Eden’s Everdark

CHAPTER ONE Glass Flower
Eden slid her finger on the map to the blue expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. She stared at the sea islands off the coast Georgia. The largest island was out farther than the rest, an isolated mass. This was Safina Island, her mother’s birth- place.
Her father had bought the map at a North Carolina rest stop and designated her as the navigator instead of using the app on his phone. It was an opportunity for Eden to learn the geography of intersecting routes and identify points of interest.
On their road trip, they ate junk food from vending machines and drank too much soda. They sang songs and laughed at their off- key melodies. It could have been easy to pretend that it had always been just the two of them, but a weight pressed heavy on Eden’s chest like a block of ice. The cold truth of her mother’s death.
She had endured the first days of shock with denial. Then a bitter acceptance when the house stopped being full of strangers offering their condolences with dishes wrapped in foil. During this time her father had treated Eden like a glass flower, a fragile girl who could break at the slightest touch. But when the record heat of the summer turned into the chill of winter snow, Eden’s father slowly transferred his energy back into his work. A professor of
evolutionary biology, he was teaching a full course load for the semester. Dr. Langston Leopold was keeping himself very busy.
Today he was dressed similarly to Eden in a graphic tee and jeans-much different from his usual uniform of oxford shirt and khaki pants. But he still wore his tortoiseshell glasses that complemented his brown skin.
“Saw a sign for a diner a few miles back,” he said. “Should be coming up soon.”
They were traveling the local highway through the coastal town of Marien, Georgia. The trees were different from the ones in Maryland. The pines had skinny trunks, and wide oaks. dripped with Spanish moss. Palmettos clustered together as if sharing secrets. Eden hadn’t seen any of the red clay that she had read about online. Instead the soil was sandy brown as if the beach had invaded the mainland.
“Do you think this place will have fried green tomatoes?” Eden asked.
“I’ll bet they do.” Dr. Leopold chuckled, but then his face
turned solemn. “You still feeling okay about this trip? It’s not too much, is it?”
A knot formed in Eden’s stomach. Those words again: too much.
They had lost the same person and been through the same journey together. Couldn’t he understand this was her chance to meet her mother’s family? Eden couldn’t explain how a place she had never visited could feel so much like home. How could she describe that kind of yearning to her father? Nothing could ever be too much for Eden. Not even the universe could fill the empty space her mother had left.