"Oh . . . I, well. We'll talk about that—"
She shook her head vehemently. "No, Eden, please. I can't bear it. I won't be able to sleep another night if you're not under the same roof." She started to cry quietly again. "Now that I have you back, I'll die if you don't stay."
"Carolyn . . . Mom," I said, "I'm not going anywhere." I smiled at her. "I'm back, and I'll never go away again."
"Promise me," she said, her voice cracking.
"I promise." I smiled up at Molly as she handed me a glass of apple juice and set a glass of wine in front of Carolyn.
Carolyn took a big sip of her wine and leaned back. She looked away from me, out over the pool. "Your father helped build an investment firm from the ground up. It was very successful. We suddenly lived a lifestyle we had never dreamed of . . . cars, houses, vacations . . ." She waved her hand in the air. "We learned that all the material things meant nothing in the end. But of course, at the time, it seemed like everything we'd ever dreamed of." She was quiet for a minute, looking lost in thought. "Anyway," she looked back at me, "one of your father's co-workers was caught stealing money he was supposed to be investing. There have been higher profile cases like it on the news in recent years, and everyone has heard of those, but back then, I barely understood it."
"So my father wasn't the one stealing?" I asked.
She shook her head. "No, but he had looked the other way. He knew what was going on and his failure to act allowed it to continue. His failure to report what he knew resulted in hundreds of people losing their life savings. In the end, the whole company, they were all disgraced." She waved her hand through the air again. "The details don't matter so much, Eden, trust me, I knew them all and they still didn't help me make sense of it, other than to say that it came down to greed—levels of it, yes, but all greed in the end." A brief look of pain skittered across her features as if she was living back there for just a moment.
I looked down.
"Your father took it hard. Not just the loss of his job, all the stuff, but the disgrace. The shame ate at him like a cancer. And that's when Hector came along."
My eyes flew to hers.
"He first came to us as a man who had lost everything and understood where we were. At first we were skeptical, naturally, but . . . the more he talked . . . told Ben, your father, that it wasn't his fault, that the greed of society had seeped into his soul . . . well, it sounds ridiculous now. But at the time, and with how far we'd fallen, I guess we were searching for something, anything—"
"I understand, Mom. I do."
She looked back at me sadly. "Of course you do. I'm sorry for that."
I shook my head. "Please go on," I said.
She sighed. "Well, your father, he became almost obsessed with Hector, although, at the time, we knew him as Damon Abas. Your father was intrigued with this society that Damon . . . Hector had started, this place where there was supposedly no greed or sin, no pain or competition. This community had started several years earlier, but Hector had spent that time constructing the buildings and finding the first people who would live and work there. Hector and your father talked non-stop about how it would all operate . . . the things people would need down the line, what was working, what wasn't." She shook her head again. "Even with the talk of gods and visions and other things that were difficult to believe in . . . it healed something in your father for a time, gave him something to cling to, a purpose, an escape, and so for that I was so very grateful. I ignored my suspicions about Hector . . . I did just what your father had done. I looked the other way because I was benefitting from it." Tears welled in her eyes again. "I guess if you choose to trust a snake, you deserve his venom."
"Carolyn . . ." Molly said, but Carolyn shook her head and wiped at her eyes.
"Anyway, Hector came to your father specifically because Hector had this idea about a council. I know now from the news reports on Acadia what came to be as far as that went, but when he first spoke of it, he spoke of a group of men who understood what it was to fall in the "big society" as he called it—a group of men who had personal knowledge about the evils of our culture—men who could guide and mold this 'land of plenty.'"
I thought about what I'd learned from the news reports on the Acadia council—things I hadn't understood when I'd lived there. Hector had gone around the country gathering together a group of men who had been disgraced in one way or another and were desperately looking for a place to find respect again, to reclaim some small measure of the power they'd once had. And of course, there was the financial gain. Hector was paying them a yearly salary—far more than any of them had been making in their previous jobs. The police had looked for the money trail, but apparently Hector had known how to hide it. The property had been paid for in cash and put in his false name as well. They'd never found a thing that would clue them in to Hector's true identity.
And of course, the council had been chosen to benefit Hector in a myriad of ways as well . . . a judge . . . a police officer . . . I moved that aside.
Sadness welled inside me as she discussed Acadia, even the idea of it. It had been my home. It had been where I fell deeply in love. And somewhere inside me, just speaking of it, sparked a longing so intense, it shocked me, because it had also been the place where life ended. Of course, it wasn't the place I longed for, but a person. And for me, that's where he'd always be. I swallowed heavily.