Bloodline(72)

I nod. My blood feels sluggish. I am so tired. But finally, I’m not the only one who knows about Lilydale. I’m led to a room with a couch. I lie down. The detective pulls a scratchy blanket over me.

Somebody else is in charge now.

Somebody else will take care of everything.



I wake to a commotion outside. It takes me a moment to remember where I am. The smell of stale coffee. The industrial furniture. I’m inside the Saint Cloud police station. They have Paulie’s birth certificate. Irrefutable evidence. I run my hands through my short hair and stand.

This is the story that will make my career.

I grimace at the thought. It’s a dying gasp from the old version of me, the girl who believed in ambition and love and happy endings. Still, Grover and Angel deserve their stories to be told.

I reach for the doorknob. The people in charge may want me to stay around for questions, but I’m hopeful I can simply check in at a nearby hotel and get to work writing this up. It’s no longer about the byline. It’s about the truth.

The doorknob turns under my hand. I jerk back.

Amory Bauer strolls in, as big as a mountain, pistol straining at his side. He’s pleased, as glossy as a snake who’s swallowed the whole rabbit.

I choke on my own tongue.

His smile is vicious.

“She’s awake!” he calls over his shoulder.

He steps aside so Ronald and Deck can stride in. Deck appears as shamefaced as a child and still groggy. Son of a bitch. I lunge at him and start pummeling him with my fists. Amory pins my arms at my side with no effort at all.

“Better take it easy. You won’t like it any other way,” he says.

He pushes me out the door, marching me past the two plainclothes officers. They won’t meet my eyes. “See you at the next meeting,” Amory says.

He doesn’t speak again until we are in the car, him behind the wheel and Ronald and Deck on each side of me in the back. Amory adjusts the rearview mirror, our eyes meeting in the glass.

“I can’t believe Grover tracked down your birth certificate. I was sure we’d destroyed all your papers, Paulie.”





CHAPTER 57

I remember little of the drive back to Lilydale. When we reach town, we drive straight to Dr. Krause. They’ve woken him up, and he looks disheveled and annoyed. Oddly, I don’t think he’s in on any of this. I think he’s just a plain old-fashioned sexist. He tells them I’m to be under constant supervision, not alone until the baby is born. Krause administers another injection. It must be stronger than the one he gave me after Kennedy was shot, because I remember nothing after the needle pierces my flesh.

I wake up in the lemon-colored room. I stand, teetering, and stumble to the window. It’s open a few inches. I can look across the way and see the bedroom I’ve shared with Deck for over two months, the flowered wallpaper splattering the walls like blood.

A roar deafens me, the sound of my reality splitting.

My childhood memories are coming back, coursing like boiling water over my brain.

They took me to this room, only for a night, before they moved me to the basement. I was wearing a sailor suit.

The jolt is so strong that for a second, I feel as though I’m standing next to my own body. Bile races toward my mouth. I hold it down, just. I see Slow Henry standing below, on the driveway. He meows up at me. I can’t get to him. My tears start pouring out.

Ronald’s voice comes from the doorway. “Can you believe Paulie Anna was your real name? I wouldn’t have let Stanley and Dorothy keep it, even if we didn’t need to hide your identity. It was too on the nose. You’ve always been such a goody-goody girl, at least until recently. So placid, when you were young. So docile.”

I don’t turn immediately. I can see his reflection in the glass. The birth certificate that Grover finally tracked down had been clear. Paulie Anna Aandeg had been a girl.

She was me.

Virginia Aandeg was my mother, though I knew her as Frances Harken. The man I’d been told was my father must have given my mom the new surname and me the birth certificate with a new name and birth date to hide us from these monsters. I shudder at what it must have cost her.

“The newspaper articles,” I say. “They referred to Paulie as a boy.”

Ronald steps closer. “Virginia cut your hair herself. It was identical to the atrocious mop on your head right now, by the way. You looked like a boy then, you look like a boy now. Between that, the sailor suit, and it being the first day of kindergarten, poor Becky Swanson didn’t know who was what. When the newspapers descended on Lilydale for a day or two, I made sure they thought you were a boy. Made it easier for us if they were looking for a male. The town got on board.”

I lean my cheek against the cool glass. It’s going to be a scorcher out there, yet I’m shivering.

“You’ve always known,” he says, now standing immediately behind me. “You wanted to pretend you didn’t, but you knew. You were six when Dorothy took you. You couldn’t possibly have forgotten.”

A rage explodes inside me. I want to punch through the wall, through the glass, through his face. I whirl. “I was a child.”

“A slow one, by all accounts. But we still took you. You were chosen. The Mill Street families only had you for five days, Joan, but we loved you like our own.”