CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Calder
We drove in silence for a while, headed toward New Albany, Indiana. The radio played softly as we watched the beautiful fall scenery go by. I marveled at the vibrant colors of the trees. This was the first year since I'd lived in the Midwest that I had the heart to appreciate the beauty of nature, and all the ways this part of the country was so different than the desert landscape I'd known all my life. There was beauty there, too, but it was such a different kind. Looking through the windshield now at the reds, yellows, and golds of the trees passing by, something about it felt intensely familiar. My mind had been in a completely relaxed state when the feeling came to me and I furrowed my brow, not understanding what it meant exactly, if anything. Maybe I was just finally at the point where the Midwest felt like home. And I was sure that was directly related to the woman sitting next to me. I grabbed her hand and smiled as I brought it to my lips.
"What names do you like?" I asked.
Eden looked over at me and worried her brow.
"For the baby," I prompted.
She still didn't answer for a minute and then, "I think we should wait until we know everything is okay before we plan anything." She looked over at me.
I squeezed her hand. "Everything's gonna be okay," I said.
She nodded. "Hopefully. I just—"
"You don't want to get attached yet," I said quietly. I understood because deep inside, I felt the same way, even despite the fact that I had only found out about Eden's first pregnancy after it was already gone. My heart squeezed at the memory of that moment in Hector's jail. A flash of anger lanced down my spine, making me sit up a little straighter in my seat.
"I'm already attached," Eden said. "I just think maybe I shouldn't get any more attached."
"I understand," I said, kissing her hand again.
She smiled softly. "I know you do."
When we pulled in to the town of New Albany, we plugged the address of the university into the GPS on my phone and then headed in that direction. We cruised slowly through the residential neighborhoods close to the college. We didn't have what had been Thomas Greer's address and so we didn't exactly have a location, so we just drove aimlessly. After about an hour, Eden huffed out a breath and said, "Nothing even looks vaguely familiar about this town. And all these houses are starting to look the same to me. I mean," she lifted her arms and let them drop, "even if he did bring me here, to this place, even if we drove right past the house I lived in, the yard might be completely different now. It's been fourteen years." She took a deep breath. "Oh well, at least we tried. I'm sure the police will be able to get his address and they can show me a picture. Maybe I'll recognize it. Maybe it doesn't even matter." She smiled over at me, but it seemed forced.
"Why don't we stop by the university?" I suggested. "It's lunch time. We could get some college cafeteria food and pretend like we're just two kids from suburbia who spotted each other across the bleachers at a football game and fell in love at first sight." I grinned over at her and she laughed, leaning over and kissing my cheek.
"Okay. I like that plan."
As I thought about it, I realized that it would have been true. No matter where Eden and I had been placed together in this world, we would have fallen in love. Whether we'd been two college freshman, two farm hands, two gypsies—two anything—the falling in love part of our story would have been the same. She would have pulled my heart from across a gymnasium, or a cornfield, or a traveling caravan.
We parked in the visitors lot and held hands as we strolled through the campus. It was a strange feeling. On one hand, I loved just being with Eden, and blending in among the other people close to our age, all walking around. It made it feel like we really were just two average college students, and that we fit in here just like anyone else. For that moment, we didn't have a past that was much different than any other average American kid's. For that moment, we hadn't lived through heartbreak and struggle and trauma. But on the other hand, this was the place where Hector had worked . . . where he had taught students and perhaps where the idea of Acadia was hatched. A small chill went down my spine when I thought about the fact that right here, this was the place where the idea that would change my and Eden's life forever was born.
And yet.
This was also the place where the idea that would bring Eden and I together came to be. It was hard to know how to feel about that. Sometimes it seemed so much of the beauty in life resulted from the ugly. And how did you make sense of such things? How could you be thankful for something when so much suffering was necessary to bring it to you? Or was that the very thing that defined real beauty–light after darkness? And maybe that was the whole point. If you constantly sought beauty in the most obvious places, in only the brightest of circumstances, perhaps you weren't really looking for it at all.
We stopped and asked someone for directions to the cafeteria and then made our way there. After waiting in line to purchase sandwiches, we sat at one of the tables and chatted and ate. I couldn't help but notice all the guys who kept stealing glances at Eden. I could hardly blame them. She was the prettiest girl in the cafeteria. She was the prettiest girl in Indiana, hell, the world as far as I was concerned. And she had my baby in her belly. A fierce feeling of pride swept through me and I sat up a little straighter, grinning across at her. Eden raised one delicate eyebrow.
"What's that look for?"
I took a bite of my turkey sandwich and tried not to smile as I chewed. When I'd swallowed, I said, "I just feel good, proud. I'm happy. Even here, even knowing why we came here."
Eden's eyes got soft and she reached across the table for my hand. "Me too," she said.
An older maintenance man was bringing some boxes in and when he caught my eye, his own narrowed and he looked momentarily stunned. He kept looking at me until he turned the corner out of sight. Well, that was odd. I looked back at Eden and smiled. "Ready to get going?" I asked, gathering up all our garbage.
"Should we see if we can ask someone about Thomas Greer?" Eden asked. "I mean, maybe someone knows why he left . . . or can give us some information about him?"
"It's been so long, Eden," I said as we turned out of the cafeteria. "But yeah, let's give it a shot."
She nodded. "It's a long shot, but there are probably still some professors who worked with him, you know? He wasn't that old."
"Come on. We'll walk through the building once. We'll find out where the history department is."
Eden grinned. "Okay." I couldn't help chuckle. Who would have thought she could turn an information dig on Hector into some kind of adventure? I shook my head, but pulled her toward me and kissed the top of her head. Maybe it wasn't the most pleasant of topics, but we were in charge here, not him–never him, never again. And I guessed Eden was right to pursue it, because that part of it felt powerful.
We asked directions from a guy with curly red hair, an oversized backpack and a large coffee in his hand, and then followed them to the part of the building that housed the history department. The hallways were mostly deserted. Either the history classes were scheduled for earlier in the day on Fridays or they had been cancelled for some reason. Either way, it wouldn't help our cause.
I heard footsteps behind us and when I looked back, I spotted the same maintenance man who had been looking at me strangely in the cafeteria. I stopped and so did Eden, looking curiously up at me. "What is it?" she asked.
Without answering her, I called out to the man, "Excuse me, sir?" I pulled Eden with me as I walked toward him. His eyes got wider and he looked like he was considering whether to turn around, but evidently decided not to, as he stood still waiting for us to approach him.
When we got closer, I saw he was a little older than I had originally thought with leathery and wrinkled skin, and hair that was far more white than the blond I had thought it was. He was thin and wiry and stood hunched over slightly in what I guessed was his natural stance. One of his eyes was cloudy.
"Hi," I said when we'd gotten close to him. "My name is Calder Raynes. We were hoping you might be able to answer a couple questions about someone who used to work here."
He nodded at me and glanced over at Eden quickly and then back to me. "Morris Reed," he said, his voice deep and raspy with a slight rattle behind it that told me he was probably a heavy smoker. He didn't offer us his name.
We both took a few steps closer and I could indeed smell tobacco smoke wafting off of him. "Um," Eden said, glancing at me. "No. Did you work here when a man named Thomas Greer taught Greek History?"
The man stared at her, looking slightly confused, and then turned his head and coughed, a rattling, mucous-y sound. I almost flinched, but held my expression steady until he'd turned back to us. "Yeah, I knew Tom," he said. "Or at least, knew of him, knew him in passing. We didn't associate much."
"Oh," Eden said. "Well, do you know why he left?"
He studied Eden for a minute and I instinctively grabbed her hand. The man glanced down quickly at our joined hands and then back up to her face. "Wife and daughter was murdered," he said, a note of sadness in his voice. He shook his head. "Been a long time, but . . . sure was a sad case."
"Yes," Eden said softly. "So that's why he left then?"
The man coughed again and then said, "Nah, they fired him - years later, though. They kept it hush-hush. Let him resign. But the real truth is that he got fired. He took a turn after that crime. Always spoutin' off in his classes, scaring the students, saying weird stuff about gods talking to him. He was always taking leaves of absence and each time he came back, he was crazier than ever. Went out of his head from the tragedy is my guess. He left and I never heard anything about him again."
We both stood staring at him. I nodded. "Right," I said quietly. "Well, thank you for your time. It's been very helpful."
He nodded and we started to turn away. "You look just like him, you know?" he said.
I turned back around. He was staring at me. I frowned and shook my head very slightly. "I'm sorry? Like who?"
"Your father. Worked here in maintenance with me. Up and quit a couple years before Thomas resigned."
My heart slammed to a stop and then resumed beating rapidly. "My . . . what?"
"You're darker in coloring, but you've definitely got his face. Never had any trouble getting ladies, that one." He chuckled a choking, loose sound, but recovered quickly and looked at me with something that looked like regret on his face. "He told me your mama came and took you with her somewhere. That true?"
"What's his name?" I interrupted. "Do you know where we can find him?"
"Oh yeah, I do, but you better be quick about it. My sister works at the hospital. Hospice was called out to his place a while back. Don't figure he has much time left. He's been sick for years. His name is Morris Reed. Thought you were here looking for him, not Thomas." He furrowed his brow and tilted his head as if he'd just delivered bad news.
My heart was still racing in my chest and my thoughts were all jumbled. I was trying to catch up. Morris Reed. Morris Reed. My father was Morris Reed.
The man continued. "He's about a mile from here out on Abaddon Road." He spelled it and then rattled off a street number and then he started to turn and walk away.
"Wait," I said. "Do you know if this man you think is my father—did he know Thomas?"
He shrugged. "Not as far as I knew, but Morris and I didn't associate outside of work much." He looked down, seeming as if he was considering his next words. He looked up at me, that rheumy eye unblinking. "I figure you shouldn't talk ill of the dead, but your father isn't dead quite yet so I'll tell you this—as far as I was concerned, it was best to stay far away from him. Face of some kind of god, but the devil was in his eyes."
I gaped at him. It felt like something cold and thick was dripping down my spine. Suddenly Eden's hand was pulling me and I stumbled behind her, looking back at the man, as we practically ran for the door and out into the bright sunshine of the outside world.