Bloodline(75)

I’m leaving Dr. Krause’s with her when she realizes she left her purse in the examination room.

I’m momentarily alone when the car pulls up.

A woman steps out.

I cover my mouth to stifle my scream.

She looks at me, then past me. I’m used to this invisibility as a pregnant woman. Lilydale tells me I am serving my purpose and don’t deserve a second glance. But she gives me one. Her eyes widen.

“Joan?”

It’s Ursula. She will destroy everything by being here. I hiss and back toward the door. I hope Mildred comes out. Grim-faced Catherine would be better at getting rid of Ursula. Mildred will help me, though. I can’t do it alone.

“Jesus, Joan. Are you having quintuplets?” She’s walking toward me, staring at my belly, grinning. The smile falls off her face when she meets my eyes.

“What do you want?” I ask.

“Benjamin called me,” she says. She’s gorgeous, truly a Sharon Tate, so trim and cosmopolitan and out of place in Lilydale. “I’m sorry, Joan. I should have been a better friend. He said he’s worried about you, for real worried about you, and that he can’t reach you at your old number. He found something out. Something he wanted me to tell you.”

I peer over my shoulder again at the clinic. Mildred is laughing with the receptionist. She’ll be out any minute. I must get rid of Ursula.

I walk up to her and shove her. “You have to go.”

She stumbles back, her expression wounded.

“Joan?” It’s Mildred. Finally. She’s behind me, her voice uncertain.

I turn to reassure her, stepping away from Ursula. I grab Mildred’s hand and lead her across the lawn so we can avoid the intruder.

“Minna and Johann Lily were brother and sister, Joan. Their first child was born horribly deformed. Minna went mad and threw it down a well.” Ursula’s voice starts shaky but grows louder as we walk farther away. “That’s not the crazy part, though. She and Johann kept going, having one freakish child after another. Do you hear what I’m saying?” She’s yelling now. “That’s some Olympic-level incest. This town is haunted. Fucking haunted. You okay? You okay, Joan?”

Mildred wraps her arm around me, and we scurry away.





Clean. Rested. Hydrated. Fed.

I’m ready.

It’s time for me to join them.

It’s time for me to get my child (Frances, I will call the baby, boy or girl; God, what my mother sacrificed for me) and escape Lilydale, for real this time. Forever. This must work out. My plan balances on a pin—so much could go wrong—but I can’t think of that.

One way or another, I’m getting out.

Like my mom did. Taking her child, the child of rape, Stanley Lily’s daughter, who got his eyes, who recognized a bit of herself in an old newspaper photo of her real father. Changing her name. Always staying on the move.

I pat my pocket. It’s in there. My ticket out of Lilydale, the thing I’ve been meticulously collecting in the weeks since they brought me home from the Saint Cloud police station.

My short hair has already dried. My clothes are clean, all signs of giving birth disguised. My eyes are wide and gaunt. Can’t do a thing for that, so I pinch my cheeks, wet my lips, and leave the lemon-yellow bedroom.

I hear the murmurs and clinks of their party.

They’re celebrating a new baby.

Mine.





CHAPTER 59

It’s August 1.

The weather has grown so scorching that the state weather service issues heat warnings. We sit in front of fans blowing over bowls of rapidly melting ice, but it’s no use. The world’s on fire.

I’m practicing my crocheting at the dinner table, sweat soaking my shapeless shift. Though I’ve grown unspeakably huge, Dr. Krause has assured me there’s only one baby in there. I am so large that it is difficult to cook, but I still prepare all the meals for Stan and Dorothy.

“You’re very good at that.”

It’s Dorothy. I don’t know how long she’s been watching me knit. She steps behind me and pulls sticky hair from my neck. I shiver at the human touch. She begins twisting the short bits into tufts. “Catherine says you’re pretending.”

My needles click. “Pretending what?”

“Pretending to be docile.”

I can think of no answer that she will believe, so I keep silent.

She finishes twining my hair and taps my shoulder. “I think you’re not. You’ve always only wanted to make people happy. It was selfish Virginia who made everything so difficult.”

I think of Stanley. Dorothy cares for him, moving him from one room to another, bathing him, spoon-feeding him. And sometimes, when she’s not looking, I think he grins at me, a wicked, wolfish grin.

“I’m going to walk to Dr. Krause’s today,” I say. “I need more sleeping pills and Valium. I’d love to have company. I want to make sure the baby is getting everything he needs, and the exercise will be good for me.”

“That’s my girl,” she says. She makes a tsking sound in the back of her throat, as if I’ve pleased her. “How would you like to become one of the Mothers tonight?”

I turn in the chair as fast as my swollen body will allow. My eyes are full of tears. My emotions have been so close to the surface these last weeks of my pregnancy. “I would love that. I would love that before the baby is born.”