After all, Arie was “the cancer girl,” and the whole town had pitched in over time. They had held bake sales, placed collection canisters in stores, sponsored bingo nights at the veterans center, and held fish fries in church parking lots, all to help pay her mounting and finally overwhelming medical bills.
The house wore its emptiness like a dark cloak. Eden McLauren didn’t need to go inside to know that her mother was gone. Yet despite being eighteen and grown, she felt like a four-year-old again. That was how old she was when it first began to dawn on her that her mother, Gwen, wasn’t like other mothers. She had huge mood swings—one day erupting with the energy of a volcano and tearing around in a frenzy, then crashing for days with such depression that she couldn’t get out of her bed.
Eden stepped through the side door in the carport and into the kitchen. Dishes were piled in the sink; cabinet doors were standing open. Gwen had left in a hurry, not even locking the door behind her. No way to tell when she’d left. No way to know when she’d return. The old run-down house seemed to sigh with a sense of abandonment.
Eden’s gaze swept the room, taking in the ripped vinyl flooring, the worn-out table and chairs, and the egg-yolk-yellow walls. Eden had painted them out of spite once when her mother had left, knowing how her mother hated the color yellow—the color of the sun and daffodils and school buses.
Eden’s old insecurities returned, along with the anger she felt toward her mother. Where did her mother go? Why did she run away? A child’s questions, she knew, but ones that still haunted her even after all these years. She spied the paring knife on the counter and picked it up, staring at the tip, longing to bring it to the inside of her arm, press it into the scarred skin and slice. She imagined the thin line of blood oozing onto her skin and the sudden pain that would dispel the other pain that lived inside her head. How good it would feel, this release, this freedom to bleed. Fighting the urge, she laid the knife down.
Maybe her mother hadn’t run off. Maybe she’d been called in to her cashier’s job at Piggly Wiggly grocery and rushed out the door, carelessly leaving the door unlocked and forgetting to write a note. Eden went upstairs into her mother’s bedroom and checked her hope at the door. Contents from drawers were heaped on the floor, closet hangers picked clean, making it look as if a burglar had ransacked the room. Eden stared at the mess, hardly able to breathe. She glanced to the closet shelf and saw the blue duffel bag was missing. She remembered they’d had their first screaming fight over it when she’d come home from school at age eleven and found Gwen furiously packing it.
“Where are you going?” she’d asked, standing in her mother’s bedroom doorway, mystified.
“Away. I have to go away.”
“Go where? Why?” Fear. Confusion.
“I can’t say. Just away. For a little while.”
Eden had thought she was accustomed to her mother’s weirdness and had adapted to it, her “ups” of all-night activity and “downs” of days of retreating under her bedcovers, unable to function, but Gwen had never packed and left before. “I’ll go with you.”
“No! You have school.”
She watched Gwen zip the duffel closed, hardly able to breathe. “But … but when will you be back?”
“Um … a few days.”
“What about me?”
Gwen had dropped to her knees and taken hold of Eden’s small shoulders. “You’re such a big girl. I left money for you in the kitchen drawer for lunches. You can get ready for school all by yourself. You’ll be fine, honey. Just fine.”
“But … but I’ll be alone. I don’t want to be alone.”
“I’ll be back soon,” Gwen promised. She stood and picked up the duffel bag, then started to the door.
Eden ran and grabbed the handles of the duffel bag, trying to rip it from her mother’s hands. “Don’t go, Mama!”
Gwen won the fight, pushing Eden onto the bed and stroking her black curly hair. “You’ll be fine,” she said. “If I leave, the bad things will follow me and not bother you.”
“What bad things?”
“Shhh. If I hurry, I can sneak past them.” She ran out the door, heaving the duffel bag over her shoulder.
“Mama!” Eden screamed. All she’d heard was the slamming of the front door and the start of the car motor, and then silence descended in a blanket of desolation.
That first time Eden cried, afraid of being left alone. She’d never known a father, a subject that would set Gwen off if mentioned. Over time, Eden stopped asking. Gwen was gone nine days and had returned looking dirty and disheveled, emotionally empty, almost robotic. No explanations. No apologies. Life resumed. It happened many times over the years, this leaving. Eden learned to cope. To cut. To endure. But she never cried again.
This was Eden’s life with a bipolar mother. Manic-depressive. An illness. A disorder. Lifelong. Life-altering. Not Eden’s fault. Except … it always felt like her fault.
Eden kicked the pile of her mother’s clothing deeper into the closet and slammed the door. She crossed to the tiny bathroom, saw that the floor was littered with a colorful array of pills scattered like tiny petals from a bouquet of pharm flowers. When had Gwen stopped taking them this time? She’d been stable at Eden’s graduation, two weeks before. But it only took a day or so for her mother’s demons to arrive when she stopped her meds. Eden never understood why Gwen would stop the pills that kept the lid on her illness. What was wrong with normal?
On the meds. Off the meds. Sometimes Gwen stayed on the meds for months. Day-to-day life was smoother then. Gwen was never abusive to Eden. She turned inward, neglectful, heard whispers from voices Eden couldn’t hear. The voices always told her to stop her meds. Or did she stop taking her meds and then hear the voices? Eden never knew. However, Eden took the blame, telling herself that if she were a better daughter or a different daughter, prettier or more lovable, her mother would have had no reason to run away. During that time, Eden had taken up cutting, and watching the blood seep from the cut gave her release and a sense of control. Over time, the scars multiplied, on her arms, torso, and inside her thighs—relief for a while.
As Eden stared at the scattered pills, she felt the familiar tightening sensation grip her belly. The pressure was building, closing her inside a dark cloud. If she didn’t leave now, she wouldn’t be able to stop from slicing open her skin. She thought of Tony, of her promise to him made at sixteen to stop her cutting and to come to him instead, to burn away one desire with another—his bed, his body becoming a substitute for her blood sacrifice. She should go to him now before she cut.
Reluctantly she reached for her cell phone and punched in Ciana’s number. When her friend answered, she put great effort into sounding breezy. “Bad news, girlfriend. The boss wants me to stay and do an inventory.”
“No!”
“ ’Fraid so. I hate inventories. Takes forever and is b-o-r-i-n-g. You and Arie have fun tonight.”
“Shouldn’t you call her?”
“Please handle it for me, okay? This weekend we’ll do something spectacular, just the three of us.”
“I’ll tell her.” Ciana paused. “You all right? You sound out of breath.”
“Fine. Just bummed about missing tonight. Please tell her I’m kicked about her remission.” She turned off her phone and headed down the stairs, thinking back to the summer before ninth grade when she turned fourteen and everything changed. That was the summer she had first met twenty-one-year-old Tony Cicero. And two years later traded one compulsion for another.
“What do you mean you can’t come with us?” Eden asked Arie.
“We’ve planned this. It’s your celebration,” Ciana added.
Arie gestured to the mob scene of relatives and well-wishers in her backyard. “I’m stuck,” she said. “I promised Mom I’d stay. They’ve got some big surprise planned.”
Eden looked out onto the patio and lawn, at the crowds around the tables and grill. “Just how many relatives do you have?”
&n
bsp; “A bunch,” Arie said with a sigh.
“But this dance hall is brand-new and really hot,” Eden argued. “Best band in Nashville.”
Ciana wasn’t thrilled about Eden’s plan either. She’d have opted for dinner at Chili’s and a movie, but when Eden set her mind to something, it was hard to weasel out of it.
Arie shrugged helplessly. “Can’t help it. Plus, Eric is bringing home his latest girlfriend.” Arie leaned closer and with an exaggerated lift of her newly regrown eyebrows added, “This is ‘the One.’ ”
“What happened to his other two ‘Ones’?” Eden deadpanned.
“Good one!” Ciana said, turning to Eden for a high five.
“That’s mean,” Arie said with a wry grin. “My brother’s had a bad year and you both know it.”
As if you didn’t have a worse one, Ciana thought, but didn’t say it. Ciana thought Arie looked tired, not long enough out of chemo to be going with them to Nashville, but Eden seemed oblivious.
A gaggle of running children burst between the three of them, with girls screaming and boys peppering them with water pistols.
“You two go on. No use missing out on fun for the two of you. If you like it, we’ll all go next time. Promise,” Arie said.
“Oh, I don’t think we should—” Ciana started.
“We’re going!” Eden said emphatically, looping her arm through Ciana’s and dragging her backward. She waved cheerfully to Arie. “Hugs and kisses.”
“Call me tomorrow,” Arie shouted as they went through the side gate.
“But I don’t want—” Ciana started to say.
“Hush up,” Eden interrupted her. “It’s a forty-five-mile drive to the dance saloon, a chance for us to have a good time, and you’re not going to whine about going for the entire drive. Hear me?” She stuffed Ciana into her car.
“I’m not a good dancer,” she groused as Eden headed toward the freeway.
“No one will notice. They’ll all be drunk. And before you tell me you don’t have an ID, look in my purse. I have doctored driver’s licenses for both of us.”
“How?”
“Tony, of course. I usually only flash it when I’m with him, but I begged him to make one for you, and he did!”
Ciana didn’t care much for Tony. She thought he was too old for Eden, too much of an unknown for her. There were rumors about him running in gangs that moved drugs, but he seemed to have some kind of hold on her friend. Eden didn’t do much to break his hold either. The one thing Tony had accomplished with Eden was to make her stop cutting herself. Ciana should be pleased, and she was, but she still didn’t like the guy.
Knowing that Eden spent every spare minute with the man, Ciana asked, “Where’s Tony this weekend?”
“He’s in Atlanta, so that’s why I planned for us to all go out together.”
“Sorry Arie couldn’t come.”
“Me too. I don’t know when I’ll be free to do this again.”
Ciana bit her tongue to keep from saying something sarcastic. She punched on the radio, aware that the car Eden was driving had been a gift from Tony too. “So I won’t be a prisoner every time Mom takes off,” Eden had explained when she proudly showed off her wheels to Ciana and Arie for the first time. Ciana was glad the car helped out Eden, but she didn’t like thinking about what Eden might have had to trade for it.
The dance saloon, Boot Steppers, was on the southwestern side of Nashville near the banks of a slow-moving creek. Eden parked in an open grassy field because both parking lots were full. So was most of the field. “Told you this place was hot,” Eden said, locking the car door.
A bright full moon lit their way to the freestanding clapboard building that had been designed to look like an old Wild West saloon. Loud music poured from the front doors, and men and women were gathered outside to grab a smoke. Olivia would have pronounced the whole scene “unseemly,” her word of choice for anything that went against her standards of good manners. Good thing she’d never caught Ciana and her friends lighting up in high school.
Ciana wore a belly-skimming sleeveless top, a short tight denim skirt, and her sexiest aqua-colored Western boots with long suede fringe. Her thick cinnamon-colored hair was clipped upward at either side of her face and fell into a cascade past her shoulders.
They walked into a giant room where a greeter at the door asked for their IDs, and Eden whipped hers out. Ciana felt guilty about her fake ID—eighteen was a long way from twenty-one, but the bouncer stamped her hand and passed her through.
“Come on!” Eden shouted above the noise. She grabbed Ciana’s arm and pulled her to the bar where three bartenders worked frantically to fill orders. “Cold pitcher of beer,” she told one of them.
“I don’t like beer,” Ciana said.
“Don’t start with me. You’re going to have fun! And a little alcohol will loosen up that tight butt of yours.” Eden threw down some cash and scooped up the pitcher and two frosty mugs from the bartender. Together, she and Ciana wove their way around the sides of the huge, crammed dance floor in search of an empty table. Ciana found one way back against the wall away from the crush of bodies.
Eden never sat down. She poured Ciana a tall frosty glass and said, “Just for tonight, take some chances. Let go, girlfriend.” Eden glanced behind her. “Back in a jiff!”
Ciana watched Eden merge into a line dance out on the floor but lost sight of her as others crowded in. Colored spotlights spun over the dancers in bright red, green, and blue while glittering disco balls rained sparkles across every surface. Cheesy, she decided. No true saloon in the Old West spun disco balls. Ciana envied Eden in a way. She was uninhibited around people and had a good time and few regrets for hard partying.
Ciana, on the other hand, was always aware of who she was—a Beauchamp. Olivia’s doing. Her grandmother had drummed certain rules into Ciana’s head since she’d been a small child. Her mother never cared about them, but she did. Rule one: A Beauchamp must never sully the family name. Rule two: A Beauchamp lived by the motto Do unto others as you’d have others do unto you. Rule three: A Beauchamp never— She halted the recital in her head. Stop! What was the matter with her? No one in Nashville knew or cared who she was. Still, she missed Arie. This night was supposed to be about her. Arie was sweet and long-suffering and would have kept her company while Eden played.
She grabbed the filled frosted glass, which was already beginning to sweat and grow warm on the table. Eden was right. It would be easier to get it down cold. She put the oversized mug to her lips and chugged it. She set down the empty glass with a satisfied thud, burped loudly, and wiped foam from her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Dance?”
She looked up to see the most gorgeous guy she’d ever laid eyes on standing in front of her. Had he seen her guzzle the mug of beer? Belch like a redneck? She heard Olivia whisper, Unseemly.
The guy grinned, showing off straight white teeth and deep dimples. He winked, then dabbed her upper lip with his finger. “Missed a spot.”
If only the floor would swallow her. “Um … thanks.”
“Come on.” He took her hand and led her to the dance floor. By now the line dance was over and couples were moving to country swing. The man took her hand, pushing her out, pulling her close, twirling her around and under his arm. The movement and the beer hitting her bloodstream began to make her woozy. Please don’t let me fall down. Just then the band segued into a slower tempo. Piano keys tinkled and her partner pulled Ciana close to him, pressing her against his warm body. She felt every lean, well-muscled cell of him down to the tops of her boots.
His arm felt like a steel band around her waist, and his hands were rough and calloused. She wasn’t a serial dater, had considered the boys in high school silly and immature. The few dates she’d had with college guys had disappointed and led nowhere. But in this man’s arms, she knew he was no pretender with a fake ID or a frat boy out to get wasted.
“Loosen up,” he said. His breath i
n her ear caused goose bumps along her arms. “I won’t bite.”
She pulled back and saw his good-natured grin and his amazing green eyes. The beer mellowed her and she leaned into him, resting her head in the crook of his neck. He smelled wonderful, like leather and spice.
Onstage, the lead singer began an old Garth Brooks song that had always been one of Ciana’s favorites, “The Dance.” The singer sounded eerily like Brooks as he sang, “Our lives are better left to chance. I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance.” The song spoke to her heart, to the arms of the man holding her, to her longing.
When the music ended, he pulled back, searched her face with his incredible green eyes, and said, “Nice.… You’re a very pretty lady.”
Their gazes held, and her pulse pounded. What magic was in those eyes that stirred her so? That made her want to taste his incredibly perfect lips?
He said, “How about some introductions. I’m—”
She quickly pressed her fingers against those lips. “No names. Tonight it’s about the dance.”
His gaze narrowed, considering her, before he tipped his head to one side in concession. “For now.”
She broke the spell of his gaze and turned toward the table, her blood singing. He returned to the table with her. Ciana could tell that Eden had stopped by because the pitcher was low and the other mug was gone.
“Want another?” he asked.
“Um … not really.”
“You don’t like beer, do you?”
“Not so much,” she confessed, remembering their meeting.
“Tell you what, why don’t I get you a margarita?” He didn’t wait for her answer, just headed toward the bar.
She watched him, the way he walked, and could tell he’d ridden his share of horses. His boots were well worn, as were his jeans. He wasn’t a weekend cowboy like so many guys in Nashville. When he returned, he set the icy-cold drink in front of her and settled across from her. “Bourbon,” he said, raising his glass in a salute to her and taking a swallow.