Bloodline(74)

Then, Dorothy spotted me in my sailor suit on the way to my first day of kindergarten and decided she wanted the beautiful child for her own; since I was half Lily, and since the Fathers and Mothers had done so much for Virginia and for the town, Dorothy felt entitled. She lured me to her house with candy. By the time Stan returned home that afternoon, Virginia had called the Lilydale police to report me missing.

Stan was furious when he found me in his house, said Dorothy should not have been so impulsive, but Dorothy stood up to him for the first time in her life. She wouldn’t give me up, so Stan created a plan. They would wait until everything blew over and then present me as their own daughter. The town would look the other way, as it always had, and if the state police or papers ever came back to Lilydale, they’d be looking for a lost boy, not a lost girl.

Stan gave Virginia a generous donation that very day. He said it was from the Fathers and Mothers to cover her heartbreak at the loss of her child and to give her enough for a clean start in a different town, where she wouldn’t always be reminded of her lost child. It was clear it was a bribe, though Stan never said as much. Virginia, drunk, took Stan’s money, and she stayed drunk for the next five days while Lilydale was overrun with papers and police.

On the sixth day, a Sunday, Virginia sobered up, broke into Stan and Dorothy’s house while they and all the Mothers and Fathers were at church, found me catatonic in the basement just as she’d suspected she would, and fled Lilydale with me. The Mothers and Fathers wanted me back because I was half Lily, but they didn’t want the police to find me, because Virginia could reveal that Dorothy had been the one who’d kidnapped me. So no one reported Virginia missing, they burned down her house to destroy any evidence she might have left, and they encouraged rumors that Virginia had killed me and then fled town to escape justice. Dorothy, for her part, kept reading the city papers for any word of Virginia and Paulie, because she believed I was hers.

I am still crying when Ronald finishes his story, because I know what he doesn’t. Virginia moved to Florida, taught me to paper over the bad memories and remember only the good until those years in Lilydale were a nightmare, changed her name to Frances and mine to Joan, and we would have made it . . . if I hadn’t written the obituary against her wishes.

Ronald makes an exasperated noise. “Stop all that blubbering. Deck is a good man. He doesn’t deserve all this worry. You really should be a better wife.”

The baby kicks my kidney.

He sees me flinch. He guesses what it is and rests his hand on my belly. I want to shove it off, but I’m too afraid.

“It won’t be so bad,” he says, flashing his teeth. “We’re going to have the biggest party when this baby is born! We’ll welcome him into the Mill Street family. We’ll all be there. Everyone who matters. We’ll restore order.”

That’s when I understand that not one part of me is my own.

Never has been.

Ronald turns away. He picks up the sailor suit and drops it into the trash. His back is to me as he speaks. “We’re all Lilys here, you know.”

I’m crying by now, but he won’t stop.

“All of us on Mill Street. Direct descendants of the only two of Johann and Minna’s children to survive. You have the purest bloodline in the nation.”





CHAPTER 58

July turns the air into liquid. I find myself constantly drenched in sweat. We have fans set up in every room of the house, but it doesn’t matter. My body is cooking in the world’s oven.

I’m living at Dorothy and Stan’s now.

They let Slow Henry move in with us.

Dorothy is thrilled to finally have her “daughter” home.

The Mill Street Mothers will not let me out of their sight, not even to use the toilet, certainly not long enough for me to escape. They take shifts watching me.

If I’m good, I can live, and I can hold my baby.

I must make them believe I’m good.

I laugh at my previous Nancy Drew plan, the idea that I could snap photos of Ronald’s questionable business practices and drive away. No, these people will not let me go so easily.

I finally know what I’m up against. I also have one chance of escape, a sliver of light in a raging sea of dark. Ronald unwittingly gave me the idea when he mentioned the party they’d have when my baby was born. The elegant, impossible timing, so much balanced on a razor’s edge. I can’t think about it. I just plod toward it, knowing there are only two ways it will end: I will be dead, or I will be free.

I seldom leave the sauna of the house. I grow more ponderous in my pregnancy, and as I do, I write articles, but they are about the joys of being pregnant and cooking and gardening. I’ve not been asked again to join the Mothers.

They allow me to attend get-togethers at Catherine’s house. There, I let them teach me how to crochet. We make blankets for the less fortunate. There is talk of Shirley Chisholm, and we all make faces of disgust. I learn the value of saving flower seeds from one season to the next.

Sometimes I spot Regina around town, but I’m never without one of the Mothers. I hope they leave her alone, but I’m too deep in the soup to warn her. The heat and my growing body conspire against me, making me slow and clumsy. Mildred reminds me it’s a precious life I’m carrying and that I should be grateful.

She doesn’t need to tell me. I know it.