Chapter Twenty-six
Eden
Matt’s been quiet. Melancholy. Blaine, Matt, and I are driving to my hometown today. Almost against my will. Blaine thinks it’ll be therapeutic. Closure. I think it’ll make me more anxious and embarrassed about where I come from.
“Are you okay?” I ask Matt, rubbing my hand down his well-muscled back. Blaine opted for the backseat, so he could catch a nap.
Matt dips his chin in a weak smile.
“We don’t have to do this today. We could head back and wake Caleb and Hutton up. Do something more fun… like crash a funeral.” I try to coax a real smile from him, but it doesn’t work.
“Sorry.” He squeezes my hand and keeps it there, resting it on his thigh. “I just have a lot on my mind.”
I want to ask what, but if it’s case-related, he wouldn’t tell me anyway.
“All the more reason to blow off this hometown visit. There isn’t much to see. Cows, fields… maybe a meth lab.” I bite my fist while looking out at the passing fields and small farmsteads. It all looks so bleak to me. None of this feels like ‘home.’
Home is a tiny house with Anna and her cat.
Home is a city neighborhood filled with constant noise, not the ominous silence broken by the sounds of animals.
Well, really home has become Blaine…Matt.
I don’t want to be here.
“We’re almost there. Do you have memories with Embry in town at all?” he asks, adjusting his sunglasses before taking my hand back.
We didn’t get to go to many places outside of school. As we pass a rundown service station and turn onto a county road that will lead us past Clive’s trailer, something clicks.
Every summer, Embry and I would help one of the followers sell vegetables at a stand on the edge of town.
“There! Could you stop?” I point to the neon green painted stand. It looks like it’s been painted since I last saw it.
It still has ‘watermelen’s’ printed on it—misspelling the fruit always made me giggle. Sinda said I could paint an ‘o’ over the last e in the word, but it would make Mr. Weingarten feel stupid.
“Here at the stand?” He pulls the truck into the dirt lot next to the structure. Two other vehicles are parked nearby.
Blaine wakes up and mumbles, “Where are we?”
“The big town of Sussex.” I climb out of the SUV, and they follow.
Bins of tomatoes, sweet corn, watermelon, and cucumbers circle the small stand. Two older people stand in the middle. I recognize Mr. Weingarten immediately. He leans on his cane, loudly bragging about his tomatoes to a woman in front of him.
He knows me. He knew my brother. We worked at this stand for years. Maybe this will convince Matt and Blaine that Embry exists.
Matt grabs my hand while we wait for the other customers to move, to speak to the elderly couple. “Good afternoon,” Matt says to them.
“Mr. Weingarten?” I lean into the stand and the worn wood bites into my knees.
Please recognize me.
“Hi, young lady.” It’s been too long, how could he?
Blaine waves his hands to get mosquitoes to leave him alone. Then he wanders a few feet away to have a cigarette. I wish he’d quit again.
I smile at Mr. Weingarten as I tell myself there's no reason to get emotional. The odds that he’d remember me on sight were low. “I used to live in the area,” I say to him.
More customers walk up; I move back and let them pay for their produce. Matt gives me a sympathetic look. We wave Blaine over to leave, when Mr. Weingarten says loudly, “Who did you say you were?”
Turning back slightly I say, “Eden Davis… It’s been a long time.” My sad smile falters. “My brother Embry and I worked for you in the summer sometimes.”
“Ah.” He nods at me, but no recognition is evident on his face.
He bends forward and pulls a decrepit looking photo album with pages coming loose out from under the stand where he keeps his cash box.
Lifting a hand, he waves us in. “Looky here.”
I step back to the stand, with Matt and Blaine in tow. “What’s that?”
He pages through the book and stops, pulling a polaroid picture from one of the sticky pages. He holds it out to us. In it, Sinda, Embry, and I are sitting on the front of the stand, each of us full of watermelon juices and grinning.
My heart stops. A whimper escapes my lips. My brother… proof finally of my brother. Matt tucks me into his side, taking the picture from Mr. Weingarten’s weathered hand.
Blaine swears under his breath next to me. “That’s him?” He points to Embry sitting with his knees up leaning towards me.
Happy. Alive. My little brother.
“Yes, yes, that’s Embry.” A happy gasp of a cry escapes me. Replaced quickly with a fresh wave of grief over his loss. Tucking the picture to my chest, I ask in a shaky voice, “Can I keep it?”
He nods. “Sure, got a couple more.”
He taps the book and I almost wipe out trying to look at those, too. Different summers. He has one of just Embry and I holding up a watermelon together, and another… I’m bruised and Embry and I aren’t smiling. We’re holding hands.
I remember that one. We only came once that summer. Mom didn’t bring us back after he asked about the bruises.
Matt asks for the other pictures, then buys half the stand of fruit and vegetables in gratitude along with a hefty tip. We haul them into the back of the SUV. “What are you going to do with all this?” I ask him.
“I don’t care. An area food shelf will gladly take it.” He shakes Mr. Weingarten’s hand before I impulsively give Mr. Weingarten a hug. He was always so kind. Feeding us when we were here, treating us like we mattered, and confronting mom.
“Thank you. This probably won’t make sense but thank you for the time we spent with you growing up.” I wipe the errant tears from my cheek. “Embry always loved watermelon.”
“’Member him eating a whole one on his own,” Mr. Weingarten half shouts. “He always asked to live in my stand, and it wasn’t until later I figured it wasn’t cuz of those melons. Was it?”
I’m too choked up to answer. Only nodding as I cry.
Matt thanks him again, he and Blaine both shake his hand all over again.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Ed,” Blaine says through tears in the backseat. “For doubting you or your sanity for one fucking second.”
Matt pulls to the side of the road two miles from the stand then envelops me in his arms. He says fiercely into my hair, “No apology will ever make up for what I put you through when I doubted your brother was real. I can promise you that anyone I find out contributed to what you both went through is going to pay. I’m going to make them pay, baby. ”
I shake as I sob in his arms. Blaine wraps his arms around us both. Ducking his head down into my hair.
The drive past Clive’s trailer is tense. I see the shell of the abandoned trailer and overgrown grass surrounding it making my stomach flip. I ask Matt not to stop.
He hits the gas and on the trip back into town after we turn around, he takes an unpaved road to avoid me having to see it again.
“I’m embarrassed that you both had to see that.
” Anguish over the way my life started pours through me.
“That’s where I come from.” My shoulders drop as I look out at a group of kids playing baseball at the ballpark diamond on the edge of town.
Even in raggedy clothing, I know that Embry and I often looked worse.
Wearing the same falling apart clothing for days.
“You have nothing to be embarrassed about, Ed. Not a damn thing. None of this matters.” Blaine squeezes my shoulder.
“No one has any choice over who they’re born to or how they grow up. You know that, Eden,” Matt admonishes as he captures my hand in his. “It’s the luck of the draw.”
They got lucky. I didn’t.
Knowing they mean it helps my anxiety a little, but the dread of this day still sits heavy in my chest. My childhood memories have always been a catalyst for depressed thoughts and feelings.
If there’s a hell, I hope my mother is there.
We stop for ice cream at a Mr. Twisty Cone in the next town over. Matt leans forward to lick the dripping ice cream off my cone.
Jesus, that tongue…
“What do you remember about Willa Peterson, the school counselor at your elementary school?”
Why is he asking about her?
“She was nice. I stopped telling her anything because she never helped.” I shrug.
“Makes sense. She knew Embry?” He tosses the rest of his cone.
“Of course. She made a couple of visits to the trailer. She even gave us presents sometimes. Clothes, books, toys, and things like that. I told her to stop though because mom would get angry and destroy them. Then usually beat one or both of us.” Talking about this makes me lose my appetite and I chuck the remainder of my cone, too.
“Sounds like a shit school counselor,” Blaine offers. “I want to know why she didn’t back you up about Embry.” Blaine sets his shake down making a face. “What kind of person does that? Makes a twelve-year-old out to be delusional?”
Matt’s cell phone rings and he looks at it confused. “It’s a local number, but I don’t recognize it. Speak of the devil probably.” He gets up to take the call outside.
“How are you feeling about all of this, today?” Blaine massages my hand. “We pushed you to do this, and I’m happy it led to you getting your brother’s picture and some proof, but…” He looks at me intensely. “Are you okay passing that trailer? Talking about all of it?”
“I never want to come back here ever again. Ever,” I say it with conviction because I mean it more than I can even say.
“Home is with you guys. Just like you said before. It’s not a place.
It’s people. Embry and I spent a lot of time dreaming about escaping this place.
Now that I’ve gotten some time and distance from it, the fact that I don’t know where my brother is…
it’s a painful hole in my heart.” I stop to get some composure.
“I lost him here. It feels like a gravesite.”
Matt comes running back in. “We have to go. Right now.” Clapping his hands together. He looks worked up.
“What’s the emergency?” I jab him with my elbow.
“That was about your school counselor. She killed herself last night.”
My mouth drops open.
“She wrote ‘Time is Now’ on her wall with a Sharpie. My card was pinned on the wall next to it. That was the county sheriff. Let’s go.” Matt all but pushes Blaine out the door, dragging me behind him.