Sleeping in Eden (23 page)

When she had made it to the shelter of her bedroom, Meg shut and locked the door behind her. The bed was rumpled and inviting, the wingback chair she had stolen from the basement appealingly draped with pillows. But Meg sagged with her back against the closed door and slid all the way to the ground, pressing her knees into her chest. She wasn't crying, not anymore. And yet, she trembled as she slipped off Jess's ring.

In the four months that she had worn his token of appreciation, his thank-you, she had never once taken it off. From the moment he placed it on her finger, it remained untouched. It had never crossed her mind to look at it, to turn it over in her hands.

Now, with Dylan's words humming in her ears and her lips still warm and bruised from Jess's insistent kisses, she studied
the gold band as if it contained every secret she'd ever longed to know.

I know what he wrote . . .

She studied it from every angle. Tried it on every finger so she could see how far it would slide down. Felt it over and under, letting her fingertips explore every edge and smooth place, every angle. And finally, when there was nothing else left to discover, she held it up to peer inside the band.

One little word made her feel both cheated and beloved. One word changed everything.

MINE.

L
ucas stayed at work later than usual, scrolling through dozens of pages of missing women reports. He started out reading them all, but by the time he had swallowed a handful of horror stories like bad medicine, he started to create a sort of method to tame the madness. Though he didn't know an exact height, Lucas had seen the body and was sure the woman in the barn had been fairly tall. Therefore he only read profiles that matched a specific height—between five-six and five-ten. The woman had also been wearing a dress, so it was easy to rule out the countless entries that documented blue jeans or skirts or shorts. Or swimming suits or pajamas. And there was a record for a missing woman in a sheet, swept from the earth like a fallen angel found. The thought made Lucas feel scalded and violent. Like he could atone for all that had happened with the righteous vengeance of his own misplaced wrath. He was angry. But he didn't know who to be angry with.

By the time he gave up and put his computer to sleep, Lucas had a scribbled list of nineteen women that matched his rather vague criteria. They ranged in age from fifteen to forty, and they were, sadly, just the very tip of the iceberg. He had also managed to spare a few moments to research the ring, and while he was almost certain that the distinctive leafed design was a Black Hills gold creation—a style that was both ubiquitous and immediately recognizable in his corner of the Midwest—there
was no company with the initials MKD that dealt in Black Hills gold.

After the last few days, he had to admit that going home to Jenna and Angela felt like a mild form of torture. He wanted to call Alex and disappear in the bottom of a glass. Lucas wasn't sexist and he wasn't much of a drinker, but he needed his friend and he needed a beer. There was no way around it.

As he made the short drive home, Lucas planned to pop into the house, quickly change his clothes, and then take off under the premise that he wanted to give the girls some time alone. Girl time. They liked that, right? It sounded good, even to him. It would seem gentlemanly, when the truth was, chivalry was the last thing on his mind.

But when he pulled into his long driveway, his house seemed fuller somehow, bursting at the seams, from the uneven patchwork of windows to the crooked screen door, and bustling as if a party was going on inside. All the lights were on in the kitchen, and through the frame of the leaded picture window in front of the table, he could see Jenna and Angela silhouetted inside. The fall evening was already darkening, and although a cool breeze made him zip up his light jacket, the transom was open above the sink. Music poured out from beneath the whitewashed sash.

Music?

And laughter, Lucas realized as he approached the back door. He turned the handle carefully, but he didn't need to be wary of disturbing anyone. The beat that danced from the sound dock on the kitchen counter was loud and frantic, and his wife's laughter was pitched to match.

“You're crazy!” Jenna shouted over the din.

The music was definitely not from the Hudsons' collection, and from his vantage point in the mudroom, Lucas could see that the iPhone plugged into the sound dock was hot pink. Obviously Angela's. If he was right, the melody was Latin, and the sway of Angela's hips betrayed a pretty fantastic attempt at salsa, even to the untrained eye. The two women bopped and
shimmied around the kitchen, apparently in the throes of a one-on-one lesson.

“It's all in your hips,” Angela coaxed, grinning so wide that Lucas was sure he could have counted each ivory tooth. “You have to swivel them. Try figure eights. Draw figure eights with your hips.”

Apparently Jenna wasn't catching on, because Angela threw up her arms, sashayed over to the dark-haired beauty, and put her hands on Jenna's waist, coaxing her to swing in rhythm to the music. They stumbled and giggled and tried again.

And then, against all odds and against her very nature, Jenna gave in for a moment. It was almost as if Lucas could see an invisible weight slide off her shoulders like a heavy garment. The dark cloud of her worries pooled around her feet and she closed her eyes. For a handful of seconds in the warmth and harmony of the kitchen, she danced. She really danced. Like no one was watching her. Like she didn't have a care in the world.

A lump rose in Lucas's throat, and though he tried to swallow it away, the thickness remained. It filled his chest and bubbled up against his tongue, where it threatened to suffocate him with the beautiful understanding that the wife he loved still existed. She was spinning before him.

All thoughts of running away with Alex for the night evaporated. She was here, and he wasn't going anywhere. “Thank you,” he breathed. And then he did the unthinkable. He clapped.

The sound of his heartfelt applause didn't carry in the noisy room. But after a few particularly enthusiastic spins, Angela suddenly looked up and gasped. The smile melted off her face and her arms dropped ungracefully against her sides. Jenna froze, too, her hands raised above her head and one hip cocked at an angle. She stared.

“What in the—”

“You caught us,” Angela chirped, interrupting Jenna and bounding over to the iPhone to kill the music. She forced a slight smile, and though she seemed flippant about Lucas's
abrupt appearance, he could tell by the set of her jaw that she was still angry with him. The nonchalance was for Jenna's sake.

And Jenna? Lucas's gaze shot to her. She was straightening out her shirt, pulling at the tails of the gray cotton blouse and refusing to meet his eye. The apples of her cheeks were stained pink.

Making Jenna blush was no small feat. In another world, Lucas would have laughed and leaped into the kitchen. He would have caught his wife around the waist and kissed each of her rosy cheeks in turn. But she was already turning away from him, and the line of her shoulders seemed to underscore the distance between them.

“You snuck up on us,” Jenna said, clearing her throat almost shyly.

Lucas shook his head. “I did no such thing. All I did was come home.”

“You're early.”

“Actually, I'm late,” Lucas said, pointing to the clock on the stove.

“Oh, no!” Jenna threw herself across the room and yanked open the oven door.

For the first time since he entered the house, Lucas became aware of something other than his wife. The air was filled with the scent of garlic and onion, olive oil and tomato sauce. “Smells fantastic,” he murmured. “What are you making?”

“Burnt garlic bread,” Jenna sighed, setting a tray with two long loaves of crusty French bread on the counter.

“It's not burnt,” Angela consoled her. “It's toasty.”

Jenna handed Lucas a wooden spoon. “Give the sauce a stir,” she said, and turned back to the bread.

Standing between Jenna and Angela, Lucas wondered how much the younger woman knew about the battleground that was his marriage. It hadn't occurred to him until he was lifting the lid off a pot on the stove that maybe his presence was unwelcome in his own home. It wasn't a very nice thought.

But the aroma of Jenna's homemade sauce made his mouth water and slowly erased any thoughts of Alex and a numbing drink or two. He even found it hard to care whether or not Angela could see how far his relationship with Jenna had unraveled. The marinara was bubbling and hot, dotted with yellow cherry tomatoes that she had left whole. As he stirred the wooden spoon through the thick contents of the oversized pot, he wondered: When was the last time they had enjoyed a meal together? When was the last time it was homemade? He almost said something about the irregularity of their family meals and how nice it was to come home to a from-scratch supper, but he changed his mind at the last second. “How about I set the table?” he offered instead, replacing the lid and reaching for a stack of plates from the cupboard.

Jenna sliced the bread and Angela drained the noodles while Lucas put the table together. He grabbed clean glasses from the dishwasher, then had a better idea and abandoned the etched tumblers in favor of three pristine wineglasses that he and Jenna rarely used. He had to wipe them with a towel because they were dusty, and almost gave up on his plan when he couldn't find a corkscrew anywhere. But Jenna reminded him that they had a cheap one in the picnic basket.

When they were all sitting down, steam rising from the heaped serving platter between them, Lucas produced a golden bottle of unlabeled wine and proceeded to butcher the cork as he tried to open it.

“That looks like moonshine,” Angela said.

“Close enough,” Jenna said with a smirk. “Another gift from one of Lucas's patients. She brews a pretty powerful homemade wine.”

“I don't think you brew wine,” Lucas said, finally managing to extract the cork.

“Whatever.”

“What is it?” Angela asked. “There are no vineyards around here.”

“Dandelion.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Ugh.”

“That's why we've never tried it before.”

“You're experimenting on me?” Angela said, looking unimpressed.

“No, I think Minnie Van Egdom is experimenting on all of us.” Lucas measured out a little in each of their glasses and raised his hand in a toast.

“We don't toast,” Jenna reminded him.

“Come on, it'll be fun.”

Though she rolled her eyes, Jenna reluctantly raised her glass and Angela followed suit. But when the light sparkled off the three crystal goblets, Lucas realized that he had no idea what to say. What was there to toast? Angela wasn't in town for a casual visit, and things between Lucas and Jenna were as icy as ever. Catching Jenna as she danced so carelessly had loosened something in Lucas, and he had forgotten, if only for a moment, the impossible situations that they were each stuck in. It all came rushing back as the women across from him waited in skeptical expectation for his words of celebration and ceremony. He wished he had never brought out the dandelion wine.

Lucas swallowed. “Uh, to life,” he stumbled. “To our lives. May they be . . . more than we imagined.”

Jenna gave him a funny look, but she lifted the glass to her lips and tasted. “Not bad,” she said, taking another sip. “Not bad at all.”

They all agreed that the wine was, if not good, at least drinkable, and the pasta simply defied description.

“I've never tasted better,” Angela declared, and although Lucas lamented the whole-grain capellini that his houseguest had insisted on buying and mourned the absence of meatballs, he had to agree. Even a vegetarian version of his wife's secret recipe was impossible to beat.

“Your best effort yet,” he complimented Jenna, hoping that she'd catch the wink he threw her way. But she had already begun to sink back into herself, to pull the folds of her heavy cloak tight around her where she could hide behind an
impenetrable wall of stony detachment. Lucas knew that it was all an act—that Jenna excelled in the art of self-preservation. But it didn't matter, she merely nodded at his praise.

“I did it for Angela,” Jenna said. “I wanted her to have a nice, home-cooked meal.”

“I get home cooking from time to time,” Angela assured them. She spun the tines of her fork through the tangled noodles on her plate. “Or, I guess I should say I used to.”

Jenna gave her a look of such genuine compassion and query that Lucas was shocked at how quickly his wife's countenance could change. In anyone else, the transformation would ring false, but Lucas was only reminded of what an excellent social worker his wife had become. Strength and empathy and resolve and capability seemed to emanate from her in a subtle fog of understanding. All she had to do was soften her face like that and he longed to tell her his darkest secrets. He knew Angela felt the same way when she went on without being asked to.