Home to Eden Read Free

family to her.
    It was the Bradshaws who had found her her light-filled SoHo loft with its vast industrial windows. The Bradshaws who had introduced her to their wide circle of friends, a good many with sons and daughters her own age. When the Bradshaws saw her paintings, they’d insisted on helping her to get them shown. Through his contacts, Howard Bradshaw had even engineered her TV appearance that afternoon. Brief but important. She’d been introduced as a “sunny, up-and-coming young Aussie artist.” As near-perfect a misnomer as Nicole could think of, for her background was too full of black trauma. One day she reasoned she would confide in Carol fully, but not yet. The past was too close. Too filled with grief. Grief was the worst illness of all.
    Carol came to the door to greet her, her face warm and welcoming, shining with pleasure.
    â€œNikki, dear!” They kissed. Not air kisses, but real displays of affection.
    â€œSo sorry I’m late. Traffic, forgive me.”
    â€œOf course. You’re here. We watched your guest spot. You came over wonderfully well. So beautiful and articulate. Howard and I are proud of you.”
    â€œIt would never have happened without you and Howard,” Nicole said, smiling, then arm in arm with Carol accompanying her across the spacious and sumptuous entrance hall. A magnificent neoclassical parcel gilt console stood along one wall, overhung by an equally magnificent black lacquer and gilt mirrorwith two antique English gilt figurine lamps to either side of an exquisite flower arrangement. The Bradshaws were wealthy on a scale that made her own family’s fortune modest by comparison. She could see the elegantly dressed people gathered in the living room, which Carol had recently had made over—God knows why, for it had been beautiful before. Several heads were already turned in their direction. A little knot of people broke up, parting to either side.
    Shock sucked the breath from her lungs as she felt the color drain from her cheeks. She put out one hand, then the other. Her mother was staring at her intently from across the Bradshaws’ opulent living room. The most marvelous apparition, astonishingly young and beautiful, a half smile caught on her mouth, her whirling auburn hair floating around her bare white shoulders.
    The long years were as nothing. Yesterday. Whoever said time heals all wounds? Someone incapable of great depths of emotion. True love is eternal. Unchanging. It endures beyond death.
    The apparition was very slender and delicate, like a fine piece of porcelain. She was wearing Nicole’s favorite color—violet-blue—with an all-over glitter of silver. A beautiful, feminine gown. Shimmering, light as air. Romantic.
    Just like hers.
    Rapture drained away as pain and despair flooded in. The long wall facing her, she saw now, was set with tall mirrored panels to reflect the chandeliers, the museum-quality antiques and the paintings. There was no apparition. She’d had no miraculous acquisition of psychic powers. How ridiculous to think so.
    What she’d seen was her own reflection. An outwardly composed, inwardly disturbed young woman. One who had suffered a shocking childhood trauma and had never broken free of its horror. All those years of therapy, futile. There was no hiding place from grief. The memory of her beautiful mother still held her in its spell. She wanted her back so badly she was capable of unconsciously conjuring her up.
    â€œNikki, darling, whatever is the matter?” Carol held her arm, gazing at her in dismay. “You’re not ill, are you?”
    Howard, tall and distinguished, a worried frown on his face, hastened to their side. “Nikki, dear?” He bent his silver head solicitously to hers.
    â€œI’m so sorry.” From long practice Nicole held herself together. Tried to smile. “I’ll be fine in a minute. I felt a little faint, that’s all. Too much