More Than a Memory Page 6

  “No…” I didn’t know how else to say the word.

  “But your mom…”

  Oh this was something that I had to hear, “My mom, what?”

  “I wanted to know how your life was going, so a few years ago I asked your mom how you were. She kept boasting and rambling on and on about how fabulous your life was with your husband. So I dropped it and hadn’t asked about you since.”

  I felt my blood pressure rise for the millionth time tonight but now it was because of pure rage. I saw red and was on the verge of seething. “Oh that’s rich, my mom meddles in my life extremely too much. Here lately she’s been trying to play matchmaker, even to the point of having my coworkers in on it and making a segment on the show every week about my blind dates. And then she tells the one person who I’ve ever loved that I was married.” I kept going on and on, pacing back and forth in front of Baylor in the middle of the floor. The Bon Jovi song had ended, changing to some sort of upbeat tune, but I was too pissed to even realize what it was.

  “Wait, what did you just say? The one person you ever loved…me?” He kept on searching my eyes for his answer. Shit, did I actually say that? I couldn’t remember what had just come spewing out of my mouth.

  I quickly shook my head; I didn’t need him to know my stance on things. He didn’t need the leverage against me, especially when I hadn’t gotten to the bottom of everything that had happened. “What? No…I didn’t say that. You must’ve misconstrued what I was saying. Listen,” I stopped pacing and perched one hand on my hip and the other against my head, “I’ve gotta go, my mom has a lot of explaining to do.”

  Pivoting on my foot, I fled out the door before ever giving him the opportunity to respond. Bette Richardt had meddled around in my life for the last time.

  It didn’t take me long at all to get home and even those few minutes did nothing to dissipate my rage. I slammed the door to my mother’s car and then stomped my feet all the way up the pathway to the front door. Once I made it inside I felt the need to destroy something so I slammed the front door as well, but it woke my father up from his position on his recliner making him almost jump out of his skin. “Eden! What the…?” He yelled as he tried to push the footrest of the chair back in place.

  “Sorry, Daddy,” I snapped as I marched into the kitchen. “Mother!”

  “What, dear?” She said as she came up behind me, drying her hands on an apple-patterned dish towel.

  I pointed a finger in her direction, “You have a lot of explaining to do!”

  Her eyes immediately went wide and she began fiddling with her hands, wringing them around the towel. “Eden, calm down.”

  “Calm down? Why the hell would you tell Baylor that I was married?”

  “Now Eden, I did it for your own good, I was protecting you.” She pulled out a chair and sat down at the same kitchen table that I used to do my homework on. By that time my father had made his presence known in the kitchen as well, with a perplexed look on his face that matched my own.

  He took the chair right next to her and motioned to an empty one, “Eden, have a seat, I think your mother has a lot of explaining to do.” My dad didn’t ever raise his voice and he wasn’t even a man of many words but what he said in that house was law.

  Her body shook at what she was about to reveal, but she forged on with a trembling voice, “I know I shouldn’t have stretched the truth-“

  I quickly cut her off, “You didn’t stretch the truth, you outright lied!” I couldn’t help the fact that my voice raised a few octaves until it was almost a shout.

  “Eden,” my dad warned.

  “I know he was the one who broke your heart… The day after graduation you locked yourself in your room and cried yourself to sleep and the next day you wanted to go see your nana even though you never had before.” A sob threatened to erupt from my throat; that was a day that I remembered all too well but the pain had seemed to lessen when I was in Baylor’s embrace.

  My mother covered my hand with hers, “Mothers know these things, dear. That boy broke your heart and took you away from us, so when he asked rather desperately about how you were, I wanted him to feel the pain and sorrow that he made you feel. I’m sorry, honey, I thought I was doing what was best for you at the time. You wouldn’t ever talk to me about what happened, so I took it into my own hands and dealt him a blow as he did to you.”

  “Mom, what’s best for me now is to stop meddling in my life. That means no more signing me up for those matchmaking sites either.” I pointed my finger at her and she shyly and shamefully lowered her head once my dad shot her a warning glare.

  “Jesus, Bette, does your interfering have no limits? What’s next, selling her hand to the highest bidder that you find? Let Eden live her life without her mother critiquing and hindering her every move!” He was past the point of reason; you could almost see the wheels turning in his mind at the realization of all that had gone on behind his back.

  “I just want her to be happy!” She wailed out a sob. I decided my mother’s smothering concern had gone on long enough.

  “I know you do, Mom, but I don’t need a man in my life in order to be happy.” I began ticking off things on my hand, “I have a successful radio show, my own home, the best of friends, and amazing and loving parents along with my health. For the most part I am happy.” But I couldn’t lie, a man would’ve been nice–most importantly one certain man. Was I ready to hear him open up about what had happened? Could my heart take being broken again? Especially when I didn’t think it was fully healed from the first time.

  Knock…knock…knock

  “Eden! Eden, are you up?”

  I barely opened my right eye, squinting past the sun shining in through my window at my mother whose frame appeared at my bedroom door. I couldn’t hold back the audible grumble that erupted from my chest. “I am now…What time is it?” After the talk that took place between my parents and me, I hadn’t gone to bed until well after three. I immediately called Julia, even though it was even later for her, and caught her up on everything that took place at the bar. I begged her to come and be my buffer but all she did was laugh in my ear at my expense. What a best friend.

  “It’s almost nine. I have a favor to ask of you,” she said while clasping the ends of her gold watch around her left wrist. I normally didn’t agree to favors before I at least had one cup of coffee in my system, but by the looks of things she wasn’t going to let it rest until I did. “Will you listen for the door and let the plumber in? Someone should be coming to look at the drain in the bathtub. I’ve got to meet Jan and the girls for book club.”

  “Yeah, sure, whatever.” Since when did my mother join a book club? I couldn’t remember a time where she was even reading a book let along joining a club about it. I grabbed a handful of material and stuffing from my other pillow and plunged it over my head to drown out any further noise and sunlight filtering in from my window. I really needed to at least put a blanket over that sucker; it didn’t make sense to go out and buy a blackout curtain since I’d only be there a few more days. But that direct sunlight in the morning was enough to make a girl go insane, and people thought PMS was bad.

  Knock…knock…knock

  Why in the hell wasn’t anyone answering the door? “Mom!” I yelled out, only to hear continued silence. The noise was intensifying the unrelenting pounding that was occurring between my ears. Then I remembered her informing me about the plumber coming by. I sat up in the middle of my bed and had to grasp my head with both hands. The banging increased substantially with every little movement.

  Knock…knock…knock

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming!” I shouted while I flung back my covers and retrieved my tattered old bathrobe from my desk chair. My posture was slumped over as I leisurely dragged my feet on the carpet all the way to the front door. I reached up on my tiptoes to try and get a look at who it was, not that I would know them anymore, and only came up with the work truck. They must’ve stepped out of the way of t
he door.

  Yanking the door open with way more force than I intended to, I was met face to face with Baylor Jenkins. “What in the world are you doing here?” I challenged, pulling my robe together and tying the belt closed, and then looking out past his dumfounded expression and the railing on the porch to a work truck that indeed had Jenkins Plumbing embossed on the driver’s side door.

  Once my double take was complete, I gave another sly gander only to see him watching me intently with a clipboard in his clutch. “Well good morning to you, too.” I rolled my eyes. “Your mom called this morning and said it was an emergency.”

  “I’ll bet she did. I call this another case of her meddlesome self” I muttered exasperatedly to myself.

  He flicked his eyes up from his work order and raised a brow, “Care to elaborate?”

  “Not so much.” I opened the door a little further and waved a hand allowing him to enter. “Well, Mom said that the bathtub was clogged; you are no stranger to this house and nothing has moved in decades I think.”

  His eyes adjusted once more to mine as he indicated, “I didn’t used to be a stranger to you either but look at us now, trying to dance around each other’s emotions and not knowing what to say.” He drifted right by me making me feel inept all over again. I deserved the cold shoulder treatment, but didn’t he equally deserve it as well? He was making me feel like I was the one to blame for my disappearance when in fact it was him.

  I walked into the kitchen and prayed to the coffee God that there were at least a few droplets left in the carafe and to my surprise mom left almost an entire pot. Thank Jesus! Retrieving a mug, I doctored it up to my specific tastes and took a hefty gulp before I headed off to clean myself up a bit. Once I could feel the coffee filtering through my veins a light bulb went off, we only had one bathroom. While growing up it didn’t bother me because I was an only child and I didn’t have to fight for a turn. But suddenly having one bathroom was coming back to bite me in the ass. Baylor was working on our one said bathroom which meant I couldn’t get a shower, so he was going to have to suffer through me looking like shit, again.

  Would I ever be fully on my game around him?

  What game? I retorted back. Out of the three times I’d seen him since I’d come home, I’d been unbathed for two and inebriated for one. I was trying to win a constant losing battle.

  Hearing the clinking of his tools did absolutely nothing to soothe my headache, but the uncomfortable silence was near deafening. I walked down the hallway to the bathroom and leaned my body and head against the door frame with my coffee in hand. “Why aren’t you an architect?” I asked in a low voice.

  He paused what he was doing, wrench in hand suspended in midair and sighed. Throwing the tool back in the toolbox, he wiped his hand on his carpenter jeans. “Now she wants to talk,” he muttered under his breath just loud enough for me to hear. The tension in the tiny bathroom was unsurmountable; you’d have one hell of a time cutting through it with a machete. “I have my degree in architecture but shortly after graduation Dad got sick, too sick to work anymore. So I did my duty as a son to take over the family business since that’s what my family relied on for income. My mother owns seventy-five percent of the company now and I own twenty-five, and I can’t just let it run into the ground.”

  “Is your dad better?”

  He sighed again, which seemed to be a common theme around me lately, “He died almost eight years ago. When I said he got sick I was really just sugarcoating it. He found out that he had terminal cancer, stage three in the lungs. He was really lucky that he made it as long as he had, but he was a fighter and loved my mother something fierce, and he didn’t want to leave her alone. So now I take full responsibility for the company and Bentley works under me.” My hand had automatically covered my heart at the news of Mr. Jenkins passing. He was a wonderful man and I loved him as a second father; it broke my heart that my mom didn’t let me know. And to hear that Baylor was still such a truly selfless man, giving up his dreams in order to keep the family business alive, raised him even further in my estimation.

  I didn’t really know what else to say, so I thought to bring up a safe subject, “How is Bentley?” Baylor was older than his brother Bentley by four years, and I remembered that during our senior year Bentley wanted to follow us around all the time.

  “Bentley is Bentley, I suppose. I’m a hard ass on him only because it keeps him out of trouble.” You could see the pressure that was on Baylor’s shoulders, he was weighted down with not only being a father but also being the only dependable son. “Now since you are bombarding me with questions, it’s my turn…” I immediately held my breath almost as if I was waiting for the blow that was bound to occur. “Why did you run off last night?” My lungs deflated as my breath fled from my lips. “No, wait. The question that I really want to know is what happened to you fifteen years ago? Why did you run off?”

  There it was, the blow that I had been anticipating since arriving back home. Since the elephant in the room had finally been addressed, my wall that I had strongly built was obliterated into a pile of useless bricks. My anger spiked and I slammed down my now-empty mug on the bathroom counter. “You think you have the right to ask me that?” I shouted.

  “You’re damn straight I do!” He rose from his crouched down position and took a step between us, closing the distance as he grabbed ahold of my hand. “That was supposed to be our time, our summer, Edie.”

  Oh God, why now? I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. Why of all the opportunities that he’d had did he chose that moment to call me Edie?

  Chapter 6

  Baylor

  Between holding Eden’s hand and spending more time in her presence, so many memories were rushing back. I felt as if I’d never really gotten over her; in fact I knew I hadn’t. All of her defining qualities and features that I loved before had intensified as she became the woman trembling before me. Seeing the light go out in her eyes made me want to pull her even more into my embrace and tell her everything would be all right. But her reaction to my question had me wanting to know the answer even more. What happened that was so bad that she had to clam up whenever the question was asked? My anger at the entire situation grew as the thought of someone actually hurting her came to mind. I would kill anyone who laid a finger on her without her permission.

  Her eyes locked onto mine, searching for her own set of answers, “Baylor, why did you seek me out and ask me to come to the reunion? It seems as if things were better left in the past.”

  “What are you talking about? I didn’t contact you. I honestly didn’t have the faintest idea that you would be coming back, although it seems as if that’s all I’ve been doing, hoping and praying like hell that you’d come home ever since you left.”

  Her chest began heaving; I would guess it was due as much to our close proximity as to our conversation, since we were just mere inches apart. She looked even more confused than she had before. She reached into the pocket of her worn-out bathrobe and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “I’ve taken this with me literally everywhere since I received it. You wrote an email to me at my job stating that you wanted me to come to the reunion.” She handed me the printout, and my fingers brushed hers as I took it from her grasp, causing a little jolt of electricity that went straight to my heart.

  I opened the email and scanned over the words.

  My Sweet Eden,

  Can you believe that it’s been fifteen years since I’ve last looked into your beautiful chocolate eyes? I remember them as if I had only seen them yesterday. I don’t know what happened all those years ago, but the invitation from the reunion has me reliving our final moments from the past. How are you? What are you doing? Are you well? These are questions I find myself asking on a daily basis, wishing I knew the answers. I hope you find it in your heart to come to the reunion and meet with me so we may catch up.

  Sincerely Yours,

  Baylor

  The first thought that ran through m
y head was it was that rat bastard, Dean. But I quickly changed my mind; if he had found Eden I would’ve been the first person he told. It wouldn’t have been Kristina because she hated the ground that Eden walked on. There could’ve only been one other option as to who the author of the covert email could’ve been…

  “Norah and Polly,” I announced.

  “Who?” Eden questioned.

  “Well, it seems that while your mother meddles in your life, my daughter and her pesky best friend have been meddling in mine.”

  I looked over, past the paper in my hands just in time to see Eden’s face fall. “Oh, so you didn’t want me to come,” she stated rather than posed a question.

  “No!” I quickly objected. “It’s definitely not that. I just don’t do the whole social media scene and since I was under the misleading impression that you were married, I didn’t want anyone to have false hope.” My cell phone began vibrating in my pocket and I yanked it out and looked on the screen, seeing that it was an emergency call. “Dammit!” I groaned, “I have to go.” I regretfully stepped back away from Eden and began shoving all of my tools back in the toolbox. With her bathtub unclogged there was no reason for me to blow off the emergency, not that I had it in me to do so anyway. Retreating towards the front door, I didn’t want to see the sadness painted on Eden’s face, but at the last moment I turned around to see her right behind me. “Can we talk later? I can pick you up here about 5:30?” She seemed to ponder my invitation before nodding with tears swimming in her eyes. I hated to leave with everything still up in the air, but hopefully with us going to a secluded place away from everything it would help break the dam of secrets.

  My day ended at four. Let me rephrase that, I made it my mission for my day to end at four, forwarding all emergency calls to Bentley and hounding him to be sure to pick them up. My brother wasn’t the most dependable but he was definitely improving. We would just call him a work in progress.