Daughter of Light (10 page)

I shrugged. “I thought you did say boy. Sorry.”

“No. I mean, we are having a boy, but how . . .”

“Not much of a magic trick on my part,” I said. “There were only two choices, Michele. I just hit the right one. Maybe I’ll go find a roulette wheel.”

She laughed, but I held a steady serious look. I didn’t want her even to suspect that I had any special powers. I couldn’t explain the sharp insight that all my sisters and I possessed. Daddy had told me it was part of what helped us survive the ages. He had told me there were all sorts of vision, and many times, it was wiser to see through your feelings rather than through your eyes. At least, that was true for us.

“We’re thinking of naming him Nathaniel,” Michele said after a moment of deciding whether to share something so personal with someone she had just met. “That was my paternal grandfather’s name.”

“That’s nice. I prefer older names and not the flavor of the month.”

“Now you’re sounding more like my grandmother. How old are you, really?”

“Ages and ages,” I said. “I drank from the Fountain of Youth.”

She nodded. “I bet you did. See you in the morning.”

I watched her leave, and then the phone rang again. I could see it was an internal call. I didn’t have to wait to hear his voice to know who it was. “Mr. Dolan’s office,” I said dryly.

“I heard you’ve only been in Quincy one day and you’re staying at my great-aunt’s place,” Liam said. “How about I show you the town tonight? It looks like you’re practically a member of the family already.”

“Excuse me. Who is this?” I asked, knowing well who it was.

“Liam. Liam Dolan. We just met,” he said, sounding amazed and a little insulted.

“Oh. Sorry. You were in and out so quickly, I forgot your name. Thank you for the invitation, but I’m otherwise occupied.”

“Huh? What’s that mean?”

“Translated, that means I have things to do tonight that make my accepting your invitation impossible.”

“All night?”

“No. I think I’ll spend some time sleeping. But thank you,” I said, and hung up.

I waited to see if he would call back. A part of me wished he would, and I sat there chastising that part of me. He didn’t call back, but I had no doubt that he would not give up so easily.

Maybe it wouldn’t be long before he wished he had.

At the end of the day, Michael Thomas stopped in to see me. I could see from his expression that news about me had spread with electric speed through the company. I had stopped in the business office and met the head accountant, Mrs. Lovejoy, a woman in her late fifties who looked as if she had absorbed decimal points into her eyes. They were spotted black and gray. She gave me a form to fill out and mechanically explained the company’s pension plan. I sensed that despite Mr. Dolan’s eagerness to hire me, she didn’t believe I would be with the company long enough for anything she said to matter all that much.

Afterward, I returned to the office. Mr. Dolan was having a meeting with an attorney named Stan English. From the way Stan had looked at me when he arrived, I had the feeling Mr. Dolan had already told him about me, filling his description with compliments.

“If for some reason Ken doesn’t want to keep you on, you call me,” he said, winking.

“Control yourself, Stan,” Mr. Dolan told him. “You’ve got three grandchildren.”

“And a fourth on the way.” He smiled at me. “I was eighteen once. Don’t rush your life.”

“Sorry,” Mr. Dolan told me, continuing with the lightness, “but Stan, like most lawyers, is always eager to give someone else advice. Get in here, you idiot.”

“Come see me,” Mr. English mouthed as he went into Mr. Dolan’s office. Mr. Dolan had already told me that his meeting would go past the end of the day and I should just let him know when I was leaving.

I was glad to see Michael Thomas because I anticipated Liam Dolan returning to pursue me despite my having turned him down on the phone, and I was afraid that I would weaken and go with him. I told myself it was far too soon to experiment with another romance. Buddy’s face was still vividly in my mind and in my dreams, not that I had any hope of ever seeing him again.

“Congratulations,” Michael said. He was obviously very surprised that I had been hired. “I just stopped by to see if you had changed your mind about a ride home, since from what I’ve heard, you’ve done a day’s work in a matter of hours.”

I imagined I had been a big topic of discussion. “I’m not exhausted, Michael. Thank you, but you know what I would like, if you have a few minutes?”

“Sure, what?”

“A quick tour of the showrooms. I’ve been mostly shut up in here and haven’t had the opportunity to look at an actual saddle tee fixture, and since I wrote the letter informing the wholesaler who won the bid for that and other things with us, I thought I should know how to tell it from a chocolate ice cream cone.”

Michael laughed. “Absolutely. Glad to do it.”

“I’ll just let Mr. Dolan know I’m leaving,” I said. I buzzed him and told him. I added that Michael Thomas was giving me a little tour of the company on my way out.

“Good idea. See you in the morning,” he said.

As Michael and I started out, Liam Dolan appeared in the hallway, just as I had anticipated. He looked from Michael to me. “I’d be happy to give her a ride home,” he told Michael.

“She’s not going home,” Michael said. Neither he nor I added anything.

We continued down the hallway to the showrooms, both of us smiling at the way Liam just stood there looking after us, confused.

“Just give me a quick brush of it all, Michael,” I said as we entered the first showroom. “I’ll work myself deeper into it as I go along.”

“No problem. Let’s start with fixtures,” he said.

I had not realized how much there was, and after a good half hour, we had just scratched the surface, even of only a superficial view of it.

“I don’t want to take up any more of your time,” I told him. “And besides, I don’t think I should be late for my first dinner at the Winston House.”

“No, I wouldn’t do that,” he said. He looked at his watch. “You’d better let me drive you there. It’s on my way home anyway,” he said. I had a feeling it wasn’t, but I agreed, and we left together. Liam’s car was already gone. “He obviously didn’t make any effort to make up for the time lost today,” Michael said, nodding
at the parking space. “I don’t know why that kid even bothers to show up at any time.”

“His father told him the same thing, practically.”

Michael grunted.

I thought about Liam. It seemed that everyone was down on him—not that he didn’t deserve it, but if no one was in your corner, you began to believe all the negative things people were saying about you. It reminded me of what Daddy called self-fulfilling prophecies. If enough people told you that you were a failure, you could start believing it, and if you did that, you would cause yourself to fail more and more, fulfilling the prophecy.

“Does Liam live with his father?”

“I suppose you could say that. Yes, of course. The Dolans have one of the biggest houses in Quincy. It’s really a mansion. Three or four families could live in it without getting in each other’s way. I’m sure Ken avoids him, or vice versa. Julia is still living there, too. I hear she’s in a romance with an X-ray technician at the hospital.” He smiled and leaned toward me. “Quincy’s small enough for gossip, but even if it wasn’t, people would still be interested in the Dolans. They’re like that family on that television show. Ken’s a very powerful guy in this city. Politicians are always knocking on his door.”

He stopped talking, shook his head, and looked at me.

“I don’t know what it is about you, Lorelei, but you get me blabbin’ like no one I know. Some days you can count on your fingers how many words I’ve spoken. I’m
supposed to be the closed-mouthed, tight-lipped New England guy who’s suspicious of gossips. Look what you’re doing to me.”

“Don’t worry about it, Michael. I’m not much of a gossip. My father always told me to be a good listener first and a speaker later, much later.”

Michael laughed. “Good advice. Maybe he’s from New England?”

“No, Michael. He isn’t from anyplace you’d know.”

“Huh?”

I smiled. “We’re here,” I said, and he hit his brakes.

“Almost forgot. See how much of a creature of habit I am?”

“Thank you, Michael. See you tomorrow.”

“I can pick you up in the morning,” he said as I got out.

“I’m determined to get that walk in,” I said. “Don’t stop if you see me. I won’t want to hurt your feelings.”

He laughed. “Have a good night, Lorelei, and welcome to Quincy. And Dolan Plumbing Supply,” he called as he drove away.

I watched him go. Another vehicle pulled into a driveway a few houses down on my left, but other than that, the street was as quiet as it had been when I first arrived. I stood there, however, and concentrated on the place where I had thought I had seen the elderly man who had sat with me on the plane. Daddy had once told me that he was capable of envisioning more than imagining. When I asked him what that meant, he said it was like being a visual prophet. Sometimes he saw what would be before it would be.

“It doesn’t always happen, and it’s not a hundred percent accurate,” he had told me, “but I don’t ever belittle or disregard my visions.”

Thinking about that now gave me the feeling that he was nearby, warning me. Perhaps greater than my fear of Ava catching up with me was my fear of the Renegades, those of our kind who were outlaws, who followed their own rules and had no respect for territoriality. They moved about at will and endangered us all with their kills. Pursuing one of us was something they did with relish, as if destroying one of us strengthened them.

Despite the strength of the late-afternoon sunlight, the shadows it cast seemed to grow thicker and darker right before my eyes as I stood outside the Winston House studying the street. The shadows’ chill sent me hurrying into the house, where the sound of applause greeted me. Mrs. Winston and Mrs. McGruder stood in the living-room doorway, smiling.

“My nephew called earlier to thank me for sending you over,” Mrs. Winston said. “Seems I haven’t lost my touch when it comes to judging people, and that’s pretty important these days.”

“Amen to that,” Mrs. McGruder said.

“Come in, dear, and enjoy a glass of my special elderberry wine in celebration and meet Mr. Lamb.”

They stepped back, and I entered. Mr. Lamb rose from the sofa. He wore a light brown jacket, a dark brown tie, and dark brown slacks with laced walnut-colored shoes. His reddish-brown hair was cut short, with just a small wave at the front. His smile began in
his hazel eyes and drifted through his soft, full cheeks to his pale red lips. He had a cleft chin and was just under six feet tall. He didn’t look chubby so much as slightly overweight, with an almost feminine gentleness to his demeanor. Perhaps, I thought, I was having this reaction to him because I had been confronted by so many muscular, hard-looking men at the plumbing supply company all day.

“Hi,” he said. “Welcome to the Winston House and to Quincy.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lamb.”

“Please call me Jim. Glad you got here. They wouldn’t let me sip the wine until you had yours, and Mrs. Winston knows how much I love her homemade elderberry.”

He nodded at the bottle and glasses on the silver tray Mrs. McGruder hovered over beside the end table. She looked to Mrs. Winston, who nodded, and then she began to pour us each a glass. She handed them first to Mrs. Winston, who then handed one to Jim and one to me.

“This is my great-grandmother’s recipe,” Mrs. Winston explained. “If taken in moderation, elderberry wine has many health benefits. The ancient Egyptians used the plant and its flowers to heal burns, and the British used it as a cure for the common cold and heartburn. Anyway, to our newest Quincy citizen, Lorelei Patio,” she said, raising her glass.

We all sipped.

“Thank you,” I told her. “I don’t think my own grandmother could have done as much for me in one day or been as considerate.”

Her eyes glittered, but she quickly recovered her New England proper posture and demeanor. “Well, since this is a special evening, we’re having one of Mrs. McGruder’s best dinners, roast leg of lamb. We’ll have to get to it,” she said, nodding at Mrs. McGruder. She made sure to pick up the bottle of elderberry wine as they started out. She paused in the doorway. “I’m sorry the other two guests weren’t here early enough to toast with us, but at least you and Mr. Lamb have time to get to know each other,” she said, and nodded, as if she were giving us her blessing and permission.

I looked at Jim Lamb. He smiled and glanced at the chair I was near, urging me to sit.

“I should really go up and shower and change for dinner,” I said.

“Yes. I will change, too, but they don’t serve until seven sharp, so we have some time.”

I sat, and he sat on the sofa quickly.

“I don’t know much more about you than that you just were hired at Dolan Plumbing Supply and arrived here in Quincy today. Neither Mrs. Winston nor Mrs. McGruder volunteers much information about any of their guests.”