Waiting For Eden (Eden Series) (2 page)

Her stomach rumbled fiercely, and Alex turned back to the little stove that was chugging out hearty waves of heat.  She needed to boil water in order t
o partake of her dehydrated Fettuccine Primavera. 

As she walked to the stream, she reflected on the golden waves of early evening light that penetrated the fluttering canopy and splattered a lovely pattern across the winding trail.  The air was soft against her skin and pleasingly cool.  It would be a beautiful evening, and with a little luck, the temperature would not drop below 50 degrees. 

The lovely warble of a wood thrush beckoned her when she returned to the campsite with water, the only sound to break the solitude of the forest around her.  Such a difference from the endless hustle and bustle of D.C.  

Well, that was fine with her, she determined staunchly.  There would be a lot of changes in her life.  Decisions would be made. 
That’s why you came here, Alex.  To make decisions, to get your life in order.
Somehow, her upbeat thoughts did not ring true.  She was lying to herself once again. The truth was:
Alexandra Winters had merely run away
.

Sighing, Alex plopped herself down on a log, and poured the cool stream water into the stainless steel cook pot.  She would need to boil the water at length to destroy any contaminants.  Even in the depths of the mountains, giardia or other microorganisms could taint the purity of the water. 
Just as the mess of her life was now marring the beauty of her mountain retreat. 

Glancing around her, Alex realized the lingering presence of the young and handsome forester was now gone, and she felt the familiar stab of
loneliness and regret.  James had been friendly and decidedly harmless, and she had driven him swiftly away with her own miserable attitude. 

She knew with certainty
that he would have been cheering and refreshing company for her, had she invited him to stay awhile. 
You should have offered him supper at least
, she scolded herself harshly.

Alex opened the package of primavera, and realized with dismay that the concoction resembled petrified
vomit.  James would have found the dinner offer terribly amusing, of that she was sure.  His words echoed in her head. 
“Oh, that is so perfect.  Lovey.”
  For the first time that year, Alexandra Winters laughed out loud.

~~~~~~

              The lush, hay-scented ferns were gilded prettily with the waning rays of the sun.  They lent a spicy, crisp scent to the breeze as his boots crunched upon them in an even rhythm.  James had cut away from the trail in order to make up time, and he wound through the tall trees and smattering of undergrowth with ground-eating strides. 

Although he had been pushing the limits of a walk for quite some time, his breathing was only slightly elevated.  He was in excellent physical condition, and not from visits to the gym, but from hard work.  Between his
full-time forestry position and working on his family’s farm, he had time for little else.

Not that arduous work bothered him.  There was nothing like breaking a hard sweat through a long day, and the enjoyment of a sound night’s sleep to follow.  James belonged to the land, both the fields and the forests,
and it was both his heritage and his first love.

But now he was late for supper.  Not that his mother would really mind, for James doubted he could do any wrong in her
sweet, brown eyes.  But tonight was special to her, it was his brother’s birthday, and Diana Sheldon’s handiwork in the kitchen was always something to be admired.  He hated to be late.

James’s thoughts drifted to the
dark-haired young woman who had detained him.  Actually, her hair had dried to a lighter shade than he had first assumed, it was streaked with gold-toned, chestnut highlights.  Definitely not your standard brunette.

He shook his head briefly, disgusted that he was pondered the
contrasting shades of a strange woman’s hair.  And strange Miss Alexandra Aimee Winters had been.  Correction,
Mrs.
Winters.

Guilty, he remembered spying on her from the ridge above her campsite. 
Like…for a long while.  The water’s of the natural pond had run clear to the pebbly bottom in the brilliant afternoon sunlight, leaving nothing to his imagination.  He knew the water was frigid, but she had seemed determined to wade right in wearing nothing but a lacy blue bra and matching panties. 

He was surprised
at her boldness.  But her very surroundings gave evidence as to why her modesty was a bit lacking.

Great trees lined the ridge behind him, staunch evergreens and rustling hardwoods that had recently burst into the full, leafy bloom of spring. 

Where the sheltering tree-line receded, breaking away into a lush meadow thick with swaying grasses and young goldenrod, a pond broke the landscape with crystalline waters.  The pond itself was not of man’s creation, but was formed when a pair of beavers had decided to dam the spring-fed, mountain stream. 

Deep within the heart of
Susquehannock State Forest, the young woman had no reason to believe she would be watched by any pair of eyes other than a passing deer or squirrel.

Jamie chewed his lip for a moment, trying to decipher her story, where she could be from and why
she might be here.  It was early May, not exactly swimming season in northern Pennsylvania.  This woman appeared to be completely alone.  And smack in the very heart of a deep forest over 265,000 acres, spanning three counties, and not a lot of paved road.

And Alexandra Winters had been
built like something straight from a Playboy centerfold, only much more… natural.  He vividly remembered the tantalizing outline of that royal blue bra beneath her wet and clinging tee shirt as she had waded out of the water. 

Except for the
damp hair streaking down her back, she looked well-groomed, sleek, and wealthy, from the tips of her diamond-studded ears to the bottoms of her pedicured and painted toes. 
Who the hell would wear diamond studs on a camping trip?

James found himself filled with even more questions upon leaving her
behind with his stove.  There was something wounded in her eyes when he looked into them deeply.  They were brilliantly hazel, a near kaleidoscope of greens, golds, and browns. But there was something else behind them, way more than mere anger.  The depths of her eyes seemed... bruised. He wondered what her real story was.

A married woman, alone in the mountains, completely new to the arts of camping, with more than a small chip on her shoulder. 
He recalled the slim gold band that graced her ring finger, and wondered bitterly why she wasn’t sporting a flashy rock, as her kind usually did.

James scowled briefly, chiding himself.  The nuances of yuppie life in the city had never intrigued him before.  She was a bitch, plain and simple, and all of her sordid and snobbish problems had surely been brought upon herself
for a good reason.  Chances were
Mr.
Winters hadn’t bought his wifey the beamer she wanted, so she ran away to the mountains to sulk. 

Moments like those were the one downside of his job – when he was forced to deal with the public.  At least she had been something to look at, with
those tan and shapely legs emerging from curve-hugging shorts.  And that soft, full mouth.  Kissable. Sexy.

Correction,
James.  Arrogant
.  He thrust the memory of her flashing hazel eyes and her slim, lithe body from his mind.  Forcefully.  Chances were he would never see Miss Fancy Gear
or
his propane stove again.

Waiting for Eden

~*~*~*~*~*~

Chapter 2

The wind grabbed Ezra
Wilkens’ hat
and sent it sailing to the forest floor.  The resultant chill against his bared nape felt like icy fingers, and gave him sudden cause to think of his Mama.  It was God’s truth that Mae Wilkens had the coldest hands of any woman east of the Mississippi.  Upon some hint of mutiny from her brood, fingers strong as talons would descend upon the offender’s neck at the speed of light, turning blood to ice.

Mama didn’t ever hit him or cuss
at him, or at his brothers either.  Simply didn’t need to.  Those hard, frigid claws did the trick every time.

Ezra sighed, and bent slowly to retrieve the worn, brown hat, which had come to rest against a fallen log.  It had been many years since his Mama passed on, and she had lived to the ripe old age of eighty-four.  He didn’t think of her too often anymore
. Figured he’d be joining her soon enough anyway, and there’d be plenty a time for catch up. 

Ezra stared bemused
at the wrinkled hand that clutched the hat, as if the gnarled fingers with their smattering of liver spots belonged to someone else, and then slowly replaced it atop his reddened scalp, pulling the brim down low once again.   Where had that sudden gust of wind come from?

He supposed it was time to head back down the mountainside.  Marta would be worried at his long absence. 
His wife of fifty-one years was confined to a wheelchair, six years now, but Ezra figured they were managing just fine.  But sometimes…he just felt the need to escape the limits of the old, musty farmhouse his wife had been born in, raised in, and had married him in.

His daily trek into the great forest behind their home had become a near necessity.  The land had once belonged to the Native
Susquehannock tribes who lived here, passed down through generations of them.  His wife was of Native descent, the last in a long line of them. 

She was protective about her lands and her trees, and all things living among them.  When she had lost the use of her legs, Ezra himself had picked up the patrol.  Every day, he had to report. 

Ezra chuckled, for her penchant for the dramatic was as familiar to him as her crooked smile or the way her cowlick never quite allowed her hair to part straight down the middle.

He gave a last glance at the trees
towering around and above him, monstrosities some, with girths upwards of ten, twelve foot or more.  These trees were what made this land that they lived on
extraordinary
.  Magical, even. 

They had never known
a man’s ax, and not once in his seventy-nine years had he ever contemplated trying to take one down.  Marta told him those trees had stood through generations of her elders, and were the closest thing to the Creator any piece of life was ever gonna get.

Craning his neck back as far as he could get it, Ezra squinted up at the mighty hemlock that rose dauntingly before him, with dark green boughs bristling and roiling bene
ath the wind’s sudden rough-housing.

The
Susquehannocks believed there were spirits within each tree.  Guardians and such that overlooked the forest and all creatures in it.  Good spirits, good magic. 
Manitowuk
, his Marta had whispered in hushed tones when they ventured within.  With such Native blood in her veins, she knew them by name. 

In his bones, he felt
this belief just might be true.  With a wry smile, he tipped his hat to the towering hemlock, and then turned to find his winding way back down the trail to the valley below. 

It seemed a long walk
home, much harder than usual, and with each shuffling stride, he felt a strange sort of unease growing within him, quite unfamiliar. Ezra’s hands began to tremble oddly.  They clenched and unclenched of their own accord even though they were deep and warm in his pockets. 

It was the
weather, Ezra consoled himself.  But as the familiar farmhouse came into sight, his unease only deepened, till his heartbeat was buzzing in his chest like a thrum of a locust on summer’s day.

Something was wrong with Marta
. 
Find Marta
. 

He was calling her name as he pushed through the screen door in a high-pitched shaky voice
that he barely recognized.  Ezra plowed through the empty kitchen, knowing she hadn’t answered, and
it was all wrong
.

He found her in the living room, sitting up in her wheelchair with the TV on, eyes open and remote control in her lap, but she wasn’t watching.   Marta’s hair was mussed and her head lolled sideways on her chest, all funny-like, and he lifted her by the chin. 

He glanced down and saw the awful truth then.  There was blood all over her arms and in her lap, and it was no dream, this was real.  Marta was dead.  Then he saw the note pinned to her chest, and his eyes raced helplessly over the thick, block lettering.

TIME’S UP, OLD MAN.  SELL OUT OR YOU’RE NEXT!

He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t issue a single scream for help.  The phone calls and the letters had come
true
!  He’d told Marta to ignore their damn bullshit, but now they really had
killed
her.  Marta had paid for
his
stubborn streak and pride! 

He looked down at the stark raw wounds in
her skinny old wrists – she had been as helpless as a new fawn in the meadow grass when they did this to her!  The slashes still oozed blood.

A sharp pain pierced his chest, spreading quickly through arms and legs, constricting his veins with a fierce strength that somehow surprised him more than anything, and
whooshed the breath right on out of his lungs.  His vision clouded, wavered, his eyes locked desperately on Marta’s white and staring face, eyes accusing him now for his own stupidity, and then darkness waved over him in a cold and hungry gush. 

Ezra heard his old body hit the wood floor with an angry smack loud enough to shake green apples off a tree, but he didn’t feel a thing, not a blessed thing.  He thought that
was probably best.  Ezra’s lips came apart, and before his mind shut down, he managed to say one word,
“Marta.”

~~~~~~~

Staring upward through the treetops
,
Alexandra parted her lips and released a long, low whistle of appreciation. 

The sun was rising now.  A
lthough she couldn’t see the horizon and the orb itself, tendrils of swirling rose, gold, and gray had woven their way through the reaching limbs and boughs, like a curtain that stood between heaven and earth.  It was wind-still, and about her the forest was hushed, expectant, as if waiting for the commencement of Act I in the story of the Genesis.

Alex hunched her shoulders against dawn’s chill, and breathed in the streamers of heated air that roiled off her
mug of instant coffee.  The fire pit remained covered with ashes, although she had been sorely tempted to light a merry blaze upon emerging from her sleeping blanket into the stiff, cold air of this standard mountain morning. 

Her hands were warm at least, wrapped cozily around the
diameter of her coffee mug.  She stretched, and wiggled happy toes encased in thick woolen socks, smiling in relaxed pleasure.  When had she last taken the time to enjoy a sunrise?  She truly could not remember.  It may have been never.

Her eyes moved to the little beaver pond, its waters now still and dark, churning steam from its surface to shroud the air above in milky ribbons.  This strange world was so peaceful
ly serene. 

Chewing her lip, Alex was startled to realize that the hustle and bustle of her life suddenly seemed a distant memory.   There were no sirens, no motors,
and no voices carrying upward from the sidewalks below.  No fumes or exhaust, or the aroma of hotdogs wafting aloft from the closest street-corner. 

Just silence,
pure and simple, and the pungent scent of the moist earth and tangy ferns that patterned the ground around her campsite.  And beneath it all was the permeating essence of pine needles – millions of them.

The time on her wristwatch read 6:38 am.  Three months ago, she and Richard would have already dressed and shared their croissants and coffee, and would be on their way to the office.  They would be discussing the day’s agenda, for Richard liked to be prepped and ready before he walked through the office door.

Alex’s heart wrenched achingly, as she stuffed her gear into the pack, and then hefted it up to her shoulders.  She and Richard had never taken the time off for that honeymoon.  And now, as fate would have it, they never would. 

Blinking the tears from the fringes of her dark lashes, Alex gritted her teeth, determined not to start this beautiful day the same way that she had started every morning for the last three months.  Richard was gone, taken from this world prematurely in a
final whirl of screeching tires and twisted metal.

That night had been branded into her mind, stark and severe, and its memory was always lurking, ever ready to leap forth and overwhelm her.  Richard had dropped her off at the corner deli for their favorite treat, turkey and baby
Swiss on rye, with a whole jar of pickles to go.  He’d had an errand to run, and would meet her back at their apartment.  Alex had chatted overlong with the owner, Sam, a pleasant man in his mid-fifties with smiling eyes and a loud mouth that couldn’t seem quit.  

She finally broke away, her stomach growling with impatience, and pulling her wool coat about her, she clipped along the block at a good pace, figuring
that Richard would have made it back before her.  In the distance, she discerned a commotion outside the parking garage of the apartment complex, with the lights of several cruisers flashing in an irregular pattern across the darkened street. 

Alex felt a deep unease spreading in her stomach.  Then she recognized the black
Mercedes, with its front window imploded, glass everywhere, and panic crashed through her, roaring in her ears like a surging tide.  The officers were just standing there, watching as a paramedic laid a sheet over a lump on the ground.  She reached them, still clutching the deli bag with numbed fingers.               

“Richard?”  The voice that came out of her mouth was a screech, high and wavering.  She didn’t recognize it.  One of the officers took her by the shoulder, and his solemn brown eyes had trouble connecting with hers.
             

“Are you Mrs. Winters?”

“Yes.”  A whisper.

“There’s been an accident.”

Her body was humming, every inch of her skin on fire, and she stared at his frightened doe eyes, not the eyes of an officer, really, they should be hard and seasoned, but he was young, there was even a red pimple on his cheek. 

From far away, she heard the sound of the bag whispering through her fingers, the shatter of the pickle jar on the pavement, the
stringent smell of dill and garlic on the sharp night breeze... 

Damn it, why did she continue to do this to herself?
  The trail was a brown blur beneath her feet.  Somewhere, she had picked up a gnarled walking stick, and Alex became vaguely aware of the rhythmic thumping it made against the firm, brown turf, carpeted by a few stray leaves from seasons past.

Every day she relived this tortuous memory and afterwards, no matter how she tried she couldn’t keep it at bay.  It even haunted her in her dreams.

And why is that, Alex?
A small voice in her head tormented gleefully. 
Guilt perhaps?  Maybe you were glad that he got what he deserved?

“I loved him,” she whispered aloud to the trees.  “I did.  And he didn’t deserve to die
like that. Even if... even if he wasn’t perfect.”

Her stomach came up into her throat as she tripped over something, and the weight of the pack brought her painfully to her hands and knees.  Her cheek was stinging,
and a branch had taken a slim furrow of skin along with it in the fall. 

Brushing herself off, she rocked to her feet under the awkward pack, suddenly confused.  She had tripped over a small log, and the trail was now narrow and overgrown, if there was a trail at all anymore...
where the hell was the trail?

Alex spun around in a
full circle, scanning all the trees in the near vicinity for the tell-tale white dot that marked the trail she was using.  She saw nothing but a brown expanse of bark. Everything looked the same to her, forwards and back.  The mat of leaves beneath her boots had grown thicker, and was now interspersed with living ferns that nodded gently in the breeze.

“Shit!”  Shrugging off the pack, Alex dug out the trail map she had sent for in the mail while planning her trip.  Getting lost was not something that was supposed to
happen.  Refusing to panic, Alex set her mouth in a grim line and snapped open the neatly folded, crisp, new map. 

She had parked at Ole Bull State park along Route 144...
and had probably hiked a good ten… or twelve miles before breaking camp, judging by the soreness in her calves and thighs.  So walking a few hours this morning should have her somewhere in the vicinity of Hogback Hollow according to the map... but where the hell was the hollow?