Daughter of Light (32 page)

“Daddy expects me to help shape you,” she would say, as if I were a lump of clay.

However, I never lost the feeling that she was worried that I was moving too quickly into her shoes. I supposed any sister would resent how much attention her younger sister enjoyed from her father, but there had been no higher goal than pleasing Daddy. I learned that it wasn’t simply to win his love, of course. It was the way for us all to survive. That was something abhorrent to me eventually. I hadn’t changed my mind. It still was today, and I hoped it would be forever.

There were moments during the night when I came close to telling Julia more than I thought I should. She was so forthcoming about her earlier romances, her sex life, her needs and dreams, that I felt guilty lying beside her on my bed of falsehoods and deceptions. I was bound to make mistakes, to cause confusions and raise doubts as time went by. Most important of all was my
insecurity about what I was physically capable of. Could Liam and I have a child together? Would it be wise for me to have Julia arrange some sort of physical exam?

Put it off until it’s a must,
I told myself.
Don’t rush the future, or you’ll end it.

Julia fell asleep before I did. She kept apologizing for keeping me up with what she called nonsense teeny-bopper talk about music and fashions, colors and foods, and the different quirks about men that annoyed her. How could I tell her that for me it was like turning to a television channel I had never seen or even known existed? I encouraged her to keep talking until she finally confessed that she was exhausted, leaned over to kiss me good night, and fell asleep almost immediately while I lay there looking up into the darkness, listening for something, anything, that would warn me that what I was trying to do was impossible and would bring harm to these people whom I wanted to be my new family.

I put away those fears and carried on. It was the busiest few weeks since I had come to Quincy. I didn’t make a single dinner at the Winston House, but I could feel the excitement building in Mrs. Winston and Mrs. McGruder. Whenever I was home, they wanted a detailed report on what we had done that day concerning the wedding and our future plans.

Liam was serious about our honeymoon in Capri and made arrangements for us to stay at the Casa Morgano immediately. He brought me brochures and pictures of the island. We even watched a short video about it. I couldn’t help but agree with him and be excited.
Aside from my flight, I had never taken a trip with anyone but Daddy. Suddenly, I did feel as if the world was opening to me.

Three weeks after we had told his family we were engaged, Mr. Dolan had it in the Quincy society pages. My biography was kept generic and vague. I was simply one of his newer employees who had come from California. No mention was made of my family. He had influence with the paper and the writer, so nothing was questioned further. He was always looking out for me, protecting me, as if I were already a part of his family. I knew that didn’t mean that questions wouldn’t come up. I had to prepare how I would respond.

And then that problem ended, but not the way I would have wanted.

One day at work, Mr. Dolan called for me to come into his office.

“Close the door,” he said as soon as I had entered.

My heart began to race. The look on his face was more serious than ever. Once in a while during the past weeks, I would pause to wonder if Mr. Dolan, perhaps at Mrs. Wakefield’s request, had decided to hire a private detective to track my past. Maybe some of his friends at the golf club or other business associates had warned him about so-called gold diggers. I was sure he would testify that I was too wonderful to fall into that category, and he might even go into how much I had changed Liam for the better. I could imagine him saying something like “Even if she is, she’s worth it.”

But then again, he might have concluded that it was his responsibility to protect his son. How could I blame
him for it? I was sure that Liam would get very upset about it if he found out his father was spying on me. That might have been the only reason Mr. Dolan hadn’t done anything of the sort, as far as I knew. He wouldn’t want to ruin his renewed wonderful relationship with his son.

Until now, my personality, my work ethic, and my relationship with Mrs. Winston and Mrs. McGruder had surely pushed back any unpleasant suspicions, but how long could I carry on? Maybe no longer. Perhaps that was why he called me into his office, I thought as I took the seat in front of Mr. Dolan’s desk. I was prepared to learn that this was the beginning of the end.

He sat forward, his hands folded. I thought he looked even more nervous than I felt. What was happening?

“I just got off the phone with your father,” he said.

It was as if some monster had torn open my chest and scooped out my heart. I felt cavernous, drained of blood and organs. I was like a corpse in an autopsy, every little secret part of me exposed and displayed. Was I still breathing? It didn’t feel like it. Did he really say “your father”?

“I don’t understand,” I said.

He nodded and was silent a moment, a moment that seemed like hours to me. “People say the world has grown so small. News in one corner can be picked up in another instantly, and with the Internet . . . well, it doesn’t surprise me.”

I shook my head. “What doesn’t surprise you?”

“That your father out in California would have
someone mention to him that he saw your name on a social news blog and then describe your upcoming wedding.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“Yes.”

“What does he want? Why did he call you?”

“He wants to pay for your wedding,” Mr. Dolan said. “Father of the bride and all that.”

“But he’s . . . he hasn’t been my father. That’s why I left home.”

“He knows that. This is his way of making amends. I didn’t say yes,” he added quickly. “I told him I would be talking with you.” He paused and then smiled. “Look, I’m a father. I know I haven’t been a perfect father. I can’t help but empathize and—”

“This is different.
He’s
different.”

“I know that’s how you see it, how you have seen it, but time has passed. The reality of your being out of his life has settled in. He has obviously had the time to consider what has happened. He doesn’t expect that you will reconcile overnight or even after weeks and months, maybe, but he would like to go more than halfway to make it up to you. He was actually pleading by the end of the call,” Mr. Dolan added.

I looked up sharply. Daddy pleading? That would never happen. Why couldn’t Mr. Dolan see through the subterfuge? I had thought he was smarter than most men. Daddy was manipulating him as easily as he could manipulate anyone. Now how did I look in Mr. Dolan’s eyes? I was sitting before him, suddenly the bad one, the one who wouldn’t forgive, recalcitrant, bitter
and stubborn, maybe even spoiled. How could I be that way? What had happened to all the sensitivity I’d shown? I could hear those thoughts and see them coming at me.
How do I do this? How do I respond without saying too much?

“Why don’t you sleep on it?” Mr. Dolan said, seeing my reaction. “You’re on your way toward making a whole new life for yourself. We’re here for you, and we are powerful and formidable people,” he added with pride. “You have nothing to worry about.”

I nearly laughed aloud. It took all of my self-control not to do it.
You,
I thought,
powerful and formidable against my father?
It was so ridiculous a concept that I had to look down, close my eyes, and hold my breath.

“You won’t go back to him. This is your home,” Mr. Dolan continued, trying the reasonable approach. “You’ll treat him like any other guest if that’s what you want him to be.”

I looked up quickly. “Guest? So, you’re saying not only does he want to pay for the wedding but he also wants to attend?”

Mr. Dolan shrugged. “Look at it another way. He could have been totally uninterested, hated you, or tried to forget you, but that part of him that’s good wants to see what every father surely wants to see, his daughter married and moving on to a life of her own. He wants to give away the bride. I know I’d be heartbroken if I wasn’t at Julia’s wedding to give her away. Think it over,” he said again as he stood. “I have to go see Charley in the appliance center. Be back in a while. You can talk it over with anyone tonight. I’m sure Julia will be a
good ear if you don’t want to talk to Liam about it just yet.”

He came around the desk. I stood up. He smiled at me and then hugged me. “Whatever you decide, I know it’ll be right,” he added, and started out.

I watched him leave the office and then sat hard on the chair again, stunned.

If anything, I felt trapped. It was worse than confronting Ava on some dark street and hearing her berate and threaten me. It wasn’t Daddy’s style to come at me violently. He would glide into Quincy, surfing on his wonderful, attractive smile, and charm everyone around him. I could just imagine him talking to Mrs. Winston. He would discuss her beloved Colonial history as if he had been there, because it was very likely he had.

“Oh, forgive him,” they would all tell me. “He’s a man. He has weaknesses, but it’s wonderful that his love for you is too strong for him to ignore forever.”

What would he do then? What did he want? Was this really his way of stopping my marriage and getting me back?

I felt drained of energy. Just the walk back to my desk exhausted me. I sat there staring at the computer and at the work I was doing. What was once so easy looked formidable. A strong part of me wanted me to get up and, as quickly and as quietly as I could, slip out of the building and do what I had done when I had left Buddy, hitch a ride out of there and continue my flight. It didn’t matter where. Just keep going.

After an hour of moving through the paces without getting all that much done, I was actually on the verge
of running off when Liam came into the office, practically bouncing with excitement.

“We got them!” he cried.

“Who?”

“Remember that band I wanted for the wedding? We played their CDs for you and you loved the way they mixed the old with the new. Remember?”

“Yes, Johnny and the Classics, but you found out they were previously booked.”

“They were, sorta. Well, Dad made them an offer they couldn’t refuse, and I don’t mean like the God-father. He’s acting like money’s no object when it comes to what we want. He just did it, and they accepted. They would have been crazy not to. He practically doubled their fee.”

Maybe that was because he was expecting that I would agree to permitting my father to pay for the wedding. He had so much of it covered that he could afford to offer more for the band, I thought.

“Well? Aren’t you pleased? I think he was doing it more for you than for me.”

“Yes, of course. You just surprised me, that’s all. And I was in the middle of something.”

“Sure.” He started to turn around and then stopped. “Oh, I decided to ask Clifford to be my best man. He agreed. Julia is very happy about it.”

“That’s nice, Liam.”

“We’ve got to do what we can to help that romance along,” he said, lowering his voice as if we were planning something secret.

“Okay,” I said.

He looked at me for a long moment.

“What?”

“I just can’t believe that in a matter of weeks now, you’ll be mine. And I’ll be yours, of course,” he quickly added.

“I have trouble believing it, too,” I said, maybe a little too seriously. His smile didn’t fade, but it looked like something frozen on a computer monitor.

“Not too much trouble, I hope.”

I shook my head.

He drew closer. “You look a little shaken up, Lorelei. Is something wrong?”

It was only a matter of time, maybe only a matter of hours, before he would find out anyway, I thought.

“A while ago, I learned that my father called your father to offer to pay for the wedding.”

“What?”

“He wants to attend, too.”

“You mean give away the bride?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. And you’re upset about it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, whatever you want to do is all right with me, but—”

“But I’d look too unreasonable to everyone if I said no, right?”

“Most people don’t know about your problems with him, and—”

“But they will, eventually.”

He stood there quietly. I knew he was afraid to offer
advice either way and was ruminating on what words to choose. “What did you tell my dad?”

“I said I would think about it.”

“So, do that,” he said. “I repeat. Whatever you decide is all right with me.”

I wanted to tell him that he didn’t know my father. Whatever I decided wouldn’t matter. He was coming here one way or another. There was, of course, the ever so slight chance that he was accepting my decision and wanted to pretend to be a normal father. Was it better to declare war and tell Mr. Dolan to say no, that I didn’t want him, or was it better to take the chance? The third choice always remained: to run off again.

Liam came around the desk and knelt beside me. “I don’t like to see you upset, even for a little while, Lorelei. What can I do?”

“Nothing. This is all on me, Liam.”

“I don’t understand how he could have been so indifferent to your feelings and now suddenly care so much.”

What was my clever answer to this?

“As your father says, the reality of my being out of his life has finally sunken in, and then he found out about our wedding,” I told him, practically parroting Mr. Dolan.

“Well, it’s not a bad idea to start anew and give the wedding another layer of goodwill and happiness,” he offered timidly.

I smiled and ran my hand softly through his hair. “I don’t know what your mother was like, but I think you have more of your father in you than you can imagine.”

“Maybe you do, too,” he said.

That soft, intending-to-be-warm reply felt like a clap of thunder in my ears. I nodded.

“Maybe I do. Okay. I’ll say yes,” I said.

He smiled and rose slightly to kiss me. “We’ll celebrate your father’s resurrection Saturday night. See you later,” he said and hurried off.