The Legacy of Eden by Nelle Davy Read Free Book Online

was fate that had led her there. I am inclined to agree.
    “I’m sorry, I did not mean to intrude,” she said. He looked up at her then. He was reclining back on the white bench, a tumbler beside him and a bottle of scotch.
    “Who are you? I ain’t seen you before,” he said curiously.
    “I’m Anne-Marie Parks,” she replied coolly and then held out her hand as an afterthought, but he’d already turned from her back to his scotch and her hand fell limply to her side.
    “You from here?” he asked sharply.
    “Most of my life.”
    “How come I don’t know much of you then?”
    “I don’t know. Nobody knows much of me.”
    He looked her up and down. “Probably the best way,” he said conclusively. “Soon as anyone knows anything about you in this place they all start wanting a piece. Well, they’ve had as much as they’re going to get of me.”
    “Where you been? They— I heard that you had been away for some time now.”
    “Oregon. I’m a salesman there.”
    “Oh?” enquired Anne-Marie casually. “What do you sell?”
    He shrugged. “Whatever needs selling.”
    This was how my grandfather was—cold, casual, unattached to anything and anyone except his daughter. He’d had enough of attachments at this stage in his life. All they ever seemed to do was bring him harm.
    “I heard your daddy is dying.”
    “You heard right.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “You wouldn’t be if you knew him.”
    “I think you knew him and you’re still sorry, or you wouldn’t be down here away from everyone knocking back scotch.”
    In the dark she could see his gaze arrest in surprise. His hand hovered over the bottle before he poured a thimbleful.
    “Want to taste?”
    She drew herself up.
    “Ah, now there’s no need to be like that. A bit won’t kill you and it’s the good kind anyhow. My pa has good taste in liquor.”
    “How old are you?” she asked.
    “I’m thirty-five.”
    “Well, it’s a sorry state when a man of your age is hiding from a party thrown for him at the bottom of a garden, drinking stolen liquor.”
    Cal laughed. “You ain’t very popular, are you?”
    Anne-Marie put a hand to her neck and then dropped it in irritation.
    “About the same as you from the sounds coming out of people. Who says I ain’t anyhow?”
    In the dark he seemed to smile. “Nobody is who likes pointing out other people’s truths.”
    He stood up then and she saw how tall he was, the broad shoulders, the thin nose and square jaw, his long hands that were now cradling his drink. She would come to know how much he would like to drink and for a long time it would not bother her.
    “What did you say your name was?”
    “Weren’t you paying attention? I told you it was Anne-Marie.”
    He shrugged. “Anne-Marie just don’t seem to suit, is all. You don’t look like an Anne-Marie to me.” He licked his lips. “Anne-Maries are soft creatures. You ain’t soft, you’re hard and brittle and harder because you know you’re brittle. Your name is a lie, Anne-Marie, but then so is mine. People call me Cal, have done all my life, but my name is Abraham. You know your bible—Abraham is the father of the twelve nations of God’s chosen people, all-wise, all-knowing. But I ain’t no Abraham just like you ain’t no Anne-Marie, so what then is your name, girl?”
    It was then, my grandmother said, that she knew it. She watched the swaying man try to steady himself on his drunken feet and even though he wasn’t handsome, even though he was just some salesman from Oregon, even though she felt a creeping vine of disdain tug at the corners of her mouth as she observed him, it could not change her revelation.
    “One day you will know,” she would say much later. “You will just know and all you can do is pray for the serenity to accept it and the courage to follow through.”
    “My mother called me Lavinia,” she said finally.
    He smiled down at her, and as he leaned forward she could smell the rich yeast of his