In Search of Eden
Authors: Linda Nichols
In Search of Eden
Copyright © 2007
Linda Nichols
Cover design by Andrea Gjeldum
Cover photography by Graeme Montgomery
Scripture quotations are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
And from the Amplified Bible. Old Testament copyright © 1965, 1987 by the Zondervan Corporation. The Amplified New Testament copyright © 1958, 1987 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâelectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwiseâwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2012
eISBN 978-1-4412-6029-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
For Bridget,
with love.
Contents
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all my friends, both writerly and not, who have held my hand and encouraged me during the writing process and who have upheld me with their prayers. Readers and friends I've never met have prayed for me regularly, making me realize again what an incredible bond we have in Christ, whether we meet on this earth or later in our Father's home.
Debbie Macomber, Susan Plunkett and Krysteen Seelen have been wonderful, as have Sherrie Holmes, Sherry Maiura, Bob Moffat, JoAnn Jensen, and MaeLou Larson, the Thursday night scribes. My agent, Theresa Park, has seen me through this journey as she has the others. I would also like to thank Sharon Asmus and Carol Johnson for their wonderful editing as well the entire Bethany House staffâpros one and all.
The book would not have been written without the testimony of Lloyd and Joan Brown, two of my heroes.
As always, my devotional life spills over into my writing. To that end, I want to thank all the teachers of grace. Billy Sarno, pastor of Tacoma Foursquare Church, and three other wonderful Christian pastors and writers have blessed me incredibly: John Eldredge, David Seamands, and Steve McVey. I would also like to thank the people at Tacoma Foursquare who have loved me and prayed for me and my family.
Finally, I would like to thank my cousin, Lane Perry, who gave me the inspiration to visit Abingdon and set my story there. I have taken certain liberties with Abingdon's geography and places. Its charm and history are true.
“He will make her wilderness
like Eden,
and her desert like the garden
of the Lord.”
ISAIAH 51:3 AMP
Prologue
Eden's hands trembled as she opened the heavy box. She had waited ten years to look at its contentsâuntil the conditions in the instructions had been met.
Wait until you don't need to know what's inside the box to know who you are inside your heart,
the tag had said. So each year on her birthday she had asked herself if the time was right. And each year something inside her had hesitated, and so she had put it away. This year, on her twenty-first, with college and Christmas and applying to police academy, she had almost forgotten about the box. Mom had reminded her, looking at her with a steady, settled smile. So she knew the time was right.
She lifted off the lid and carefully folded back the sheets of tissue paper. She gave a half smile of puzzlement when she saw the contents. It wasn't what she'd been expecting.
It was an artist's spiral sketch padâa huge oneâand with so many things glued to and stuck between the pages that it bowed out into an arc of papery waves. A scrapbook of sorts, but raw and lively, not polished and cleanly edged. The front was covered with a collage of glue-bubbled images: a country road heading off into the woods, babies and mothers, an iceberg. She fanned the pages and saw sketches and tiny watercolors, handwritten and typed entries, and more magazine pictures. She didn't understand. But she would, and she was finally ready. She opened the front cover, and there inside was an envelope addressed to her. Her heart began to beat faster. She opened the flap and slid out the solitary piece of stationery.
Dearest Eden,
she read.
Today is your birthday. I don't know if I will see you, or even if I'm a part of your life. But I want you to know that you are in my heart, as you always have been. I think of you every day. I pray for you every day. I pray that your life will be happy and blessed. I pray I did the right thing.
My friend says the luckiest people are the ones who don't walk away. Those words have settled in, and I carry them around with me because, for most of my life, I was what you would call unreliable. It's not that I wanted to be that way. It's just who I became. I have walked away from almost everything in my life at least once. When things became marred, I always thought they were ruined. I was the kind of person my friend would say was unlucky because I floated away from things like dandelion fluff drifts off in the breeze. Almost before I realized it, I let go of people and jobs and promises and just slipped away, the wind lofting me off to someplace new. But I am getting ahead of myselfâanother one of my faults.
I'm sure you'll see them all for yourself before I'm finished because I'm going to give you the whole unvarnished story. Not the sanitized version. This is another friend's expression, and it was his idea, too. “Gather it all up,” he said. “The old parts and the new parts. The parts you're proud of and the parts you're not, and put them all together in your book. It will be your gift to her,” he said, “and you will know the right time to give it.” So that is what I've done. I have written all of it down just as I remember it and as others have told me they remember. I've told the tale in total honesty, which, I have to admit, is a good quality of mine. I do have a few, I think. But that's up to you to decide.
Anyway, you'll see. I'll tell you all about what happened and then you can see for yourself whether or not I
did the right thing. You're the only one who can really judge. I hope you will do so tenderly, for I am now and always will be,
Your Miranda
Eden took a deep breath and smiled, her joy spilling out from the edges of her too-full heart. She supposed a part of her had always known. Had always hoped. She wanted to get up and run to the phone, to the car, but instead, she read the letter again, slower this time and with tears. And finally, when her heart had become calm and steady and she was ready to know the how and why, she turned the page and stepped into the story.
chapter
1
DECEMBER 14, 1995
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
W
anda stifled a yawn. Ever since the hospital had gone to ten-hour shifts, she'd begun feeling her age. It crept up and settled in her back after a long day on her feet. Especially on days like today. She felt another pang of sympathy for her patient. She was just a girl, not quite sixteen, barely past childhood herself. Much too young to be having a baby.
But she had. They had whisked the newborn away so quickly Wanda had barely gotten a look at the child herself. They hadn't wanted Wanda's patient to hold her child or even look at it. They. Dr. Herbert and the baby's grandmother, who reminded Wanda somehow of the wicked stepmother in all the fairy tales she'd read. Oh, she was pleasant enough to look at with her red hair and heart-shaped face, but there was something to the narrowed eyes that gave Wanda a shiver, like feeling a cold hand clamped down on the back of her neck.
“The baby's being
adopted
,” Dr. Herbert had said with that same pursed-lip expression. “It's been
privately
arranged.” Emphasis on privately. Wanda thought that kind of secrecy had gone out in the fifties, but you didn't argue with Dr. Herbert. Not if you wanted to keep your job. Wanda had a sudden image of some
rich socialite buying the baby from that horrible grandmother. She shook her head and closed her eyes. Where had her patient's mother been when her daughter had been crying and frightened out of her wits during her labor? Nobody had sat with her. Wanda had made her as comfortable as she could and held her hand throughout, but it had been a long, frightening ordeal for her. Dr. Herbert had finally done a Cesarean, which had made it easier for them to keep the baby away from her.
The infant was fine, though. Born healthy and squalling, Apgar scores of nine, but Wanda hadn't even been allowed to tell the young mother the vital statistics. Not the birth weight, length, not even the baby's sex.
“The family has decided it would be best if the girl doesn't know,”
Dr. Herbert had said. The family. Meaning the bride of Frankenstein.
Wanda glanced at the grandmother, now sitting in the waiting room. Every so often she would go outside to smoke a cigarette, and when she returned, she'd pace the room or rearrange all the magazines in that nervous way she had. Wanda shook her head and glanced at her watch. It was a sad situation all the way around. She sighed and felt the weariness again. It was time for her shift to end, but she wanted to check on her patient one more time.
She walked down the hall to the postnatal wing. Here was another cruelty, she thought. Wasn't there any place they could have put her besides here on the same floor as the other mothers and babies?
She found the roomâ510. At least it was a private room, and Wanda thanked the Lord for small mercies. The door was closed. Wanda opened it slowly. The lights in the room were off, the curtain on the far window pulled shut. It was gloomy and dark. She heard sniffling. Sure enough, the young girl was crying.
Who wouldn't be?
she thought with a surge of anger. Here the child was, not even sixteen, trying to cope with all the emotions of having given birth, the baby's father absent, her own mother absent, not to mention the physical pain she was in from the long, fruitless
labor and resulting surgery. Why, just the anguish and fear of going through such a thing by herself at such a young age would be enough to leave a scar on the heart. Not to mention having her baby taken away.