if she was living back there for just a moment.

I looked down.

"Your father took it hard. Not just the loss of his job, all the stuff, but the disgrace. The shame ate at him like a cancer. And that's when Hector came along."

My eyes flew to hers.

"He first came to us as a man who had lost everything and understood where we were. At first we were skeptical, naturally, but . . . the more he talked . . . told Ben, your father, that it wasn't his fault, that the greed of society had seeped into his soul . . . well, it sounds ridiculous now. But at the time, and with how far we'd fallen, I guess we were searching for something, anything—"

"I understand, Mom. I do."

She looked back at me sadly. "Of course you do. I'm sorry for that."

I shook my head. "Please go on," I said.

She sighed. "Well, your father, he became almost obsessed with Hector, although, at the time, we knew him as Damon Abas. Your father was intrigued with this society that Damon . . . Hector had started, this place where there was supposedly no greed or sin, no pain or competition. This community had started several years earlier, but Hector had spent that time constructing the buildings and finding the first people who would live and work there. Hector and your father talked non-stop about how it would all operate . . . the things people would need down the line, what was working, what wasn't." She shook her head again. "Even with the talk of gods and visions and other things that were difficult to believe in . . . it healed something in your father for a time, gave him something to cling to, a purpose, an escape, and so for that I was so very grateful. I ignored my suspicions about Hector . . . I did just what your father had done. I looked the other way because I was benefitting from it." Tears welled in her eyes again. "I guess if you choose to trust a snake, you deserve his venom."