In Search of Eden, page 1
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 means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without 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
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Author’s Note
Discussion Questions
About the Author
Other Books by Author
Back Cover
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 staff—pros 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 contents—until 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 pad—a huge one—and 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 myself—another 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
Wanda 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
“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 room—510. 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.
“Hey there,” Wanda said gently, approaching the side of the bed. She leaned over and smiled. Her back gave another twinge, but she barely noticed.
The girl opened her eyes, and Wanda saw them light with recognition and then fill with tears. The girl turned her face away, looking ashamed.
“It’s okay,” Wanda said. She took the girl’s hand and stroked it, and that seemed to open the floodgates. Wanda put down the rail and sat on the side of the bed and opened her arms. The girl let herself be gathered in close, as close as she could get with her fresh incision, and she cried against Wanda’s chest for quite a while. The shoulder of Wanda’s scrubs got wet, but she didn’t care. She hugged the thin shoulders and kissed the thick, slick hair and murmured, “Hush, now. It’ll be all right. It’s okay,” just as she did to her own daughter, but somehow those crises seemed minuscule compared to this.
After five minutes or so the little mother seemed to have cried herself out. Wanda handed her the box of tissues and then rose up and filled the plastic pitcher with water, feeling another little spurt of irritation at the nurses on the floor. This child was just a few hours postpartum, postsurgery, and no one seemed to be paying much attention to her. But even as she thought these things, she knew they weren’t true. They would be monitoring her closely. In fact, someone would be coming in to check her any minute. She knew her irritation wasn’t really toward the nursing staff but toward the situation in general.
“Here, drink this,” Wanda said, holding down a plastic cup of water and bending the straw so the girl wouldn’t have to raise herself up.
The girl took a sip. Then another. After a minute she moistened her lips and spoke. “I never got to see my baby. They wouldn’t even tell me if it was a boy or a girl.”
She looked at Wanda with a question in her eyes, and Wanda felt torn between hospital policy and her tender heart.
She was opening her mouth to speak when she heard the patient’s mother. She couldn’t make out the words, but she could tell from the tone that she was complaining about something. She caught “left me sitting out there in the waiting room” and “went downstairs for some food and took the wrong elevator.” The door opened and in she came with a whoosh.
“There you are,” she said, her presence, if not her slight frame, filling up the room. Her tone was accusing, as if her daughter had done something wrong. Well, perhaps she had, but Wanda thought this was not exactly the time for blaming and shaming.
“Hey, Mama,” the girl said weakly, her voice containing more misery than Wanda could stand to think about.
The woman gave Wanda an accusing look, as well, though she had no way of knowing Wanda really had no official business here. Wanda patted the small hand, now trembling slightly, and left the room. She waited at the nurses’ station, feigning nonchalance, talking and sipping coffee until she saw the woman leave.
“There’s a piece of work,” the charge nurse said, shaking her head in the new grandmother’s direction.
Wanda nodded and waited for more. She was not disappointed.
“Adoptive parents are on their way. They’re taking the baby home today.” Wanda and the nurse both watched Grandma march toward the elevator, heard her heels clicking on the polished floor, saw her cross her arms and wait impatiently, tapping the button several times before the elevator arrived and she stepped inside. The doors slid shut. So she had left without even saying hello and good-bye to her grandbaby. Wanda shook her head and exchanged another glance with the charge nurse, who shrugged, grabbed up a chart, and headed toward the other end of the hallway, leaving Wanda alone.
Wanda hesitated just a moment and then went straight to the nursery, not letting herself think too much about what she was doing. Not thinking about the fact that this could mean the loss of her job, just knowing what she would want someone to do for her if she were in the same situation. She punched in her code, then stepped inside the nursery doors. The attendant was Martha Green, nearing retirement, too. In fact, Wanda had gone to nursing school with Martha back in the dark ages. Martha was busy bathing and weighing a new arrival, the father helping, all thumbs and elbows. She gave Wanda a quick smile and a nod before going back to her task.
Wanda looked across the cluster of Isolettes and found the one she was looking for. Oh my. What a sweet, beautiful baby. Pink cheeks, dark hair, and a tiny pursed mouth. But then, they were all precious. The baby was wrapped in an anonymous white blanket, and she remembered the charge nurse’s words: “Adoptive parents are on their way.”
She had only a minute. She picked up the tiny bundle, opened the door, and headed back across the hall, moving quickly and holding her head high. Acting as if she were on official hospital business and had every right to be doing what she was doing, not as if she were breaking hospital policy and maybe even the law. She went down the hall toward the girl’s room and pushed open the door, pulling it closed behind her.
The girl looked up, then dropped her mouth in shock. “Oh,” she said before tearing up again. “Oh, thank you!”
Wanda helped her sit up, put the baby in her arms, then went to the door and cracked it slightly. So far, so good. She flicked her eyes back and forth between the scene on the bed and the hallway outside. The girl held the baby gingerly and was saying something too quietly for Wanda to hear. She reached down to touch one tiny hand, bent her mouth to brush the baby’s cheek.
Wanda checked her watch and moved to the bedside. She didn’t want to interrupt the sweet scene, but she put a hand on the young mother’s head and another on the baby’s. “Lord Jesus,” she prayed aloud, “your heart is loving and forgiving. You said just as a mother would never forget her child, so you would never forget us, for you have engraved us on the palms of your hands. I pray now for these two, that somehow, someday, your love would bring them back together and that in the meantime you would guard and keep them. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
