Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Eden
I’d never had stitches before, but they weren’t as bad as I imagined, at least not with Terry Davies distracting me with stories about the many injuries her sons had sustained over the years.
My favorite was about Milo, Mark, and Mark’s friend, Henry, who had gone against Libby’s advice and decided to scale a barbed wire fence outside an abandoned building when they were around Carter’s age.
Libby had simply followed the fenceline until she found an unlocked gate. The boys ended up covered in scratches, but had insisted they could take care of the injuries themselves.
Terry found them cutting up the maxi pads Milo discovered under the bathroom sink to use as bandages. After calling Henry’s parents and hauling them all in for stitches and tetanus boosters, the mothers had parked outside a drug store and sent the three boys in to buy a replacement box of pads.
I was giggling helplessly when Milo returned to the room.
“Oh, dammit, Mom. You told her about the pads, didn’t you?”
“They are extremely absorbent. That was good thinking on your part,” I told him.
“I didn’t even know what they were,” he grumbled. “I couldn’t understand why Mark and Henry thought it was so funny when I pulled out the box, but their fingers were bleeding too much to argue.”
Libby winked at me as she finished taping a bandage over the back of my hand. “If only there were places to seek medical treatment and professionals to deal with such things.”
With the gash taken care of, Libby turned her attention to dabbing antiseptic on the tiny cuts along my arm, chest, and cheek.
Terry made Milo step back out of the room while the ladies helped me undress to make sure there were no other injuries that needed attention, then I was deemed well enough to give my statement to the police.
Rose Hanson, who’d spoken to us during the bomb threat, sat beside me in the clinic’s empty waiting room and had me go over the sequence of events leading up to the window shattering.
I didn’t think I had much to contribute, since I’d barely noticed the car outside before glass rained down over me, but Detective Hanson was incredibly patient with me.
“Did you notice anything about the car—color, make or model, license plate?”
I started to shake my head, then went still. “It was a light color, but not white or silver. It looked almost like pale gold.”
“Good, Eden, that’s good. Could you see inside the car?” she asked.
“Not really, especially after the headlights hit me. There was a passenger, though. I mean, you probably knew that, because they were driving north and would’ve had to throw the brick out the passenger window, right?”
The detective smiled encouragingly. “Confirmation helps, Eden. So you saw two people in the car, a driver and a passenger?”
I nodded and said, “Yes, but I didn’t get a good look at either of them. I’m sorry. I wish I could remember more. It all happened so fast. The headlights paused on me for a minute, the engine revved, then the window broke.”
“The headlights paused?” she repeated.
“Yeah, I think the car stopped. It was like a spotlight on me in that corner of the store by the window.”
“The note on the brick makes it clear this was planned, Eden,” Hanson said gently. “Do you think you were the target?”
I froze. “The note?”
“There was a note tied to the brick with a Bible verse about purification, something about contamination of body and spirit. I’m sorry, I assumed you saw it.”
For a second, I forgot that my parents were somewhere across the world and experienced a moment of absolute terror.
It faded as quickly as it hit, but there were plenty of members of my parents’ church who might have taken up the baton of ensuring I didn’t succeed in a business venture that might contaminate them all.
Members of my brother’s church.
He’d found my phone number all those years ago when he called me—who was to say he hadn’t found out the rest in the time since?
“Yes, I’m the target. Shit, shit, shit,” I wheezed.
“Easy, easy. That brick didn’t go through your shop window, Eden.”
“No, but it was the window I was standing in front of. No one else in Milo’s store was even visible. The displays blocked the game table. Milo was over by them when it happened, but I was standing by the window.”
“Is there a reason you think you’re the target, aside from that flier?”
I bit my lip, then nodded. “I grew up in a very strict church, the kind that doesn’t approve of a woman owning a business, much less one like mine.”
Her expression was gentle, but her gaze was sharp. “I understand your family isn’t local, is that right?”
“Yes. But it’s not like they’re far away. I mean, my parents are on another continent, but we just found out my brother took over their branch of the church. He’s the pastor there now, in Binghamton.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions, okay? Can you give me his name and the name of the church? We’ll look into any possible connection and you can focus on getting some rest.”
Shakily, I gave her the information and watched her scribble it on a tiny pad of paper. She stayed silent, but my brain launched into warpspeed. Milo’s shop had been vandalized because of me. Someone else could have been hurt because of me.
The past I’d fought so hard to free myself from was rising up to hurt the people I loved.
Oh, god. I love him.
The realization wasn’t warm or fuzzy; it was edged in sheer panic. Milo could have been hurt, killed even, if he’d still been standing at my side, whispering into my ear, when those headlights landed on me.
“Eden,” Hanson said, her voice firm and authoritative. “What happened is not your fault.”
I closed my eyes, nodding even though she was dead wrong. “Do you need anything else from me?”
“Not right now. I’ll be in touch if anything else comes up, and here’s my card. I want you to call me directly if you see or hear anything else even remotely out of the ordinary.”
“Okay,” I whispered, taking the card with my bandaged left hand.
Hanson stared hard at me for another minute before she rose to her feet and left the clinic. I sat in the silent waiting room, staring out the glass front doors into the night, until eventually Milo poked his head out of the exam room and saw that Hanson was gone.
“Hey, everything okay?”
I didn’t look at him—I couldn’t. “I’d like to go home now.”
Milo sat in the chair beside me, wrapping his fingers around my uninjured hand. “Eden, hey, are you all right?”
“Please,” I whispered. “Can you or your mom drop me at my apartment before you go back to the store?”
Hurt and alarm mingled in his handsome face, darkening his eyes as they scanned my features. He lifted his free hand to my cheek and swept his thumb just below the tiny cut under my eye.
“Don’t shut me out, Eden. Not again. Please.”
His voice sounded wrecked and I almost gave in, but this was for his own safety. Guilt and fear pulsed through my veins as I tried to summon an excuse that would inflict the least amount of pain while still keeping him protected—away from me—for the time being.
Nothing came to mind, so I said, “I just need to be in my own space for a bit.”
After a long, penetrating inspection of my features, he blew out a defeated breath. “If that’s what you want.”
It wasn’t what I wanted, not by a long shot, but when I nodded, Milo dropped his hands and stood to go speak to his mother and Libby in hushed tones that barely registered in my ears.
When the three of them came back out to the waiting room, Libby flipped off the lights and locked the door behind us, then they bundled me into Terry’s car.
Before closing the door, Milo crouched down and took my face in his hands.
“I don’t know what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours, Eden, but I don’t like this.
I promised I’d back off when you need time to process, so that’s the only reason I’m not pushing you to talk this through right now. ”
“It’ll be okay,” I whispered.
“It will,” he whispered back. “Because I love you. This wasn’t how I imagined saying it, but I want you to know before you leave here. I love you and we will sort all of this out.”
I drew in a shuddering breath, wishing like hell I could give that back to him, but fear tightened my lungs until I couldn’t speak another word.
Milo, as always, didn’t need words to see what was in my heart. He searched my expression, smiled slightly, and leaned in to kiss my forehead. Though I managed not to burst out crying, I felt one tear sneak past my eyelids and roll slowly down my cheek.
“I’m here for you,” Milo murmured, “and, eventually, you’ll believe that. Get some sleep. You know where to find me when you’re ready.”
I gave a tight nod as he backed away, closed my door, and lifted his hand in silent farewell as his mother slid behind the wheel.
It took every ounce of strength I possessed to keep it together until I got inside my silent apartment, where I curled up in a tight ball on the couch and let the sobs loose.
Once everything had poured out of me, I retreated to my bed, squeezed my eyes shut so tight that pinpricks of light danced behind my eyelids, and let the aching emptiness in my chest suck me down.
If my brother was behind any of this, then I was the only one who could stop it.