A Deadly Influence (Abby Mullen Thrillers #1)(22)

“How did you end up in New York?” Abby asked. “I thought you’d go live somewhere more rural.”

Eden frowned. “Why?”

“You spent your entire time in the wildflower fields behind the farm.”

The sudden memory almost made her smile, which in turn consumed her with guilt. Here she was, having a casual conversation while her son was being held by malicious strangers. “I totally forgot about the fields,” she said, her voice cracking slightly. “When Father noticed that I spent all my time there, he started calling them the Garden of Eden, remember?”

Abby nodded. “They were beautiful.”

“Were they?” Eden couldn’t recall how it had looked. All she could summon was the feeling of the rugged soil between her fingers and the smell of the wet earth after it rained.

“Yeah, they were.” Abby smiled sadly.

“I really should have gone somewhere rural. I did for a time, but I ended up here. And if I lived somewhere else, Nathan wouldn’t have been—”

“Don’t blame yourself.”

But now that she’d started going down that road, she couldn’t stop. “Do you think that if I’d called the police when I first saw that guy in the street, Nathan would be home now?”

“I don’t know.”

She should have done it. She should have insisted more about the bus stop’s location. She should have found a job that let her be home in time to meet her son after school. A tapestry of terrible mistakes and moments of weakness culminating in her son’s abduction.

“Eden,” Abby said. “I have to ask. Did you get my number from Isaac?”

Eden hesitated before answering. “Yes. When I saw you on the news, I wanted to reach out. He didn’t want to give it to me at first. He said you left the past behind you and that he didn’t think you’d be happy to hear from me.”

Abby didn’t seem about to contradict her. Eden exhaled and added, “I finally convinced him to give it to me but promised I’d sleep on it a few days before I called you. And I guess I never really managed to go through with it. Reach out, I mean.”

Abby nodded, her jaw clenched.

“I chat with him every week,” Eden said. “And before, we stayed in touch with actual letters. He was like my pen pal.”

“Same here,” Abby said. “I didn’t want to stay in touch at first. Just wanted to leave it all behind me. But he sent me letter after letter, and eventually I succumbed.”

“He was right to insist,” Eden said. “Family’s the most important thing.”

“It wasn’t a family,” Abby said. “You know that.”

“It was a family for me,” Eden answered defensively.

“You just think it was. It was never a family.” Abby’s tone became sharp again. “And Moses Wilcox was never Father. It was a cult. And Moses Wilcox was the bastard who created it. And in the end, he was the one who took everyone with him to hell.”





CHAPTER 15


After Eden went back to bed, Abby opened her computer and sat motionless in her chair, gazing at her laptop’s screen. Long-lost memories were floating to the surface of her consciousness. She could feel them emerging, lone fragments—a bowl of soup in the mess hall, the laughter of her biological parents when she said something funny, her Sunday dress stretched on her bed, so white and clean. But behind those glimpses, she knew that other memories lurked. Not the ones she’d forgotten but the ones she’d repressed, pushing them into a dark corner in her mind. Now that the dam was cracking, they’d gush out as well.

It was talking about the Garden of Eden that had done it. Just mentioning it brought back the scents. The sweet smells of the flowers Eden tended to. What were they? Abby recalled purple flowers . . . lavender? And underneath that scent, something else. A stench that didn’t belong.

Chicken feed.

The sudden realization knocked her breath away. The Wilcox community had been nearby a poultry feed mill, and on some days, depending on the wind, everything smelled like fermented grain.

What was it her mom used to say?

It smells like—

“—the armpit of a skunk here,” Mommy said. “We’re knee-deep in flowers, and all I can smell is that awful chemical stench.”

She was carrying two large buckets as they paced through the field. A pair of scissors was wedged in her belt. Every few steps she’d halt, snip a few flowers, put them in one of the buckets, and move on.

Abihail followed behind her, a handful of flowers clutched in her fist. She loved picking flowers with Mommy. Later, she knew, Mommy would make beautiful bouquets from the flowers she picked, and her daddy would go sell them in the flower shop that the Wilcox Family owned in the nearby town. Father Wilcox sometimes said that Mommy was a genius of beauty and color. And whenever he said that, Abihail’s chest would fill with pride.

She picked another flower, a small yellow one, adding it to her own bouquet. Bees hummed around them. A bee had stung her several weeks before, and Abihail had refused to enter the fields afterward—until Father Wilcox told her she had to. He explained that like them, bees did God’s work, spreading beauty in the world. And if a bee had stung her, it was only doing God’s work, and it was probably a small punishment for Abihail’s impure thoughts.