Finding Eden (A Sign of Love Novel)(77)

She shook her head. "No, because it's just stuff I was looking into. I don't have any answers yet, but I thought if I kept going, I might."
"Like what?"
"Like who he really was. Where he came from."
"What were you looking at?"
She leaned up slightly so she could look at me. Her eyes were wide like they always were when she latched onto a topic that interested her. I love you so much, Morning Glory. "Well, the more I looked into the things the Holy Book taught, some of our rituals, the way Acadia was organized, the names for things, I researched on the Internet and found that a lot of it was based on Greek society, Greek religion, Greek myths. It all fit, almost every bit of it." Her voice sounded more animated. "Not everything, but a lot of it."
"What else?"
"Well, his name—which we know now wasn't really his name. Hector. Isn't that sort of a strange name for a blond, blue-eyed man?"
"I don't know. I guess." There were a few Hispanic men named Hector who worked on the construction site with Xander and I. I always cringed when I heard someone call out their name.
"And his sons - Jason, Phineus, Simon and Myles." Her voice cracked slightly on the last name and she laid her head back down on my chest. I pulled her tighter. She still carried grief in her heart for those innocent boys she had known much better than I had. The ones she'd loved.
"What about the names?" I whispered, leaning down to kiss her head.
"They're all names from Greek history or Greek mythology. One is a god, one a hero, one a sea spirit . . . I can't remember the other one. I have it on the back of my door," she said very quietly.
I thought about that for a minute. "Okay, but what does that all mean?" I asked. "So Hector was obsessed with Greek history for some reason? So much so that he created a religion out of it? Or used it as some sort of inspiration. What does that mean?"
"I don't know. I think it might have started in Indiana though."
I frowned. "Why Indiana?"
"Because I think that's where he brought me when he took me from my parents. He kept me somewhere for almost two years before I came to Acadia. I have this brief flash of memory, of waking up in a car for just a split second and seeing a sign that said something about the Crossroads of America. I always remembered that, but I had no idea what it meant. I looked it up–I Googled it," she said, nodding her head as if she was agreeing with the proper use of a new term. I smiled. "That's what the welcome sign to Indiana says. We arrived at the house I was in with him for the next couple of years very shortly after that. That's where my memory starts fading again."
My blood felt like it dropped a couple of degrees. "What did he do to you there?" I asked.
She shook her head. "Nothing like what you might be thinking. He . . . made me read the Holy Book a lot. He talked to me about my role . . . constantly. It's foggy. I was grieving for my parents. I thought they'd died. I was alone . . . a lot. I wasn't allowed to go outside very often. It's all very . . . blurry."
"He brainwashed you."
She seemed to think about that for a minute. "Maybe."
"Only it didn't work very well, my strong Morning Glory."
"No, it didn't. But on some topics, it did. I couldn't remember so much . . ."
"Why do you think it started in Indiana? Acadia was already functioning. Why would he bring you back to his home?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe that's where he felt safest, where he had a place to bring me other than Acadia. Maybe he had things to wrap up in his life. Who knows?"
"You were considering going there, weren't you?" I asked.