“But I just can’t let you go and forget,” he added.
What was he telling me? That because I was how I was, an anomaly, a freak to our kind, no better than a Renegade, he was here to destroy me? Was this the end? I gla
nced at Ava. She looked happier, more satisfied.
“You can understand that, can’t you?” he asked.
I nodded.
“It’s not easy for you, either, crossing from our world to this one.”
“I’m not afraid of it,” I said.
“Of course you’re not,” he replied. “You’re my daughter, after all, are you not?”
I looked at him. How would it come? What would it be? A ravishing bite, a sweep of his powerful hand, or just the drawing out of all my breath and strength, leaving me folded in a heap at the foot of the bed? They’d find me like that in the morning, and some autopsy would conclude that I had suffered a heart attack.
Daddy saw the fear in my face. “I said I wouldn’t harm you,” he continued. Ava’s smile disappeared. He took my hand into his and, for a few moments, just played with my fingers. “You always had the most beautiful hands of all my daughters. There were many different things about you. Some I cherished, but some I should have known would bring us to this moment.”
If he wasn’t going to harm me and he knew I was different, too different to be like any of his other daughters, what did he mean when he said he just couldn’t let me go?
“You know that I’ve spoken to your future father-in-law a few times. He sounds like a very nice man, one who would be more of a father to you than a father-in-law. Ava here thinks your fiancé is quite handsome. She’s drooling over the possibilities, aren’t you, Ava?” he asked her. She smiled. “Possibilities she won’t realize.”
She stopped smiling again. She was on the same roller-coaster ride I was on, I thought, one moment hopeful and then another moment not. Our reasons for hope were very different, of course.
“And you know I’ve paid for this quite elaborate wedding that’s being planned, and I’ve pleaded to give you away properly, as any other father would.”
I nodded.
“By the way, how did you explain your flight and arrival in Quincy to these people?” he asked. “I’m sure you had a good explanation.”
I told him what I had fabricated, and he looked at Ava and laughed.
“Terrific story. And you called my new wife Veronica, nicknamed Ronnie?”
“Stupid,” Ava said.
“No, quite the contrary. It’s so pedestrian that it’s more credible. Good thinking, Lorelei.”
Why was he giving me a compliment now?
He sighed. “Well, since you’ve done such a good job of it and I don’t like wasting my time or my money . . .” he said. Now I was confused.
“What are you saying, Daddy?”
“You can go ahead and marry this man you love, enter this world you want, and live this life.”
Ava looked more shocked than I had ever seen her, shocked and disappointed. “Daddy?” she said, stepping forward. He held up his hand, and she retreated again.
“I ask only one thing from you. Well, ‘ask’ isn’t quite the word, I guess,” he said. “I demand only one thing from you, and then you will be free of us, all of us. You will not be a threat to any other family, and there will never be a shadow for you ever to fear.”
“What is it?” I asked, my breath so thin that my question seemed more like something I had thought and not spoken.
“If your first child is a girl, she will go with me,” he said.
His words fell like thunder on my ears, like the pronouncements of some biblical prophet laying demands on the people who looked up to him, words so powerful and firm that they couldn’t be erased or forgotten. They were words etched into the very souls of those who heard them.
Ava’s smile returned.