“No kidding?” His expression changed. “She decided I wasn’t one of those renegades, right?”
“Yes,” I said. I nearly laughed. “I don’t know why that should give you any sense of relief now, Buddy. You’ve kept yourself a target by coming along with me.”
He shrugged. “No sense talking about it now.”
He drove on. Because we had started so late in the day and because of the time it took us to reach Hearts-port, it was twilight by the time we found Dunning Road. The road began as a solid macadam street, but after a good mile and a half, it became gravel.
“You sure about this address?” Buddy asked. “I haven’t seen any houses since we turned, and this isn’t looking like anything that’s been developed, especially when you think how long ago you were there.”
“It’s the address I have,” I said.
We continued almost another mile until we saw a large, two-story house with a cupola at the crest of a small rise. It had stone cladding, a small stairway to the front door, and a double slanted roof. From this angle, the dormer windows looked like eyebrows. The grounds around the house were not very neat. There were patches of grass here and there and wild bushes.
“That’s a pretty old house,” Buddy said. “I know a little bit about architecture because of a class I took. It’s what’s known as Second Empire.”
The downstairs windows were dimly lit, but the upstairs windows were dark.
“If I didn’t see that sign there,” Buddy said, nodding at the sign that read, “Lost Angels, An Infant Sanctuary,” “I’d think we were at the wrong address for sure, or it was a place nearly deserted. Maybe it is. Maybe someone bought it, and it’s no longer an orphanage.”
“Then why the sign?”
“I don’t know. Whoever bought it might think that’s cool. I mean, look at it. The gardener must be legally blind.”
There were no signs of life around the house, no cars, no one outside.
“I feel this is it, Buddy.”
“So, I guess we’ll go in to see what’s what,” he said.
“No.”
“No?”
“I don’t want you going in with me. Wait in the car.”
“Are you sure? I mean…”
“I’m sure,” I said.
I couldn’t tell him why, exactly, but the feeling I had had back at the motel was much stronger here, and those famous instincts Ava often accused me of not having were alive and behaving like sirens and alarms.
“Well, I don’t think I should let you go…”
“Please, Buddy. I agreed to let you come along with me this far. Please.”
“Okay, if that’s the way you want it.”
“I do,” I said. “If I need you, I promise I’ll come out to get you.”
He nodded.
“Lock the doors,” I said when I opened mine and stepped out.
I heard the click and looked back at him. He was sitting forward, his face caught in the dim glow of the slowly brightening half-moon. His face looked made of wax and in danger of melting away completely.
I walked up the gravel drive to the front steps. Just as I reached the top, the door opened, and Mrs. Fennel stepped out of the shadows and into the dimly lit front doorway. I gasped and drew back. She smiled.
“We expected you sooner,” she said.
Ava came up to stand a foot or so behind her.
I took another step back, glanced at the car, and considered running back to it.
“There’s no need for you to run away, Lorelei. No one is going to hurt you,” Mrs. Fennel said softly.
“Even though you’ve done a lot that could hurt us,” Ava added.
“Now, stop,” Mrs. Fennel said. “You know what your father told you.”
Ava smirked. “We won’t hurt you, but that doesn’t mean we’ll leave him alone,” she said, nodding toward the rental car.
“There’s no need to threaten her,” Mrs. Fennel said. “I know my girl. Come on in, Lorelei. You want to know so much, and you’ve come so far.”
She stepped back. Ava disappeared inside. I looked back toward Buddy. He had never seen Mrs. Fennel, so he wouldn’t know that they had beaten us here. I hoped he hadn’t seen Ava standing next to her. I was afraid for him, but what drew me back up those stairs was my own need to know about myself as much as anything else. Mrs. Fennel kept her smile.
When I reached the doorway, I heard the sound of women laughing.
“Those are just other daughters and sisters,” Mrs. Fennel said. “They all know you’re coming. Everyone’s waiting for you.”
She put her arm around my shoulders and closed the door behind me.
“You know, this is a wonderful second chance for you, Lorelei. I can tell you, few of us would have enjoyed such an opportunity. Your father really loves you.”
The house was old, but nothing looked worn or as untidy as the grounds did. There was no dust, no cobwebs. Everything looked as it might have looked the day the house was built and furnished. The floors glittered like immaculate hospital floors, and the wood of the walls and ceilings looked polished. I followed her through the short entryway and hallway and then heard the sound of babies crying.
“Feeding time,” she said. “Don’t look so surprised. This really is an orphanage of sorts,” she added. “Come. Look.”
We stopped at a doorway on the left. Inside was a nursery with ten infants in bassinets. Two women wearing nurses’ uniforms were tending to them.
“Go on, look at them, Lorelei. Each one is perfect and will be quite beautiful.”
The nurses turned and smiled at me.
The one on the left reached into a bassinet and took out an infant who wasn’t crying. She looked asleep. The nurse held her so I could see her face. She did look perfect.
“Wouldn’t you love to have a daughter like that?” Mrs. Fennel asked.
I didn’t answer.
The laughter in the other room grew louder.
“Oh, come on,” Mrs. Fennel said. “They’re so anxious to see you.”
I followed her across the hallway and into a large living room. Five young women sat on settees. I didn’t recognize them from the pictures I had seen in Daddy’s closet, but when the fifth turned to me, I gasped.
It was Brianna.
“Hi, Lorelei. You have grown beautifully. She’s perfect, isn’t she, Mrs. Fennel?”
“Perfect.”
Ava, who was now sitting in a large cushioned chair on the right, continued to glare angrily at me. The four other women were as beautiful as Brianna, two with rich, radiant black hair and two with auburn. All of them, including Brianna, were dressed in black gowns very similar to the one Daddy had brought for me from Paris. Ava laughed at the expression of surprise that I was sure I wore.
“Dresses look familiar?” she asked. Her expression soured again. “I didn’t wear mine tonight. Thanks to you.”
“Ava,” Mrs. Fennel said with a tone of warning. She smiled again and nodded at one of the women with black hair. “This is Sophie, Ava’s mother. Don’t they look more like sisters?”
“I thought… she died in childbirth,” I said.
“You weren’t ready for this sort of truth when we told you that story, Lorelei,” Mrs. Fennel said.
How much had been fabricated? I wondered.
“Here you are,” I heard, and turned to see the woman in the picture with my name on it, the woman I had thought was my mother, enter the room. She didn’t look any older than she had looked in the picture and certainly no older than any of the other women. She carried a dress in her arms that looked just like the dresses the others were wearing. “Look at how she’s grown, Mrs. Fennel.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Fennel said.
“It’s not fair,” Ava said.
I looked at her, confused. What wasn’t fair?
“Stop it, Ava. Your father has decided,” Mrs. Fennel said.
Ava pouted.
“You know who this is, don’t you?” Mrs. Fenn
el asked me. “You took her picture from your father’s closet.” She shook her head. “Don’t look so surprised. Of course, I knew you had, and your father knew you had, too. You could keep no secrets from either of us.”
“Is she my mother?”
“Yes.”
“Then Daddy is…”
“Is really your daddy,” Mrs. Fennel said, nodding. “He’s all their daddies,” she added, with a sweeping gesture toward Brianna, Sophie, and the other two.
I shook my head. It was all overwhelming.
“Maybe you’re telling her too much too quickly,” my mother suggested.
“No,” Mrs. Fennel replied. “It’s what Sergio wants. He believes that if she’s told the truth now, she’ll stop resisting.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You said she was my mother.”
“I am your mother, Lorelei, and your daddy is my daddy, too.”
“But that’s… incest,” I said, and they all laughed, Ava the loudest.
“Those kinds of rules, biological or otherwise, don’t apply to us,” Mrs. Fennel said. “Now you know. You have your father’s blood, just as they all do. It’s how we go on. This is your destiny, to have your father’s progeny.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t try to understand everything at once,” my mother said. “For now, you’re to put on this dress. Mrs. Fennel brought it along.”
“Why?”
I saw how all the others were smiling. Only Ava continued to sulk.
“It’s what we think of as a bridal dress. Daddy is going to be here soon. You’re moving to the head of the line.”
“It’s not fair,” Ava insisted, rising to her feet. “I’ve done everything right, and she hasn’t, and she’s moving ahead of me.”
“A mistake has been made, and your father believes this is the way to correct it. You should be thinking of him, not of yourself,” Mrs. Fennel said sharply.
Ava glared at me and then sat again.
“What are you saying, Mrs. Fennel, that they are all Daddy’s daughters and Daddy’s wives?”
“Well, we don’t have formal weddings here,” she said, and they all laughed again.
I looked at Ava. Why did she want this more than I did?
“You probably noticed that your mother doesn’t look a day older than she did in that picture,” Mrs. Fennel said, as if she could hear my thoughts. “And Brianna… not much of a change in her, either. As your father promised you many times,” Mrs. Fennel said, “you will have more and do more than any other young woman.”
“But you’re older,” I said.
Mrs. Fennel laughed. “I’m older,” she said to the others, and they laughed, too. “Yes, I’m older, Lorelei. I’ve passed my prime, but we’re talking in terms of centuries, not decades, and I have a long time to go yet, a very long time. Besides, do you know anyone who looks my age who has my energy and strength?”
I looked at my sisters. “Do they all need what Daddy needs every month?”
“No. Only the males feed, Lorelei, but the females provide for them and give birth to our new ones. That’s their destiny, and that’s your destiny now.”
“Put on your dress,” my mother said, thrusting it at me. “It’s getting late.”
I didn’t move.
“You can go out and tell your young man that everything is fine and he can leave. We’ll let you do that,” Mrs. Fennel said when she saw my hesitation.
“He’d better not be out there when Daddy comes,” Ava warned.
Everyone stared at me, waiting. Some of the babies began to cry louder.
Mrs. Fennel’s smile began to fade as I remained hesitant and took a step back. Her eyes narrowed into that more familiar face of suspicion and anger. “You don’t want to do this, do you?” she asked me. “You don’t want to be one of us, after all? There is something wrong with you.”
“Wrong with me?” I shook my head. In my way of thinking, there was something right with me.
“There is no long window here, Lorelei. If you refuse your destiny now, you could end up never being one of us, never being accepted. You might even become hunted, and not only by us.”
“Don’t beg her,” Ava said. “Let her go. We don’t want an impurity in our family.”
“What family?” I asked. “This isn’t a real family. Daughters who are wives and mothers of other daughter-wives.”
“Lorelei,” my mother said. “Please.”
I backed away, shaking my head. No one moved. They all stared at me as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Only Ava looked pleased.
“You can’t have any sort of real life out there without your father,” Mrs. Fennel said. “You have his blood running through your veins. Anyone you’re with will sense something is very different about you, and if you ever did have a child with another man, you could never be sure of what and who that child would be, especially if it was a boy.”
I shook my head again.
All of the babies sounded as if they were crying now. I backed farther away from her. Still, no one moved. No one looked interested in preventing my escape.
“Lorelei,” Brianna said.
“Lorelei,” they all chanted.
I turned and ran to the front door, expecting them to follow, but no one did.
No one was chasing me, but I didn’t hesitate. There were no clouds, but a shadow moved over the light.
Daddy’s almost here, I thought, and charged toward the car.
Buddy saw that I was fleeing and started the engine, but he had forgotten to unlock the doors. I tugged madly at the handle. I could hear the babies screaming. It was a piercing sound, cutting through my brain. I put my hands over my ears. I felt myself weakening and sinking to the earth as if I were actually melting away.
And then darkness rushed in.
Epilogue
I woke in the car. We were bouncing over the gravel road, because Buddy was driving so fast. I heard the tiny stones being kicked up into the wheel wells. Buddy didn’t know I was conscious. I could see how terrified he was. I groaned and sat up.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You fainted. I got out and got you into the car as quickly as I could and drove off. What happened in there? Why did you come running out like that?”
“Did anyone come after me?”
He shook his head. “But I wasn’t going to wait around to see.”
“Good.”
We reached the smooth macadam portion of the road, and he picked up more speed.
“So? Who was in there? What did you find out? But more important, what made you run to the car like that and faint?”
I wondered how much I wanted Buddy to know. I had no doubts in my mind about what his reaction would be if he knew I was literally my father’s daughter. I was no orphan, and I had no parents who were normal human beings.
Lying had already become second nature to me. So much about the way we had lived depended on good and credible fabrication. Deception and darkness were our true guardians. None of us could survive if we didn’t develop the skills to be crafty and cunning. This was what Daddy meant when he had told me that darkness was our friend. He didn’t mean only the darkness that comes with night. He meant the darkness we could draw over our true faces, the darkness in which we could hide our true feelings, and the darkness through which we navigated during everyday life to avoid exposure.
I realized now that there was so much I had inherited from Daddy. I used to be jealous of Ava, who we were told was Daddy’s actual daughter. The resemblances I saw between him and her often disturbed me, because I wanted those resemblances, too. The very fact that I had not been told until now that he was my father, too, underscored how important it was for us to ration the truth. I didn’t know whose idea it had been to keep me and Marla believing we were simply orphans, but I saw the purpose. For however long we believed it, we were grateful and willing to be obedient and loyal and, of course, to make the sacrifices necessary always to
protect Daddy. I didn’t know when Ava had been told the truth or why she was an exception, but I was sure it had to do with what Daddy and Mrs. Fennel sensed about her. Even I sensed something more about her, something that brought her closer to Mrs. Fennel. It occurred to me that perhaps Marla had been told the truth just recently, and that was what had given her the self-confidence and the edge.
It all seemed to make sense to me now. Daddy was like the queen bee in a hive. He didn’t give birth, but he was the only one who could propagate his kind. All who surrounded him lived to defend and nourish him. This was what Ava and Mrs. Fennel always meant when they emphasized that I shouldn’t think of myself but only of my family. They reminded me of this whenever I felt sorry for myself because I wasn’t permitted to do the things girls my age were doing.
The compensation for this undying loyalty and sacrifice was true, however. I had just seen it. Yes, we would enjoy youth and beauty for decades, even centuries, longer than any normal human being. Yes, we would have anything we wanted, go anywhere we wanted, and satisfy all of our senses, our desires. We would never be frustrated or disappointed, unless we had what I thought I had, a longing to be loved and to love someone.
Whatever capacity for love my sisters possessed had to be directed toward and reserved for Daddy. He demanded all of it, for it was only then that he could be confident that they would never betray him or desert him or fail to provide for him. There was no girl anywhere who was more of a Daddy’s girl than we were and would be forever.
“Well?” Buddy asked.
“Daddy and Mrs. Fennel knew I would be coming there. They called ahead to warn them.”
“Really? But what was it like in there?”
“It’s a very special little orphanage. Daddy obviously does a lot to support it, so whatever he asks for, they are sure to do.”
“What did he ask for?”
“He asked that they not be cooperative with me. They were nasty to me, in fact,” I said, thinking only of Ava.
“But why did you run out of there and faint?”
“I was persistent, probably too persistent, and one of their attendants frightened me.”