Daughter of Light (6 page)

Mrs. Winston pressed her lips together and shook her head.

“Mother of God,” Mrs. McGruder said, and she looked up as if she could see an angel hovering on the ceiling.

“I knew it, but I said nothing to him—or to my mother, of course. Two weeks after my mother’s passing, my father brought his new girlfriend home. We hadn’t even put up the tombstone yet.”

“Oh, the hardness cementing the hearts of self-centered men,” Mrs. Winston said.

“They didn’t marry. They had the decency to wait some time before they were going to do that, but she behaved as though they were married. It wasn’t long
before she was telling me what to do, and he was siding with her all the time. Finally, he gave me an ultimatum. Accept Veronica as my surrogate mother until they were married—that’s her name; he calls her Ronnie for short—or leave.”

“Your father said that? He gave his own flesh and blood such an ultimatum?” Mrs. McGruder asked.

Mrs. Winston grunted. “I don’t know why that would surprise you, Mrs. McGruder. You and I have lived long enough to see it all.”

“But not to abide it.”

I nodded. “He gave me that ultimatum, so one night, I packed only enough to get away quickly. I had a little of my own money, and I thought I would get new things as I went along. As you can imagine, it was important to travel lightly and get as far away as I could as fast as I could. I don’t intend ever to go back there except to visit my mother’s grave from time to time. I know he won’t.”

“You poor child. Don’t you have any relatives you could have gone to?” Mrs. McGruder asked.

“Both of my parents were only children, and both sets of grandparents are gone,” I said. “I guess you can see how important my mother was to me and I to her. As I said, we were more like sisters.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Winston said. The two women were both silent a moment, and then Mrs. Winston looked up at me again. “What brought you to Quincy?”

Time to mix in some truth,
I thought.
It’s the recipe that always works.

“To be honest, I read about it on the flight from
California to Boston and decided it was a good place to get a new start. I’ve always loved being close to the ocean, but even more, I love being close to history.”

“No question about it. You’ll be close to that here,” Mrs. McGruder said.

“Why didn’t you go to college?” Mrs. Winston asked, still holding on to some of her skepticism and suspicions. It was too much a part of her nature to let them go easily.

“I fully intended to do so, but my father told me we didn’t have the funds and I should first get a job and make some money. We had the funds. I knew it, but what could I do? He made promises that I knew he would never keep. He said he would match anything I made, but once his Ronnie came to live with us, I saw the writing on the wall. There would be little or no money put away for me, no matter what I did. She was always asking him for expensive things.

“But I haven’t given up on going to college someday,” I said quickly.

“Did you inquire about any job prospects here?” Mrs. McGruder asked.

“Not yet, but I’m good on a computer, and I have very good organizational skills. No matter what, I want very much to try to live here for a while,” I said. “This looks like just the sort of place that’s the opposite of where I was in California. I have the feeling that people are real here. I’m the sort who likes to make new friends. My mother was like that, too. She taught me that if you are honest and sincere with people, they will be the same with you. My father taught me the
opposite,” I added, grimacing, “but I’ve tossed those lessons overboard.”

Now they looked as if they were the ones holding back tears.

“We have room for only six guests,” Mrs. Winston said after a deep sigh. “Currently, we have three. You’ll be our fourth. There are strict rules,” she added with a tone of admonition.

“I’m not afraid of rules,” I said.

“We’ll see. We’ll show you your room. You’ll be sharing a bathroom with Mrs. Addison. She was recently divorced, and she is waiting for her new house to be renovated.”

“And for her divorce settlement, which could go on for quite a while. The courts here are like the courts in a Dickens novel,” Mrs. McGruder added. “Have you had any lunch?”

“Lunch?” I smiled.

“What’s so funny?” Mrs. Winston asked.

“I was so involved in my travel, I forgot to eat breakfast, too,” I said.

“I’m not surprised. Young people today don’t know right from left most of the time,” Mrs. McGruder said.

Mrs. Winston nodded in agreement. “Well, then, first things first,” she said, rising. “You just make yourself at home here for a few minutes while we look into some lunch. I’m a little hungry now myself.”

The two of them left me. I gazed around the room, which just reeked of history, of family, of heritage. I had no reason to feel at home and no expectations of finding friendship at all.

But somehow I felt as if I had.

Was it merely a wish, a need so great it would paper over reality and leave me even more vulnerable than I was before I had begun my journey?

The world was bright there, cozy and warm.

Don’t fool yourself so quickly, Lorelei,
I told myself.
The winds of darkness you left behind are surely blowing vigorously in every direction at this very moment, searching for you, waiting to swallow you up and take you back to the fate you were destined to have.

Remember Ava’s prophetic words.

“You can’t escape from yourself.”

I continued to elaborate on my story at lunch, building on half-truths. I held the two women in rapt attention, especially when I described the fictional Veronica, making her sound jealous of my capturing even a few seconds of my father’s attention. I even suggested that she tried to make me out to be a thief by claiming that she couldn’t find certain pieces of her jewelry and somehow was always missing money. Jealousy among myself and my sisters was always in the air at home. All of us competed for my father’s attention, so it wasn’t difficult coming up with this scenario and describing it with passion in my voice.

“Whenever Veronica brought any of this up, she fixed her attention on me in front of my father so that there would be no doubt whom she was accusing. She must have descended from Judas,” I added, and their eyes widened. “It was like living with an assassin,” I said. “Gradually, my father’s once loving eyes turned into cold gray stones when he looked my way, and all because of her. Once my father loved me like a father should love a daughter,” I added, thinking of my real father. “He loved to spend time with
me, lay whatever wisdom he could upon me to guide me, but after she came on the scene, I felt like a stranger in my own home. It got so I was spending hours and hours locked up in my room, finding every way I could to avoid them. I would fall asleep with my mother’s picture embraced in my arms and pressed to my heart.”

I looked away as if to prevent them from seeing tears forming in my eyes. Actually, they were forming.
I’m good at this,
I thought.
I’m better than Ava ever could be, because she’s too hard-hearted to create any sympathy for herself. She’d laugh in the faces of those who tied her to the stake, the most feared and ancient way to rid the world of our kind.

“No wonder you ran off. Please, take as much time to eat as you want,” Mrs. Winston said, her hand now pressed against her heart, tender with compassion. “We’re in no rush here.”

I hadn’t realized how hungry I really was and was gobbling my food. Mrs. Fennel would say I was vacuuming it up from the plate. She’d give me a look so stern I would go into slow motion.

“Thank you. I’m sorry to go on and on like this about my father and his witch,” I said. “I’m sure it’s depressing you, and you don’t need someone new coming here with emotional and psychological burdens. Everyone has his or her own troubles. I’d understand why you wouldn’t be so eager to have someone like me as a tenant.”

“Oh, no, no. We’re happy to listen,” Mrs. Winston said, and she looked at Mrs. McGruder, who nodded emphatically.

“I’d like to get my hands on that woman for ten minutes,” Mrs. Winston said. “I just hate that type, and we’ve seen enough examples of them.”

“Amen to that,” Mrs. McGruder added, like the loyal alter ego she was.

I was confident that they wouldn’t want to send me on my way. Rather than depressing them, I had the feeling I was giving them their entertainment for the day, if not for the week. Feasting on the private lives of their guests was probably what they needed to nourish their own existence in a world where the most excitement came from statues and plaques.

“This is delicious,” I said, nodding at the salad.

Mrs. McGruder had made a Waldorf salad. Before she served it, she went into the history of it, telling me that it was first created in 1893 by the maitre d’ of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. I wondered if everything presented to me in that house would have a biography attached. I really was going to live in the middle of a history book, but oddly, that made me feel safer. It was as if I had gone through a door and traveled not only thousands of miles away from my father and my sisters but a few hundred years away, too.

Actually, despite the sorry face I wore, I was enjoying the first really relaxing moments I’d had since getting into the truck with Moses. The dining room was surprisingly bright and airy because of the sliding patio doors and two large windows. Mrs. Winston explained that this part of the historic house had recently been renovated. Recently, I learned, meant within the last twenty years.

“I didn’t want to do it, but the business required it. Naturally, the historical society made us jump through hoops,” she said.

“And then some,” Mrs. McGruder added.

There was a long light oak table that could comfortably seat a dozen people, a matching armoire with shelves of very old china, and two side chairs in opposite corners. Above us was a pewter chandelier that looked as if it had once held candles instead of light bulbs. The walls there, as they were elsewhere, had pages from old newspapers in frames, drawings of Colonial government figures, and an occasional print of a watercolor depicting farms or the original streets in the city.

“We don’t usually provide lunch for our guests,” Mrs. Winston continued. “This is a bed-and-breakfast, but we do have what is called half-board if you want to take your dinners with us as well.”

So there would be no misunderstanding, she wrote out the prices.

“The room you’ll be getting is our Abigail Adams. All six of our guest rooms are named for Quincy historical figures. Abigail was, of course, the wife of John Adams, who was the second president of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, who was the sixth. I’m giving you a discount because you’re just starting out here.”

“Thank you,” I said. “And thank you for lunch. It’s delicious.”

“Everything Mrs. McGruder makes is delicious. At the moment, our three other guests are half-board because they know they’ll get a dinner ten times better
than anything in any restaurant out there,” she added.

“I’d like to do the same,” I said.

“Very wise decision. Well now,” she said, seeing that I had finished my lunch, “shall we show you the Abigail Adams?”

“Yes, please,” I said.

We went out to the stairway and started up. It was only a short stairway, but because the windows in the upstairs hallway were small and far apart and because there were no lights on at the moment, it was much darker.

As if she knew what I was thinking, Mrs. Winston turned to say, “We don’t waste electricity here. I don’t put the lights on until after dusk. For years after electricity became a big thing, my family held on to candles and oil lamps. I think we might have been the last ones in this section of Quincy to install a telephone. One should not be so eager to give up one’s history. Not all change is for the better, you know.”

I didn’t say anything, but I understood her point. None of her ancestors had given up as much as I was trying to give up and deny about my own history.

We turned right and went to the third door, where she paused as if we were in a movie and she was anticipating some entry music.

“The Abigail Adams,” she announced, and opened the door.

I imagined it had been renovated, too, because it had two large windows, one on each side of the simple white enameled four-poster bed, maybe half the size of the king-size bed I had in California. It was made
up with simple light blue linen. There was an old-fashioned crocheted bedspread with knotted fringe. The windows faced the street. The chintz curtains were tied back so the light fell fully on the small table beside the bed. On it was a shaded reading lamp. Although there was a mirrored dressing table with a cover of clear glass, there was also a long mirror on what I imagined was the closet door, two chairs, one of which was wicker, and a footstool. In the far right corner was a writing desk. The walls were papered with a small pattern of flowers in soft colors, and there was a large plain green woven rag rug. On the left was a bureau.