5. Eden
EDEN
My father doesn’t say a single thing on the drive home, and he remains silent after we go into the house.
That’s how I know his wrath is coming.
He waits until we sit down for lunch. Then he sets his Bible on the table and turns to me.
“Who was the man I saw you with in the parking lot?”
I place my napkin on my lap. “Just a member of the congregation. He’s new. I was welcoming him.”
“Lying is a sin, Eden.” His eyes narrow.
He’s disappointed in me. But he’s always disappointed in me, so this is nothing new.
I remain quiet because he isn’t finished speaking.
“I’ve heard gossip that you’ve been seen with a member of the Hellborn Kings at college.
I thought it was gossip, because no daughter of mine would do such a thing.
” He sets both hands on the table. “Then a man with a snake tattoo on his neck sits in the last pew this morning and looks at my daughter like he’s got a claim on her. ”
My mother stops eating.
I could lie. But I’m tired of hiding who I am, and from the life I really want.
“He’s a nice man,” I say to my father.
My father pushes back from the table. “Do you have any idea what those men are? They run guns. They own a strip club and a bar where men go to forget they have families. They hurt people, Eden.”
“I found him hurt, Dad.” I twist my napkin in my lap, needing something to do with my hands. “I’m training to be a nurse. I stopped, and I helped him. Tell me which part of that you’d preach against on a Sunday.”
“Don’t you turn scripture on me.”
“Why not? You turn it on me every meal.” The thing I’ve stayed quiet about at this table for twenty-two years comes pouring out now that I’ve started.
“You’ve read me the story of the Good Samaritan since I was a little girl.
A man is bleeding in the road, and everybody decent walks past him.
I’m the one who stopped. You ought to be proud.
Instead, you’re telling me I should have stepped over him. ”
“That is not the same, and you know it.”
“It’s exactly the same. You only want the parable when it’s a stranger you’d approve of. I didn’t stop believing in God, Daddy. I stopped believing he speaks only through you.”
His jaw works. My mother is staring at her plate, not daring to look up.
“Eden, how will this look to the congregation?”
“I don’t care what your congregation thinks!
” I raise my voice, a thing I have never done.
“Have you ever cared about what I think? I’m so tired of your rules!
I have done everything you’ve ever asked.
Every dress. Every curfew. Every prayer I didn’t mean.
And it was never enough. You never cared about me.
You only ever cared about your control over me. ”
“You will not see him again.” He doesn’t respond to what I said. “You’ll come home after your classes, you’ll sit at this table, and you’ll be the girl I raised. Or—”
“Or what?” I set my napkin on the table and meet his eyes.
He inhales sharply at my tone.
Then he recovers fast. He always does.
“Or I will stop paying for that school.”
There it is. The one card he’s held since I was old enough to want a single thing for myself.
A month ago, that sentence would have destroyed me.
But I’m not the same person. I’ve had a little taste of freedom, and I want more.
Viper endured so much, and he still survived. I don’t need my father’s money to live.
“I can take out loans,” I say.
He blinks.
“I can take out loans,” I say, louder this time, more confident in my response. “I don’t want your money if it comes attached to your rules. I’m an adult, and I’m able to make my own decisions. I’m going to continue to see Viper. He likes me exactly the way I am. I don’t need you.”
For a breath, he has no response. Then he reaches for the one thing he’s never had to use on me, because he’s never had to.
“Your mother is worried about you.” There it is—the guilt, now that the control has stopped working. “Is that the daughter you’ve chosen to be? One who breaks her mother’s heart for a criminal who’ll use her up and leave her?”
“You have no idea what she feels about anything. Just like you have no idea how I feel.”
His head comes up.
He tries to speak, but I just keep talking. “Mom is the kindest woman I’ve ever known, and she flinches when you clear your throat. And that’s the kind of marriage you preach about?”
A tear runs down my mother’s face, and I want to save her, too. Hopefully, this fight with my father shows her it’s okay to stick up for herself.
But I can’t fight her battles.
I push away from the table, stand, and storm off to my room. Within minutes, I’ve packed a suitcase with everything I need.
My father stands in the doorway, watching me do it, but staying quiet.
I zip the bag.
“You walk out that door,” he says, “you can’t come back.”
“Okay,” I tell him.
My mother is in the hall when I come out. She doesn’t tell me to be careful. She doesn’t ask me to stay. She presses something into my hand—folded bills, the grocery money she’s allowed to keep.
She closes my fingers over it before he can see.
“Mama—”
She shakes her head once and steps into the dark of the hall.
I sit in the parking lot of a store for hours, contemplating whether leaving was the right choice.
And finally, when the sun goes down, I decide it was. I drive to the only place where I feel safe.
The roads past the county line run dark, no streetlights and nobody on them, and my hands sit easy on the wheel the whole drive. They ought to be shaking. I keep waiting for the part where the fear catches up and tells me to turn the car around.
It doesn’t come.
Trapper has the gate hauled open before I pull in.
“Does he know you’re coming this time?” he asks, already grinning.
“No.”
His grin turns into a laugh. “Of course not. Come on in.”
I park my car and climb the porch steps with my suitcase.
I don’t get the chance to knock. The door swings open, and there he is, standing in the doorway. His eyes drop to the bag, then climb back up to my face.
He doesn’t ask what happened. He doesn’t ask if I’m okay.
He grabs my suitcase and steps aside.
And he lets me in.