Page 51 of Tempting Eden

“Hello?”

“Is this Jack England?”

“Yes, who’s speaking?” Sleep thickened my words.

“I’m Lydia Gibson. I’m a nurse in Birmingham. I do hospice care. My patient has been asking for you nonstop for the past two days. I’ve only now tracked you down.”

My mind began to sharpen, sleep draining away. “Who? Who’s your patient?”

“Sarah Reed. Well, everybody calls her Mama Reed. She says she was your mother?”

I scrubbed a hand over my face. “No, she’s not my mother.” It came out gruffer than I intended.

Eden smoothed a hand over my back. She was wide-awake now, her auburn hair mussed and the hazel flecks in her eyes warm in the morning light.

“Oh, well, I meant your foster mother.”

“Right.”

The woman cleared her throat. “Well, like I said, she’s been asking. The doctors don’t think she has more than a week left. I don’t think she’s got but three days, honestly. So…” She trailed off.

“Why does she want to see me?” I hadn’t seen Mama Reed since the day I shot her husband. She never came to visit me, never even came to my sentencing to speak for or against me. She just disappeared.

“She hasn’t really said. But she hasn’t asked for anyone else. Just you.”

I could imagine her accusing me of murdering her husband in cold blood, maybe going apoplectic at the sight of me. Or maybe she would forgive me? I could imagine the former far easier than the latter.

I looked at Eden. She must have heard the conversation through the speaker because she raised her eyebrows and whispered, “What could it hurt to see her?”

A lot. It could hurt a lot. Reopening the wound her husband had made didn’t seem like a particularly rosy scenario for me to walk into. I couldn’t relive it, wouldn’t. Helen’s death had already broken me once.

“Are you there?” Her voice wavered.

“Yes, Lydia did you say?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think it would be a good idea. We have a past, and it’s not a good one.”

Lydia lowered her voice. “I know. She told me about it. About you. But I’ve seen these types of cases time and again. She’s dying. You hear? Really dying. And if she isn’t able to get whatever it is off her chest, she won’t go easy. It’ll pain her to the last.”

Shit.My past was my past. I rubbed the inked bars along my ribs. But if Lydia was right, and I stole peace from a dying woman, I knew it would never sit right with me, even if that woman was Mama Reed.

“Fine. Give me the address.”

“Come back as soon as you can.”

“I will.”

“And don’t stay too long.”

I smiled down at Eden. She’d driven me to the airfield. She chewed her pinky nail the whole way, nerves getting to her. I wondered if she was more nervous for me or for the project.

“I think you already covered that.”

“Right. Well, just, call if you need me. I’ll be here. Working.”

“You mean bitching out Frank?”

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