Eden
Eden tossed and turned that night, the sheets on her bed coming untucked and tangled in her legs. On one hand, she might be paranoid. It could be just coincidence that the two men who came into Callahan’s knew someone who looked like her. She’d kept a low profile, used an alias, and hadn’t made or sent any phone calls, emails, or messages she’d learned were “texts.”
Still. Porter might keep his wives in a digital desert, but that didn’t mean he was in it with them. Male Fundamentalist Mormons could do pretty much whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. They justified their behavior as their “duty” to protect the family or the sanctity of the Latter-Day Saints. Aside from the sexual and domestic abuse, their hypocrisy in mundane daily activities had grown to infuriate Eden.
But, like most abused women, she’d seen her inability to protect herself and her children as a stain on her own character. She should have been smarter. More resourceful. Acted more quickly. She almost began to regret leaving in the first place. The guilt of leaving her kids, however briefly, with these monstrous men threatened to paralyze her.
Eden had no idea how far Porter’s resources stretched. She’d realized months earlier that the way he’d met her the first time, for example, couldn’t have been random. She lived in Quincy, Illinois, almost fifty miles from Nauvoo, and yet he showed up at a Protestant fundraiser on a Sunday night, seemingly materializing out of nowhere. Someone must have told him about the pretty, unmarried girl in Quincy mourning her dead boyfriend.
Then there were times when Porter seemed to know more about important events than anyone else in the community. For all Eden knew, he might be using a computer in secret. They said you could find anyone on earth from your home computer these days. Had he somehow put a tracker on her? She doubted it; he would have found her by now. But she knew without knowing exactly how that Porter had cast a wide net over the years. He had the advantage.
Chicago wasn’t a stretch either. Long ago, a friendly competition had existed between the leaders of Nauvoo and Chicago. Nauvoo predicted it would surpass Chicago in size, population, and splendor within a few years. Of course it didn’t, because the Mormons were kicked out of Illinois.
Which meant it probably wasn’t such a great idea for Eden to have come to Chicago. Porter might have contacts here she didn’t know about. In fact, it had been a stupid idea. Maybe he was already closing in, and the two men in the restaurant were the advance men. She needed to go somewhere Porter would never suspect. Maybe south. Or west.
She recalled the illegal venture he’d been planning with his Mormon brothers. Had they launched it by now? Selling and distributing drugs and weapons were clearly the result of contacts he’d made over the years. Contacts that may or may not have been in the Mormon community. She remembered the night she’d overheard them talking about the venture. His business partners were Mormons. All of them stood to make good money, and they didn’t care where it came from. She shivered at their hypocrisy. And deceit. She’d had the nerve—she’d thought it was courage at the time but now she realized how foolhardy it was—to confront him. She should have kept quiet. She knew what he was planning. Porter would never stop looking for her until he found her.
And then what? Drag her into a dark alley? Kill her? She fingered the scar on her thigh.
Around five in the morning, Eden made up her mind. As much as she loved the new life she had forged out of nothing, as much as she cherished the first paycheck she’d cashed at the currency exchange, as much as she wanted to get to know the other women at Ms. Kate’s, she wasn’t safe in Chicago. Before everyone at Ms. Kate’s shelter woke up for the morning routine, she stuffed her few belongings into a backpack, threw on some clothes, and slipped out the front door.