Eden's Promise Read Online Free PDF Page A

introduced them quickly and the men parted reluctantly to let him pass, the dog clicking along beside them. Eden thought Damien tensed just a little more than necessary when the newcomer walked by. A glance from Aaron told her he noticed it, too.
    “How is everything out here?” Aaron asked. “Supplies? Health? Power?”
    “We don’t have power, but we have fresh water from the wells, and my father had started laying in supplies years ago, worried about this very thing. Add to that, we have groups that go covertly to the mainland to liberate what they can. And not too long after everything went to hell, a ship sank to the north and we were able to retrieve a lot of the cargo.” She didn’t tell him what had happened to the surviving crew. She was pretty sure her father and Damien hadn’t known she knew. “We don’t let many newcomers stay, unless they have skills that would be useful to us, and we’re pretty strict on rationing what we do have. We lost a few people this winter because of the flu. My father died, Mr. Wyatt had a heart attack and died, and one of the new women was diabetic and couldn’t survive without her insulin.” She wanted to hear what he had to say, about what he’d seen, but she was sure the rest of the town wanted to hear, too, and she didn’t want to make him relive it more than he needed to.
    “I didn’t see many boats in the harbor. Did a lot of people leave?”
    She drew in a breath. “No. Right after—everything changed, a couple of teenagers wanted to go see what was going on. They left and never returned. Another crew of men went to look for them. They never returned, either. My father had all the boats but a very few sunk. The ones you see belong to the newcomers and are used for fishing and occasional runs to the mainland.”
    “Have you been?” he asked with a nod toward her holstered pistol.
    She shook her head. “Not yet.”
    “Good.”
    She held onto her curiosity about the meaning of that comment as they walked down the main street of town leading from the harbor.  
    “Sure as hell looks like nothing has changed,” he murmured.  
    “We’ve worked hard for that. There’s some frustration of course. We eat a lot of vegetables and fish, are very strict with the butchering schedule, with hunting. I’d kill for a hamburger some days. But everyone understands we’re working for the survival of us all.”
    “We,” he repeated. “Your father was the mayor, as I recall. Who’s in charge now?”
    “Vince Lopez. You probably don’t remember him, but he was the harbor master here. In addition, Damien and I share a lot of the responsibility. Damien is more on security and I’m more on rationing and supplies. Everyone is getting along, and we all work together to come up with solutions. We’ve pretty much transferred to a bartering system. Some of the stores are still open, but supplies of course are limited. Your mom and Mrs. Reynolds do a lot of sewing, but since there isn’t too much fabric, we have some interesting fashion trends happening.”
    “I refuse to believe my mom didn’t have much fabric.”
    Eden allowed herself a smile—her face felt so odd doing that these days. “She had quite a lot, but not great lengths of any one kind, so there are some patchwork-looking clothes around. Then my mom and Mrs. Wyatt do a lot of canning. Most of that is evenly distributed, but we keep it in the grocery store. We’ve created ration coupons for everyone to use every month. If we have something special, like when the ship wrecked, we divide it up as evenly as possible, then barter the surplus.”
    He was looking at her oddly. “You were just a kid when I left. You can’t be, what, twenty?”
    She bristled. “I just turned twenty-five. I was in middle school when you left.” Her face heated at the admission that she remembered.  
    “Have you been here the entire time?”
    “I left to go to college, became an engineer and moved home. My dad wanted me