Finding Eden(87)

She nodded. "Okay." She tilted her head, obviously thinking. "Do you think . . . well, Hector tried to recruit my father as the first council member and he was basically local. You were among the first people who lived in Acadia. Do you think maybe you were local, too? I mean, obviously he came back and forth between here and Acadia, and then he brought me here."

I shrugged. "Yeah, but he gathered the other people who lived at Acadia from all over. I could be from anywhere. I'll probably never know." A feeling of loss squeezed my chest, even though I had no idea who I was grieving for, if anyone at all. Perhaps it was mostly because I knew no one was grieving for me.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN




Calder



We drove in silence for a while, headed toward New Albany, Indiana. The radio played softly as we watched the beautiful fall scenery go by. I marveled at the vibrant colors of the trees. This was the first year since I'd lived in the Midwest that I had the heart to appreciate the beauty of nature, and all the ways this part of the country was so different than the desert landscape I'd known all my life. There was beauty there, too, but it was such a different kind. Looking through the windshield now at the reds, yellows, and golds of the trees passing by, something about it felt intensely familiar. My mind had been in a completely relaxed state when the feeling came to me and I furrowed my brow, not understanding what it meant exactly, if anything. Maybe I was just finally at the point where the Midwest felt like home. And I was sure that was directly related to the woman sitting next to me. I grabbed her hand and smiled as I brought it to my lips.

"What names do you like?" I asked.

Eden looked over at me and worried her brow.

"For the baby," I prompted.

She still didn't answer for a minute and then, "I think we should wait until we know everything is okay before we plan anything." She looked over at me.

I squeezed her hand. "Everything's gonna be okay," I said.

She nodded. "Hopefully. I just—"

"You don't want to get attached yet," I said quietly. I understood because deep inside, I felt the same way, even despite the fact that I had only found out about Eden's first pregnancy after it was already gone. My heart squeezed at the memory of that moment in Hector's jail. A flash of anger lanced down my spine, making me sit up a little straighter in my seat.

"I'm already attached," Eden said. "I just think maybe I shouldn't get any more attached."

"I understand," I said, kissing her hand again.

She smiled softly. "I know you do."

When we pulled in to the town of New Albany, we plugged the address of the university into the GPS on my phone and then headed in that direction. We cruised slowly through the residential neighborhoods close to the college. We didn't have what had been Thomas Greer's address and so we didn't exactly have a location, so we just drove aimlessly. After about an hour, Eden huffed out a breath and said, "Nothing even looks vaguely familiar about this town. And all these houses are starting to look the same to me. I mean," she lifted her arms and let them drop, "even if he did bring me here, to this place, even if we drove right past the house I lived in, the yard might be completely different now. It's been fourteen years." She took a deep breath. "Oh well, at least we tried. I'm sure the police will be able to get his address and they can show me a picture. Maybe I'll recognize it. Maybe it doesn't even matter." She smiled over at me, but it seemed forced.

"Why don't we stop by the university?" I suggested. "It's lunch time. We could get some college cafeteria food and pretend like we're just two kids from suburbia who spotted each other across the bleachers at a football game and fell in love at first sight." I grinned over at her and she laughed, leaning over and kissing my cheek.

"Okay. I like that plan."

As I thought about it, I realized that it would have been true. No matter where Eden and I had been placed together in this world, we would have fallen in love. Whether we'd been two college freshman, two farm hands, two gypsies—two anything—the falling in love part of our story would have been the same. She would have pulled my heart from across a gymnasium, or a cornfield, or a traveling caravan.

We parked in the visitors lot and held hands as we strolled through the campus. It was a strange feeling. On one hand, I loved just being with Eden, and blending in among the other people close to our age, all walking around. It made it feel like we really were just two average college students, and that we fit in here just like anyone else. For that moment, we didn't have a past that was much different than any other average American kid's. For that moment, we hadn't lived through heartbreak and struggle and trauma. But on the other hand, this was the place where Hector had worked . . . where he had taught students and perhaps where the idea of Acadia was hatched. A small chill went down my spine when I thought about the fact that right here, this was the place where the idea that would change my and Eden's life forever was born.