Page 54 of Tempting Eden

I forced my feet to carry me back into the dark hallway. The antiseptic smell grew the farther I went. I passed two bedrooms, both empty. The door at the end of the hall hung open, but it was even darker in there than out here. The blinds were drawn, blocking out what little light the clouds allowed to pass.

I steeled my nerves and entered the room. Mama Reed lay in a hospital bed. There was no other furniture except a small chair at her bedside.

Just her, small and withered beneath the covers. She couldn’t have weighed even a hundred pounds. She was nothing like I remembered. Her hair had grayed completely, and her eyes were milky with cataracts. Her hand lay on top of the sheet, and even in the darkened room I could see it was bony yet somehow swollen.

Her eyes moved to me, up and down they went. “You—” Her voice was a croak. She coughed violently, shaking her small frame and the bed, but disturbing nothing any further from there. When she’d settled back down, she continued, “You look like Jack England.”

I stepped the rest of the way into the room and sat down. Her head was elevated on the bed. We were nearly at eye level. “I am.”

“No, no. You’re too big. Why, he was big, but not as big as you.” Her breath was thin, as if her lungs were nothing more than parchment paper sacks.

“That was a long time ago, Mama Reed.”

She closed her eyes. “I haven’t heard anyone call me that in a long time.”

“Your nurse Lydia said you’ve been asking for me?”

She opened her eyes and inspected me again now that I was closer. “I asked for Jack. For Jack. Are you Jack?”

“Yes.”

“You’re the Jack who killed my husband?”

I clasped my hands together tight enough for my knuckles to crack. “I am.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“I know.”

“It should have been me that done it.”

I shook my head slightly. I must have misheard her.

“I should have killed him when I first found out. I knew. I knew.” Her voice, already thinner than a sliver of ice, cracked, broke. “I knew he was after her. I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t ever think he would…” Her voice trailed off into a heavy wheezing, the parchment bags in her chest taxed beyond their limits.

My head spun. The fifteen-year-old me would be on top of her, squeezing the life out of her at this moment. This me was frozen. She let Helen suffer abuse, abuse I had never even known about. This woman who was supposed to protect Helen ultimately abandoned her. Anger rose and rose, higher and higher the flame burned. I unclasped my hands and gripped the rails of her bed.

She wasn’t crying, maybe she wasn’t capable of it anymore. The cold metal of her bed rails under my hands were my prison bars. I squeezed them harder and harder until my palms ached.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wish I could take it back. I do.” She was wheezing now, her exertions spent on her confession. She kept repeating “I’m sorry,” just as her husband did before I took his life.

Vengeance burned in my breast, singeing the flowers I had planted there in Helen’s memory.

Who was I? Standing at this crossroads, I could go back toward the steely bars on my right side or veer to the left, toward Helen and perhaps Eden. I wanted justice for Helen that day so long ago when I took a life. I still did. But taking another life would not be justice. Helen would not want it. I did not want it.

I let out my breath and leaned away from the bed. Mama Reed’s hand scrabbled at the sheet as if she were trying to reach for me. I was shaking and couldn’t trust my hands, couldn’t trust myself not to hurt her—not on purpose anymore, but by accident.

“Please,” she whispered, “please forgive me.”

I stood, towering over her pitiful body now destroyed by nature and time.

Long moments passed as her labored breaths came shallower and shallower. She looked at me, though I wasn’t sure if she could even see me anymore in the waning light.

“For Helen, I forgive you. She would want me to. She would give you her forgiveness freely, and so do I.”

A tear rolled from the corner of her eye slowly, as if it resented being dislodged. She closed her eyes again and laid her head back on the pillow. Her breaths slowed and after only a few short moments, halted altogether.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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