Virginia was watching her like she’d lost her mind. None of them had ever seen her make a hasty decision in her careful, claustrophobic life. “I’ll be fine,” Eden promised, and she meant it. For the first time in years, she could breathe deeply. “Don’t worry about me.”
“How could I not? What will you do? There isn’t exactly an abundance of jobs like this in Clover.”
Might as well plant the seeds now. People were undoubtedly already whispering about what was going on at Green Pines. “The family that came to stay on the farm has a business selling organic soaps and bath products. They’re doing so well, they’re expanding their operation. I might help.”
Again, that look like she’d gone insane, simply waltzed up to the deep end and jumped off. As if nothing about her made sense anymore.
It was probably an expression Eden would need to get used to.
Chapter Thirteen
“Am I crazy, Dad?”
Her father grimaced and dropped a dollop of whipped cream on top of her slice of apple pie. “You’re not crazy. You’re going through some stuff, and you’ve got to find your feet again, that’s all. If you start listening to Ginny Burke—that’s when I’ll know you’ve lost your marbles, kiddo.”
“If you say so.” It was her second slice of apple pie—and if being able to metabolize it quickly wasn’t a fringe benefit of being a werewolf, she didn’t know what was—but she thought her father’s approval had done more to soothe her doubts than his baking. “She’s right about one thing, though. I can’t keep the house without a job unless I dip into my savings, and I don’t want to do that if I don’t have to.”
“I can help you out with that,” he assured her.
“No, Dad. You’ve got the diner to worry about already. And you’ve always helped out with taxes on the farm.”
“Well, you have to have someplace to live, Edie.”
She dragged her fork through the whipped cream, leaving little indentions behind. “I was thinking…”
He bent far enough to catch her gaze. “Of what?”
“Moving back to the farm.” She didn’t add with Jay. Not that they’d discussed as much, but after last night she was having a hard time imagining a bed of hers that didn’t have him in it.
Which wasn’t something she planned to admit to her father.
But he only nodded. “Last I checked, Chief Ancheta was spending most of his time out there too.”
Eden avoided his gaze again and cursed herself for blushing. “Most of his time, yeah. Probably less once he has to go back to work.”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “I’m glad, you know. That there’s something going on out there at the farm now that doesn’t have anything to do with bad memories. It’s a good thing, a nice change.”
She thought about the shadows. The whispers and chills, the breezes that tickled the back of the neck and vanished. “Sometimes I still think it’s haunted,” she admitted. “I never really grew out of seeing ghosts out there, I guess.”
Her father gave her a stern look. “It’s not haunted, sweetheart. It’s just…a sad place.”
“I guess.” She took a forkful of pie and let the sweetness distract her from how little she wanted to ask her next question. “Has Zack been talking to you? I barely see him.”
“He’s stopped by a few times.” Austin started wiping the counter. “He talks a little, tells me stories about Lorelei and Mae. Sometimes he wants to talk about the folks who didn’t make it.”
At least he’d been confiding in someone. It eased a pressure in her chest she hadn’t realized was there. “They lost a lot of people. It’ll take some time for everyone to heal, but they’re starting to get there.”
Her father stilled and lowered his voice. “You never said how things went. The full moon?”
She couldn’t describe it in words. Fear melting into joy. Strangers becoming family. “It was good. I’m good.” She put down the fork and reached across the counter to grab his hand. “I’m great. I really am.”
“You promise?”
“Absolutely.”
A slow smile spread over his face, bringing out the deep-set wrinkles around his mouth and eyes. “You don’t know how glad I am to hear that, Edie.”
Lifting up, she leaned over to kiss his cheek. “I know you’ve worried about me. But I feel like things are falling into place.”
“As long as you’re happy, that’s all I need.” A bit of his smile faded. “You haven’t always felt like you belonged, knowing what you did about Zack and his mother. A whole other world that wasn’t part of everyone else’s. I’m sorry we didn’t handle that better, your mom and me.”
Eden settled back down on her stool. “You did your best. That’s all any of us do. I just wish…”
He tensed. “Wish what?”
He probably already knew. She’d been a child—a scared, awkward child—how well could she have hidden it? But in all the years since, they’d never discussed it. The secret was a splinter, one that had festered for years.
“I wish I’d told you,” she whispered. No one was close enough to hear, but it was easier to say if the words were nothing but soft breath. “Zack made me promise not to tell anyone how bad it was, but I wish I had. Maybe I wouldn’t still wonder if I could have made it better.”
His hands tightened around the towel. “We didn’t know how bad it was. If we had, it wouldn’t have mattered—” He looked up, his gaze clashing with Eden’s. “Your mom and I talked about taking Zack, it must have been a hundred times. There were reasons we didn’t—why we couldn’t—but none of it was ever your fault. Not ever.”
“I know.” She covered her father’s hands with her own. They felt fragile now, old and worn and human, and she had so much more strength at her disposal. “I’m still working on believing it in my gut, but that’s another thing that takes time.”
He stared at her in silence for long moments, not even breathing, and finally sighed. “Time. It’s supposed to heal all.”
Was he thinking of Zack’s childhood, or the more recent loss of her mother? “Does it?”
The last customer of the lunch rush called out a farewell and pushed through the door, leaving them alone. Austin set aside the dishtowel and braced his hands on the counter. “Your mother didn’t know. She wouldn’t have understood, and that’s not an excuse. It’s the truth, and I…didn’t want to lose her.”
A shiver of warning shook Eden as she studied her father, his tense shoulders and racing heart.
Fear. “What didn’t she know, Dad?”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “When I would talk about Zack, how he needed to come live with us, Albus would threaten me. Said he’d tell Marla everything, and my happy little family wouldn’t be so happy anymore. And I knew he was right, damn it, because Kathy was the one thing your mother didn’t understand.”
Kathy. Zack’s mother. “I thought she was gone before you met Mom.”
“Before we were together, yes. But your mother knew her. She knew—” His voice broke. “I loved her.”
“Oh.” Oh, God. So much pain in his face, in his eyes, and Eden was afraid to ask the question hanging between them. “I—I didn’t realize.”
He rounded the counter and dropped to the stool beside hers. “You weren’t meant to, Edie. No one was. Kathy… I don’t think she loved me. She was lonely, God knows—Albus treated her like shit—but that’s all. A stupid kid and his brother’s lonesome wife. A bad country song, that’s what it was.” His eyes clouded. “Except for Zack.”
Zack, who looked more like her father than she did. Looked more like her father than he had Albus. Oh, she’d heard the rumors, the spiteful whispers. She’d discounted them the same way she’d ignored everything else the small-town rumor mill spit out about Zack—because they didn’t know what she did. They didn’t know who he was, what he was.
She shook her head, denying the words her father hadn’t said. “His father was another werewolf. That’s why he was born a wolf.”
“That’s what Kathy always said, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. The only reason for the resemblance—and I know you see it. Just about everyone in this damn town has.”
If Albus had confirmed the town’s suspicions, no force on earth could have convinced them it wasn’t true. But he’s a werewolf wasn’t a workable defense in the court of public opinion.
And why was she thinking about that when Zack could be—
Oh, God. “You think he’s my brother.”
“It’s supposed to be impossible,” he said. “But maybe it was meant to be, that magic, one-in-a-million chance…and I blew it. I left him alone to deal with a man who beat the hell out of him.”
Numb shock held most of her frozen. All except the quiet, analytical part of her brain, which drew a careful line between a baby who shouldn’t have been born a wolf and a woman who shouldn’t have changed before the full moon. Two data points were barely a coincidence. They weren’t a pattern.
Except if one was possible… “I wasn’t supposed to change when I did,” she heard herself whispering, the confession tumbling free without her permission. She wanted to yank the words back, to bite her tongue and tell her father that everything was okay, that he hadn’t abandoned his son out of fear.
But the words kept coming. “I wasn’t supposed to change before the full moon, but I did. Jay and his friends are trying not to freak me out about it, but I know I’m unusual. Maybe the rules aren’t as unbreakable as the wolves think.”
“Could be.” Her father wrapped one arm around her shoulders. “I wanted to tell you. I should have already, just like I should have told Zack. He might want to find out for certain. Then again, he might wish I’d kept my mouth shut. Either way, it’s time this family was done with secrets.”