Ark of Fire

CHAPTER 46

“Back in D.C.,” Edie clarified, not wanting Caedmon to think that she’d recently lied to him.

“That would certainly explain the embarrassed blush you wear.”

“Actually, you’ve got it all wrong. I’m not the least bit embarrassed that I lied. I’m thoroughly ashamed.” And, as he undoubtedly knew, shame was embarrassment on steroids.

“Did you lie about Padge’s murder?”

“What!” Edie vehemently shook her head, the image of Dr. Padgham’s sprawled, lifeless body flashing across her mind’s eye. “No, of course not. I lied about my, um, family background.”

Crossing his legs at the knee, Caedmon sat silent, waiting for her to fill in the blanks. If he was upset or disappointed by the fact that he’d been lied to, he gave no indication of it.

“Remember how I told you that my parents were killed in a boating accident off the coast of Florida? Well, that story was . . . well, it was a flat-out lie. I can’t speak for my father, but my mother never stepped foot in anything that ever floated on the water.”

She snatched a mandarin orange from the bowl on the table. Hands shaking, she began to peel the piece of fruit, if for no other reason than to give her suddenly sweaty fingers something to do. God, she felt lousy.

Unbelievably, she’d just told Caedmon Aisquith more about her childhood than she’d ever told another living soul.

“Did you tell the lie to elicit my sympathy?”

Edie stopped peeling.

“No! Absolutely not!”

Knowing why she told the lie, but not altogether certain why she suddenly wanted to tell the truth, Edie abandoned the orange and got up from the table.

Maybe she was sick and tired of going to bed with men under false pretenses.

Slowly, trying to collect her thoughts, she paced back and forth in front of the divided twin mattresses. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Caedmon finishing off the last dregs of his port wine.

She stopped pacing. Turning toward him, she said, “Were they still alive, there’s not a single member of my family that I would be proud to introduce to you. I just . . . I just wanted a normal, sane, loving family. Was I so wrong in wanting that?”

Caedmon shook his head. “It is what we all long for.” “Yeah, it is, isn’t it? But those weren’t the cards I was given.” Realizing how canned and melodramatic that sounded, she decided to just stick to the facts. No emotion. No drama-queen theatrics.

“Okay, here it is. The unedited version of the story is that my mother, Melissa, was addicted to heroin, and bad men, and playing the state lottery. And just so you don’t jump to the conclusion that she was a horrible person, it wasn’t completely her fault. She grew up in a very repressive fundamentalist household. Unfortunately, she fell in love with a Jewish boy in her geometry class. Pops didn’t approve. So he kicked her out of the house. She was sixteen years old.”

“I take it the ill-fated lover is your father?”

Edie derisively snorted. “Hmph! Don’t I wish.”

Wished because maybe her childhood would have unfolded differently had Jacob Steiner been her father.

“According to my mother, there was a freak car accident. A strong wind gust caused the vehicle to swerve into a tree. Jacob died; she survived.”

“Is that when your mother turned to drugs?”

Edie nodded. “The grief nearly did her in. At least that’s the excuse she gave for not being able to pull it together. Oh, every now and again, she’d clean up her act. In fact, she cleaned up real good. But then”—Edie snapped her fingers—“just like that, she’d start to reek of stale beer and vomit.”

Which was about the same time that strange men started to show up, the thin walls of the trailer doing little to muffle the grunts and groans.

“I suppose I should mention at this juncture that my mother had no idea who fathered me. She thought it might have been ‘the guy with the Harley.’” Using her fingers, Edie made a pair of air quotes. “But mind you, that’s mere speculation.”

Having just confessed to being illegitimate, Edie stared at the worn carpet beneath her feet. She could only imagine what Caedmon thought of her bio. He probably hailed from a snooty English household. Something straight out of The Forsyte Saga.

“It sounds as though your mother led a tragic life,” he quietly remarked.

“Try tragically flawed. Anyway, it wasn’t a long life. She overdosed on her twenty-eighth birthday. I found her sprawled on the floor of our trailer, the Allman Brothers song ‘Sweet Melissa’ playing on a secondhand tape recorder. They say that only the good die young, but—” She waved away the thought. “Never mind. I’m not really sure where I was going with that.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, suddenly very tired.

“How old were you when your mother died?”

“Hmm?” She belatedly realized that Caedmon had asked a question. “Oh, eleven.” Eleven going on forty.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what happened to you when your mother died?”

Gnawing on her lower lip, Edie debated whether to tell him. But like a runaway train that couldn’t put on the brakes, she went ahead and answered the question put to her.

“I was put into a foster home. There were five of us. Some older, some younger. The older ones knew the drill; the younger ones were clueless.”

Caedmon’s brow furrowed. “What drill? You’ve lost me.”

“Lonny Wilkerson, my foster father, the man who signed a contract with the state of Florida agreeing to furnish me with a safe, clean, and healthy home, had a fondness for young girls.”

“Bloody bastard! Don’t tell me that he—”

“I have to tell you,” she interjected. Please, Caedmon. Let me tell my story. Let me give birth to this hideous memory. In the hopes that I can finally be free of it.

“One night Lonny came into the room that I shared with the two older kids and he . . . he put his hand over my mouth, he pulled down my panties, and he . . . he raped me.” As she spoke, she kept her eyes downcast. She didn’t want Caedmon’s sympathy. She didn’t want his outrage. She just wanted a witness. “To this day I can’t recall any of the details . . . it was too much to process. All I can remember is that it was painful, it was quick, and I was afraid I would suffocate.”

Taking a deep breath, she glanced up at him. Just as she figured, his expression was equal parts anger and sorrow.

“That’s all I remember,” she said with a shrug. “That and the fact that it happened once a week for the next two months. When Lonny moved to a new girl, she promptly told the social worker what was happening and we were all moved to different homes.”

Edie paused, battling the old recriminations.

“I should have been the one to expose that monster but”—she caustically laughed—“I was afraid of being abandoned. Of having to make a new start.” Yet again.

“You were a child,” Caedmon insisted.

She shook her head, unwilling to negotiate the point. “Anyway, to make a long story not nearly so long, a few years later a social worker took pity and went the extra mile to track down my maternal grandparents. I stayed with them until I was eighteen.” And then, like her mother before her, she took a Greyhound bus out of Cheraw. Never to return.

Getting up from the table, Caedmon walked over to where she sat on the edge of the bed. Wordlessly, he sat down beside her, his hip brushing against hers.

“Don’t get me wrong or anything. I’m not some emotionally scarred person who can’t cope with the real world,” she matter-of-factly informed him. “I cope just fine.”

“Yes, I know. But the old memories have a way of creeping up on us when least expected.”

Something in his voice made Edie think he spoke from experience. Maybe his childhood hadn’t been Masterpiece Theatre wonderful after all.

“You trod the path to hell at a tender age. But somehow out of the depths of that pain, you forged a new path for yourself.” As he spoke, Caedmon took hold of her hand. “You are a most remarkable woman, Edie Miller.”

“Remarkable enough that you want to go to bed with me?” Turning her head, Edie looked him straight in the eye. “You see, that’s why I came clean. Every relationship I’ve ever had has been wrapped in a lie. This time I wanted a clean slate.”

Caedmon let go of her hand. “Are you sure that’s what you want, for the two of us to sleep together?”

Edie watched the conflicting emotions on Caedmon’s face. At times, and this was one of them, he could be too much the gentleman.

“I came very close to climbing into bed with you the other night. And just so you know, this isn’t a puzzle that you can reason your way through. It’s just sex, okay?”

Seeing the uncertainty in his eyes replaced with desire, Edie rose to her feet and stepped toward the nightstand.

Caedmon grabbed her by the wrist, stopping her in midstep.

“Where are you going?” There was a decided huskiness in his normally cultured voice.

“I thought I’d switch off the lamp.”

With a quick tug, he pulled her onto his lap.

“Leave the light on.”