And then, one morning, I awoke, and even before the physical symptoms began, I realized that I was pregnant. As if somehow he knew it was coming, Daddy had called the day before to ask how everything was going. He had called me at work. My hand had trembled when I held the receiver.
“You’re managing well, Lorelei,” he had said, as though he had been watching me daily. I knew he didn’t have to do that to know. I felt confident, however, that Ava wasn’t spying on me anymore. She probably couldn’t stand it.
We hadn’t had a long conversation, but everything he said had stayed with me the remainder of the day and that night. When I had the realization in the morning, I could swear his face flashed before me. Two days later, I confided in Julia, and she recommended the doctor she thought was the best obstetrician, a woman, Dr. Steffen. Liam was elated, practically floating with joy. The first question I asked the doctor with Liam present was when we could know the baby’s sex.
“Oh, we don’t want to know that,” he said. “Let’s keep it a surprise.”
Dr. Steffen laughed. “Most young couples want to know these days.”
“We’re different,” he said firmly. “Right?”
I nodded and smiled, but in my heart, I hated the thought of having this on my mind for so long. Besides, I didn’t think Daddy would stand for it. The first time I went to see Dr. Steffen without Liam, I asked her again.
“I need to know,” I told her. “My husband doesn’t have to know. I know you can do a chorionic villus sampling, and a baby’s sex can be determined as early as ten weeks. I’m into week twelve.”
She widened her eyes. “Is there something in your family history you haven’t told me, Lorelei, some chromosome abnormality? Because a CVS is usually done to determine if there have been inherited abnormalities. Are you afraid your child will have Down syndrome, for example?”
“No,” I said quickly, but then I thought for a moment. Why couldn’t our child have some abnormality? “Yes,” I said. “I didn’t want my husband to know about it.”
“This is not something I like to keep from a prospective father. I must insist that he know and understand wha
t we’re doing. Won’t you discuss it with him first, please?”
If I did, I’d have to lie again to the man I married, the man I loved. When will that end? Maybe never. And what would I do if we went ahead with the test and she told me it was a girl? I had been thinking and thinking about it, considering an abortion. But then what would that do? It would only anger Daddy, and he would take back his agreement, and it would devastate Liam. I could go on for weeks, months, and do what Liam wanted and not discover our baby’s sex, but that would mean nights and days of anxiety.
No, I had made the agreement. It was better that I knew in advance so I could find a way to prepare myself.
“Okay,” I told my doctor. “I’ll talk to my husband and bring him in when you do the testing and when you have the results.”
So all of it came down to this, I thought when I left the doctor’s office. From the moment I had decided to get up from the table in that restaurant and hitch a ride with Moses in that tractor-trailer until now, all that I had done to start a new life, my love affair and marriage to Liam, my finding a new family, all of it now depended on one of two words, “boy” or “girl.” Somewhere not far away, Daddy was waiting to swoop in when it was time to do so and claim his prize. What would he do with her? How would he bring her up? Would he do all that he had done with me? And when she was old enough to understand, what would he do with her then?
Maybe he would find a way to use her the way he used his own daughters, at least until she had grown too old for it. Maybe she would become some sort of a servant, working beside Mrs. Fennel. Maybe Daddy would have a child with her to see what that child would be like. She would never know me or her father or any of this family. They’d probably tell her she was an orphan, too.
I left the doctor’s office, and even though it was a bright, sunny day with cotton dab clouds scattered over a mellow blue sky, I felt as if I should have an umbrella. The rain would fall, only instead of drops of water, there would be drops of blood.
Epilogue
Instead of returning to work after my doctor visit, I called Liam and asked him to meet me at a coffee shop on the corner.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, his voice already starting to shake with anxiety.
“Just come. I need to talk to you,” I said, and hung up.
He parked in front of the shop less than ten minutes later and hurried to my table on the patio.
“You want a coffee?”
“No, what’s wrong?” he asked, and waved the waiter off.
“I have not been completely honest about my family,” I began. It was odd, but whenever I lied about my family, created these fictions, I saw Daddy and Ava smiling. After all, I was confirming what they had predicted, the difficulty that I would always have after I left them.
“What do you mean?”
“I was afraid of scaring you off once I told you.”
He sat back, smiling now. “There’s nothing you can tell me, Lorelei, that would scare me off of you. Forget it. Just say it and get it over with. We’ve got things to do. It’s a busy day.”
I nearly smiled, too. Why don’t I tell him all of it? I thought. Could any man’s love for a woman be strong enough to withstand such truth?