Page 53 of Tempting Eden

“You must be Jack.” I recognized Lydia’s voice. “Come in, come in. I’m Lydia. We spoke on the phone.” Lydia was tall for a woman, maybe six feet. She had short cropped black hair, chestnut eyes, and dark brown skin. Her face was round, and her eyes seemed kind. I guessed she was in her fifties. She wore pink scrubs and socks with grips on the bottoms.

I followed her to the living room, my shoes squeaking on the wood floors as the rain created a low roar against the roof. The house was unnaturally clean, unused almost. The walls were bare, and the furniture, what little there was, seemed untouched. The home didn’t have a smell, other than the faint odor of rubbing alcohol or some other antiseptic. It seemed as if no kids, or pets, or guests, or anything had ever so much as sneezed in this house.

“She’s napping right now, so we have a while to talk.” Lydia said.

In the living room, I settled on a suede couch that still smelled brand new as Lydia sank into a recliner and pulled a cross-stitch hoop into her lap. She snugged a thimble on her finger before pulling a needle with red thread from a pincushion on the side table next to her.

She held up the hoop for me to see her work. It was the classic little old lady stuff—a cottage, the sun, lots of flowers, but the text said, “I didn’t choose the thug life, the thug life chose m.” She’d started the ‘e’ but hadn’t finished it.

“Nice.” I wasn’t sure how she expected me to respond.

“I sell them on the Internet to stupid white girls, and it helps me pass the time.” She plunged the needle in and drew it back out, her fingers nimble as spiders’ legs. “I wasn’t sure you’d come. I’m glad you did, though. It’ll ease her passing, I think.”

This whole situation was off. From her nonchalant stitching to the niceness and newness of the house. My stomach churned, a vat of acid eating me from the inside out. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Just old. Kidneys are a mess. She quit the dialysis a month ago. Said she just wanted to die in peace. That’s when I started coming to see her. I specialize in end-of-life care.” A few more quick stitches.

I needed to make sense of this somehow. “Do you know how she got this house?”

“Oh, I thought everybody knew. You remember that Lowood explosion? She got a big settlement from the gas company on account of herinjuries. I think she may have broken a nail or dropped a cup on her foot from the surprise of the explosion. But she wasn’t really hurt. The gas company, though, they paid everybody who so much as said ‘boo.’”

Made sense. Mama Reed was sharp as a tack and twice as apt to draw blood. I looked around at the cookie cutter home, the empty mantle, the unused dining table. She may have beaten the gas company, but death was about to beat her.

“Have none of her other foster children come?”

“No. Not a one. A bunch of lousy ingrates, I say. A woman sacrificing her good years to raise someone else’s children. And those children don’t even have the decency to—” She shook her head and missed a stitch. She squinted down at the fabric and carefully unthreaded her last stroke, pulling the thread taut before trying again.

The rain pelted down harder, then softer, but never stopped. Wind pushed the water onto the windows, leaving streaks and runnels that distorted what little view there was.

“You’d best settle in. I can’t wake her when she’s like this. Medication, you know? It could be an hour or two, maybe more, before she comes back to herself.”

I wished I’d called before coming, to set up some time when I didn’t have to be here like this. The house seemed smaller by the minute, the rain somehow shrinking it, making it wilt and diminish. The empty walls and empty rooms should have given the feeling of space. Instead, I felt as if I were in a mausoleum, packed tight with death and decay.

I wanted to burst out the door and run, just keep going until I made it somewhere safe, somewhere the past couldn’t find me. Instead, I opened my bag and took out my sketchpad. I needed to stay, to wait it out. Maybe I owed her this. Maybe it was another form of my penance.

I flipped through the pages of Belle Mar designs until I reached a blank sheet. I took to sketching, the scratching noises of my pencil tip a welcome respite from the intermittent silence and the slight clink of Lydia’s needle and thimble. I didn’t set out to draw anything in particular, but I soon found my pencil influencing familiar lines and curves. Eden’s face took shape beneath my hand, her profile emerging from the white background. I labored over the exact descent of Eden’s nose, the slight lift of its tip. I shaded her pupils, smudging the black a bit to give depth to her irises. Her thick, arched brows gave her a serious air as I filled them in.

Time passed, I didn’t know how much, as I continued making her image. I drew and redrew the shape of her chin, the slight jut of it from her confident bearing eluding me. Her smooth neck flowed from the tip of my pencil. The long line of her throat merged into the femininity of her shoulders, soft and rounded. I began to feel more at ease, the familiarity of her giving me a comfort I didn’t know existed.

“Oh, who’s that there?” Lydia’s voice broke the spell.

I slapped my pencil down on its side and closed my sketchbook. “Just a face.”

“Seemed like a nice one to me. Someone special?”

I shrugged and didn’t answer.

The rain had eased as I drew. The whisper of water was now gone, leaving only silence and the ticking of the thimble and pulling of Lydia’s thread.

A moan rattled through the air and shot a chill down my spine. Lydia stowed her cross-stitch and rose. She stretched as the moaning grew louder. She checked her phone as Mama Reed’s voice, crackling as if it might break, called her name.

“I’ll need to get her situated, and then I’ll come get you.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke.

After a couple of text messages, Lydia walked into the back of the home and out of my view. Fifteen minutes filled with grunts, grumbles, admonitions about bedsores, and a host of other sounds went by before Lydia reappeared.

“She can see you now. Let her get it off her chest. Whatever it is. Just call for me if you need me.” She returned to her needlework.

Given how long it took to get her into motion when Mama Reed called for her, I didn’t pin much hope on Lydia’s assistance.

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