“Yes, ma’am,” Eden said, her eyes looking into the old woman’s. They were small black eyes, glistening with life and vitality. Old body; young spirit.
“How old are you really?” Mrs. Farrington asked.
Behind the older woman, Gracey was vigorously shaking her head at Eden not to tell the truth.
“Seventeen,” Eden answered.
Mrs. Farrington turned so quickly that she caught Gracey shaking her head, disgusted that Eden hadn’t lied. “Your whole family are liars,” Mrs. Farrington said, without animosity in her voice, then she left the room, leaving Gracey and Eden alone.
Gracey wasn’t offended by Mrs. Farrington’s remarks. In fact, she was smiling broadly. She pushed Eden to follow Mrs. Farrington. “Go on.”
“But she didn’t say I was hired,” Eden said. “Maybe—”
“Believe me, if you weren’t hired, Alice Farrington would have told you. She likes you.”
“Likes me?”
“She didn’t say one hateful thing to you. It may be a first. Now go on, I have to go bake the pies for tomorrow.”
Gracey made it all the way to her car outside before Eden recovered enough to hurry after her. “But what is the job?” Eden called from the porch. Her suitcase was on the ground. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Oh,” Gracey said with a wave of her hand as she got into her car. “Make a list of all those papers.”
“A list?” Eden asked, not understanding what she meant.
“Like in the library.” Gracey shut her car door and started the engine.
Eden watched her until the trees hid her from view. “Like the library?” she whispered. Then her head came up. “Cataloging? She wants me to catalog that mess in there?” In high school she’d worked in the library, so she had an idea of what was involved in such an undertaking. Were the other rooms of the house as full as the central hall? If so, making even an inventory would take a very long time. Years, even.
Eden looked out at the lawn in front of her. The house sat in a little oasis of greenery, surrounded on three sides by acre upon acre of farmers’ fields. On the fourth side was a wide, deep creek, probably where the original owners moored their ships. On the right side of the house was what looked to be a vegetable garden, with flowers mixed in with the peas. To the back was what could be an orchard. It was all as messy as the interior. Taking a breath, Eden smelled the air. Fresh air, shade trees, fresh fruits and vegetables. In an instant, she made a decision. She was going to do the best job of cataloging that anyone had ever done, so that Mrs. Farrington would let her stay for the next several years. And Eden was going to raise her child here in this idyllic spot.
Smiling, she went back into the house.
“Can you cook?” Mrs. Farrington’s voice came from somewhere in the back of the house.
“Not at all,” Eden called back, feeling quite happy.
“That’s something else you’ll have to learn,” came the voice.
Smiling, Eden went in search of the kitchen. She was willing to bet there were cookbooks somewhere in the house. “Probably Martha Washington’s original cookbook,” she said as she made her way through the stacks of furniture to find the kitchen. Turning the corner, she gasped. The kitchen was a huge room with lots and lots of cabinets—and every one of them was so full of papers that the doors wouldn’t close. On one countertop was a foot square that held a few dishes, a skillet, and a pot. Eden had an idea that was all the cookware that Mrs. Farrington used.
Now, leaning against her bedroom door, Eden smiled in memory. Yes, that was all the cookware that Mrs. Farrington had used, but later Eden found whole sets of dishes hidden away inside the cabinets. Her daughter’s first years were spent in that wonderful old house. Her baby dishes had been from the 1920s, and her silverware had been real, with English hallmarks.
It was the silverware that sparked the “clearing of the wealth” as Mrs. Farrington called it. Casually, Eden had remarked that the silver must be worth a fortune. “Then we have to hide it!” Mrs. Farrington had said quickly, her voice almost panicky. At first Eden had stiffened with pride. Did Mrs. Farrington think she was a thief? She calmed when she realized that if Mrs. Farrington had thought she was a thief she wouldn’t be telling her, Eden, to do the hiding. It wasn’t until Henry from the newspaper office came to visit that Eden understood.
“He’s out,” Henry had said. Mrs. Farrington turned pale and sat down. Seeing her sit made Eden worry, because Mrs. Farrington never sat down.
“I knew it was close, but I thought I’d have more time,” Mrs. Farrington whispered.
After Henry left, Eden didn’t ask any questions, but Mrs. Farrington told her. She had one child, “a son so worthless he shouldn’t be allowed to live” is how she stated it. Eden didn’t ask questions, but she assumed that “out” meant out of jail. For the next three weeks, the two women hid things. Anything that was valuable, they hid. They pried up floorboards and shoved in silver teapots. They cut a hole behind the lath and plaster and dropped spoons down into the walls. They buried plastic boxes of things in the garden. Young Melissa, a year old by then, loved the game, and they caught her just as she was shoving Mrs. Farrington’s reading glasses into a mouse hole in the baseboard.
But Alester Farrington didn’t show up then. He didn’t show up until Melissa was five—and that’s when Eden found out why he’d been locked up. He was a pedophile. But she didn’t know it that first night.
The night her son returned home, Mrs. Farrington woke Eden, whispering in a way that made her sound like a crazy person. “They told me he’d changed. They said there was no more danger.” Puzzled, Eden had allowed Mrs. Farrington to pull her into the next room, Melissa’s room. In the dark, silhouetted by the night-light, Alester Farrington was standing over the child’s bed. Just standing there and watching Melissa sleep. In an instant, Eden understood everything. Mrs. Farrington told her son to get out of the room, and for a moment Eden thought he was going to strike his mother, but he didn’t. He smiled at Eden in a way that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Quietly, he left the room.
Eden didn’t need to be told what she had to do. She looked at Mrs. Farrington, and there were tears in the old woman’s eyes, but she nodded, then shoved Eden toward her bedroom. Eden jammed clothes into a suitcase, grabbed some boxes, and left with her daughter in the middle of the night. She’d had no contact with either of the Farringtons since that night twenty-two years ago.
Now, Eden walked to the bedroom window and looked out at the wet street lined with overflowing garbage cans. She could hear the loud music from the bar across the street; a man was peeing into the gutter. She closed the curtain. Sometimes she wondered how she had ended up in New York City. She who loved trees and bird-song. She used to read gardening books as though they were novels. She used to memorize principles of eighteenth-century gardening. Eden knew that the happiest time in her life had been those years with Mrs. Farrington. The people in town had thought Mrs. Farrington was an eccentric old woman, but all Eden had really known were her parents, whose great delight in life was meting out punishment. Compared to them, Mrs. Farrington was the sweetest, kindest—