Finding Eden (40 page)

Good. Maybe he’d realize just how I’d felt over the last few years, too. Time might have moved on, but I hadn’t. Grudges had always been my strength, and over the last 24 months, I had nursed one the size of a boulder.  

Henry opened the trunk.

“I know,” I said. “Not much to show for my life, huh?”

Banishment to a life with the Peace Corps hadn’t left me with much. Two years in South Africa gave me one large bag, one small bag, and two suitcases. All the stuff inside added up to less than $500, and I wouldn’t have cared if I had lost it all. In the Peace Corps, I had a life with meaning, but few material possessions; a life that differed in every way from undergrad at Wharton. At college, I lived in a house with three other guys, and my greatest challenge meant figuring out how to balance an expensive vodka habit, an endless parade of college girls, and the desire to get straight A’s so my father would keep paying for my education.

“Let me get that, Mr. Chadwick,” Henry said when I picked up my green soft-shell bag that doubled as a backpack.

“No. Please don’t.” I eyed him. Two years hadn’t been kind to Henry. Deep wrinkles and a sallow complexion told me that. “This is heavy. It’ll hurt your back.”

“This is my job.”

“No it isn’t,” I said, and hoisted the bag onto my own back. “You’ve always done too much, Henry.”

“This is my job.”

I shifted the bag so the weight distributed across my back. “It’s okay. I’ve got it.”

Still, he stared at me with a funny look I couldn’t place. “You’re sure.”

“I’m sure.” I reached for one of the suitcases in the trunk and pulled it out. “Why do you sound so surprised?”

“You just… back before you left… you never did things around here, Mr. Chadwick. You let everyone else do it.” 

“People change.” I grinned at him. “And please, stop calling me Mr. Chadwick. I’m Spencer. I was Spencer when I left. I’m still Spencer. I’ll be Spencer until I die.”

He laughed.

“I mean that, Henry,” I said. “You’ve known me since I was ten.”

“That’s true.”

“You used to take care of me when I got sick, and one time I threw up on you.”

He smiled at the memory. “I’ll never forget that stomach bug. Hit this whole house.”

“So, stop calling me Mr. Chadwick, okay?”

“If you say so.”

“Thank you.”

Henry took the handle of my black roller board suitcase. I only let him do it because it had wheels. Then I pulled out the small bag and he slammed the trunk shut.

“And since we’re talking about it,” I said. “What else has changed?”

“Plenty,” Henry said as he walked up the slate steps to the dark wooden double doors with a lion’s head knocker. He pushed it open, and I followed into the house my father treated as the crown jewel of his fortune. He had a good reason for this. For all the beauty of its outside, Chadwick Gardens had twice that beauty on the inside.

The foyer of Chadwick Gardens opened out into two wings of the house. On the left, a few doors and twisted hallways led to a study, library, den, master’s suite, and ancient ballroom we never used. On the right, a dining room that seated 16 backed up to a butler’s pantry, kitchen, breakfast nook, and basement entrance. Next to the entrance for the dining room, a grand staircase carpeted in maroon brocade opened up to a catwalk, office, and five bedroom suites upstairs, including mine.

And at the top of those stairs stood my luminous, effervescent stepsister, Avery Jackson.

“Spencer!” she called to me, though we’d both already seen each other. “You’re finally home!”

I eyed her for a second, looking for clues. Had she lost weight? Did she get enough sleep these days? Did the past still haunt her? What about the scars and the cuts?

“Hello, Avery,” I said. 

She bounded down the long staircase toward me, a tall vision in white jean shorts and a black, knit V-neck vintage top. When it came to Avery, I always noticed the little things—the small things about her. She had blue nail polish on her toenails, red on her fingernails, and the messy ponytail that held her blonde hair threatened to come undone at any moment. When she crashed into me for a hug, she knocked me off balance, and the backpack swung off my shoulders.

“Asshole,” she whispered in my ear.

“Nice to see you, too, dear stepsister.” 

A few days before, I told her not to come to the airport when the plane arrived. I didn’t want the first time I saw her again after so long to happen in the clinical, cavernous baggage claim terminal of CVG. That wouldn’t be right—not warm enough. She argued with me, I insisted, and for once I won the fight. 

And as she hugged me, I knew I’d made the right decision about our reunion. 

“You’re too thin,” she said after we broke away from each other. “Didn’t they feed you there?”

“Have they been feeding you here?”

She sighed. “Already?”

My eyes fell on her collar bone, visible underneath the neckline of her shirt. “Yes. Already.”

“I’m eating,” she said in a low voice. “And I’m just fine.”

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