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Schwartz Suspense

On a hot, muggy afternoon in Eden, a tiny, rural town deep in southeast Louisiana, two boys make a grim discovery: they unearth the decades-old remains of a child, strands of hair and clothing still attached to the bones.

Meanwhile on the other side of the country, in California, forty-one-year-old Evelyn Yates, a single mother is struggling to maintain psychological equilibrium despite problems with alcohol, a difficult teenage daughter, and her own traumatic past. Evelyn is devastated by a phone call from the Eden coroner informing her that officials suspect the remains are those of her sister who disappeared over thirty years earlier.

Evelyn, who has mentally reduced her childhood to a series of blotchy and painful memories, fled Eden years ago and has no desire to return. Her fragile internal world is suddenly threatened with collapse by this discovery and the pressure to return home to help identify the remains.

The discovery of the body sets in motion a series of events leading inevitably to the uncovering of secrets dating back nearly a century; terrible events that may involve the entire town of Eden. As Evelyn pursues answers, she finds her sanity, her life, and the life her daughter threatened. She must face her memories and delve deep into her family’s history to find answers.

Eden explores the devastating nature of secrets and the power of love to overcome.

Part One: Dead Girl Saturday, June 3 Present Day

Chapter One

Eden, Louisiana

The day they found the dead girl, the sky was the color of marble, and the air stank of rubber and mud. Spring had escaped Bonfante Parish early that year, and it was much too hot for early June. Ray Lee Beaumont was thirteen years old, skinny as a jackrabbit and brimming with the sweaty, excited newness of burgeoning adolescence. He stood, with the self-conscious, impatient, cool, peculiar to young adolescent boys, under the shade of a live oak, half-moons of damp staining his T-shirt underarms and smoking a stolen cigarette. Legs apart, shifting weight from one foot to the other, head down and cocked, peering out from under a lock of shaggy black hair. One hand to his lips, he held the Lucky Strike between his first two fingers, the way he remembered his daddy had done when the man still lived with them. A thin curl of smoke wafted into the still, hot air and hung there for a while before breaking up into nothing. Sporadically, he held the cigarette away from his body and tapped at it, letting the ash fall to the ground next to his feet.

All at once, he flicked the butt aside, took two steps forward until he was standing just outside the shade of the tree, and he shouted. “Basco, what in the hell is taking you so long?”

Gene Basco, twelve, just four months younger than Ray Lee but six inches shorter and lacking the peach fuzz that darkened Ray Lee’s upper lip, materialized from the woods, pulling up his pants.

“I don’t know Ray Lee. I don’t feel too good. I got the diarrheas.” you get one round off,” Ray Lee said, laughing. “I ain’t scared,” insisted Gene. He approached, and Ray Lee studied his face. Pale, big-eyed. “I’m telling you; I don’t feel too good.”

“Yeah. Well, don’t be thinking we’re going back now that we’re all the way out here, and I got my brother’s gun and all. No way. Like my daddy says, time to man up.”

Ray Lee gave the younger boy a hard stare, so he’d know there wasn’t a choice. Not now. Ray, who’d been practically shooting out of his shoes with excitement since waking up this brilliant Saturday morning to find Mack’s paintball gun, and all his gear, sitting by the back door, had no intention of turning back. Mack never left his gear or anything he cared about, out where Ray Lee might get into it. He must have come in drunk or too tired to think straight, or both. Ever since Mack made sixteen and started driving and got a girlfriend, he thought he was all that. Ray Lee had secretly snatched up the gun and the half-full box of yellow paintballs and made his way out of the house. He’d ridden his bike straight over to Gene’s since Gene was the only other kid he knew owned a paintball gun which, Ray Lee was pretty sure, the little softie shit never even used.

“And look,” added Ray Lee, picking up the weapon from where he’d laid it on the ground. “I gotta get this gun back before Mack wakes up, or he’ll kill me. So, get your stuff and come on. I already loaded yours for you.”

They started out back behind a wood structure that looked like, once upon a time, it might have been an outhouse. Everything out here looked like it came from another century. As far as Ray Lee knew, nobody had lived out at the Crazy Yates Place since the old man died, and that was almost before Ray Lee was born.

“Oh, shoot, Basco. You ain’t got the diarrheas. You’re just scared I’m gonna shoot you full of holes before

“Ray Lee,” came Gene’s whine. “Are you sure we ought to be doin’ this? I mean, what if we get caught? My mom says the Sheriff will arrest you for shooting outside in, like, the wild. I don’t know.”

Ray Lee turned around, peering at his friend. “See, I told you, you was scared.”

“I ain’t!” Gene took another step.

“Well then, quit jabbering.” They trudged across the field about a hundred yards before Ray Lee stopped just on the edge of the forest. “Ok. Here’s good.” He looked at Gene, softening. “Hey, look, I won’t aim at your face, ok? Or your neck. And I’ll give you first shot. Ok?” The twelve-year-old nodded, looking reluctant. Ray Lee felt a little bad for him. Getting splatted with a paintball hurt like a bitch, and Gene knew how good a shot Ray Lee was, too.

They crept into the forest in opposite directions, counting off before they turned and began. Immediately, Gene started firing indiscriminately, all his balls hitting tree trunks or rocks, leaving neon yellow and green paint splatter everywhere. He’ll be out of ammo in five minutes, thought Ray Lee. Idiot.

Ray Lee avoided the shots, snuck deeper into the woods, and circled behind a live oak’s thick, gnarled trunk. When the toe of his runner clipped a fat root and sent him sprawling, face first, into the earth, the gun spilled from his grip and went skittering off into the darkness. Once he’d caught his breath, he pushed himself onto his hands and knees, peering around for the weapon. A tiny kernel of panic seeded itself in his belly. Mack would murder him if he lost that gun.

He screamed back at Gene to quit firing and come help him and continued to scrabble around in the half-dark. Finally, there it was. Brown plastic sticking half out of the muck. Reaching for it, Ray Lee wrapped his palm around the hilt and at once knew the thing in his grasp was not the plas- tic gun. Fear shot through him like ice water, and he yelped, drawing his hand back so rapidly that droplets of mud splashed his face, stinging his eyes. He scrambled away from whatever it was and leaned against a rock, panting and peering into the darkness.

After a moment, he pulled a penlight from his jeans pocket and, using it to navigate, took a few steps forward. It seemed suddenly darker inside the cypress wood. His foot sank into the mud so thick it overflowed the top of his shoe, oozing through his sock, like fingers. Inside the jungle of plants, he was briefly disoriented. He swung his head this way and that, panic rising, and suddenly, he saw it. Sticking out of the wet earth, it was small and appeared dipped in layers of sludge and rot. Picking up a branch, Ray Lee used it to poke at the thing, trying to separate it from his gun. No way did he want to touch it. Pushing some filth away, and leaning in for a closer look, he jammed the branch underneath it. As he did so, a brownish bowl-shaped object appeared from the earth. He stared, horrified, as a clump of long hair fell away in a thin, stringy sheath. He made a garbled gagging sound, dropped the stick, turned, and pushed his way out of the trees, slicing the skin of his forearm on the spiny petioles of a giant palmetto as he stumbled past. Emerging from the forest edge, he paused, bent at the waist, and vomited into the dirt.