as so involved in my travel, I forgot to eat breakfast, too,” I said.
“I’m not surprised. Young people today don’t know right from left most of the time,” Mrs. McGruder said.
Mrs. Winston nodded in agreement. “Well, then, first things first,” she said, rising. “You just make yourself at home here for a few minutes while we look into some lunch. I’m a little hungry now myself.”
The two of them left me. I gazed around the room, which just reeked of history, of family, of heritage. I had no reason to feel at home and no expectations of finding friendship at all.
But somehow I felt as if I had.
Was it merely a wish, a need so great it would paper over reality and leave me even more vulnerable than I was before I had begun my journey?
The world was bright there, cozy and warm.
Don’t fool yourself so quickly, Lorelei, I told myself. The winds of darkness you left behind are surely blowing vigorously in every direction at this very moment, searching for you, waiting to swallow you up and take you back to the fate you were destined to have.
Remember Ava’s prophetic words.
“You can’t escape from yourself.”
3
I continued to elaborate on my story at lunch, building on half-truths. I held the two women in rapt attention, especially when I described the fictional Veronica, making her sound jealous of my capturing even a few seconds of my father’s attention. I even suggested that she tried to make me out to be a thief by claiming that she couldn’t find certain pieces of her jewelry and somehow was always missing money. Jealousy among myself and my sisters was always in the air at home. All of us competed for my father’s attention, so it wasn’t difficult coming up with this scenario and describing it with passion in my voice.
“Whenever Veronica brought any of this up, she fixed her attention on me in front of my father so that there would be no doubt whom she was accusing. She must have descended from Judas,” I added, and their eyes widened. “It was like living with an assassin,” I said. “Gradually, my father’s once loving eyes turned into cold gray stones when he looked my way, and all because of her. Once my father loved me like a father should love a daughter,” I added, thinking of my real father. “He loved to spend time with me, lay whatever wisdom he could upon me to guide me, but after she came on the scene, I felt like a stranger in my own home. It got so I was spending hours and hours locked up in my room, finding every way I could to avoid them. I would fall asleep with my mother’s picture embraced in my arms and pressed to my heart.”
I looked away as if to prevent them from seeing tears forming in my eyes. Actually, they were forming. I’m good at this, I thought. I’m better than Ava ever could be, because she’s too hard-hearted to create any sympathy for herself. She’d laugh in the faces of those who tied her to the stake, the most feared and ancient way to rid the world of our kind.
“No wonder you ran off. Please, take as much time to eat as you want,” Mrs. Winston said, her hand now pressed against her heart, tender with compassion. “We’re in no rush here.”
I hadn’t realized how hungry I really was and was gobbling my food. Mrs. Fennel would say I was vacuuming it up from the plate. She’d give me a look so stern I would go into slow motion.
“Thank you. I’m sorry to go on and on like this about my father and his witch,” I said. “I’m sure it’s depressing you, and you don’t need someone new coming here with emotional and psychological burdens. Everyone has his or her own troubles. I’d understand why you wouldn’t be so eager to have someone like me as a tenant.”
“Oh, no, no. We’re happy to listen,” Mrs. Winston said, and she looked at Mrs. McGruder, who nodded emphatically.
“I’d like to get my hands on that woman for ten minutes,” Mrs. Winston said. “I just hate that type, and we’ve seen enough examples of them.”
“Amen to that,” Mrs. McGruder added, like the loyal alter ego she was.
I was confident that they wouldn’t want to send me on my way. Rather than depressing them, I had the feeling I was giving them their entertainment for the day, if not for the week. Feasting on the private lives of their guests was probably what they needed to nourish their own existence in a world where the most excitement came from statues and plaques.
“This is delicious,” I said, nodding at the salad.
Mrs. McGruder had made a Waldorf salad. Before she served it, she went into the history of it, telling me that it was first created in 1893 by the maitre d’ of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. I wondered if everything presented to me in that house would have a biography attached. I really was going to live in the middle of a history book, but oddly, that made me feel safer. It was as if I had gone through a door and traveled not only thousands of miles away from my father and my sisters but a few hundred years away, too.
Actually, despite the sorry face I wore, I was enjoying the first really relaxing moments I’d had since getting into the truck with Moses. The dining room was surprisingly bright and airy because of the sliding patio doors and two large windows. Mrs. Winston explained that this part of the historic house had recently been renovated. Recently, I learned, meant within the last twenty years.
“I didn’t want to do it, but the business required it. Naturally, the historical society made us jump through hoops,” she said.
“And then some,” Mrs. McGruder added.
There was a long light oak table that could comfortably seat a dozen people, a matching armoire with shelves of very old china, and two side chairs in opposite corners. Above us was a pewter chandelier that looked as if it had once held candles instead of light bulbs. The walls there, as they were elsewhere, had pages from old newspapers in frames, drawings of Colonial government figures, and an occasional print of a watercolor depicting farms or the original streets in the city.
“We don’t usually provide lunch for our guests,” Mrs. Winston continued. “This is a bed-and-breakfast, but we do have what is called half-board if you want to take your dinners with us as well.”
So there would be no misunderstanding, she wrote out the prices.
“The room you’ll be getting is our Abigail Adams. All six of our guest rooms are named for Quincy historical figures. Abigail was, of course, the wife of John Adams, who was the second president of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, who was the sixth. I’m giving you a discount because you’re just starting out here.”