The Purity of Blood: Volume I (78 page)

“You’re not
losing me, Dad.” I laughed to myself, a little chuckle really.

He turned to
look at me with wounded indignation in his eyes.
 

“Something
funny?” he asked as he raised a warning eyebrow at me.

“I was just
remembering something Aunt Dot used to say.
 
Something along the lines of ‘your son’s your son till he takes a wife,
but your daughter’s your daughter for life’.
 
I think that means you couldn’t get rid of me even if you tried.”
 

I smiled up at
him.
 
Maybe that was all the reassurance
I could give him right now.

“For life, huh?”

A small smile
appeared at the corner of his mouth, but it didn’t last long.
 
Again he sighed.
 

“So,
Daniel.
 
He seems like a solid enough young
man on the surface, honey, but I get the distinct impression there’s a lot
lurking below that facade that he doesn’t want me to see.
 
I know you probably think I’m just being
overprotective because he’s the first boy you’ve ever brought home … Well, you
didn’t even bring him home to meet us, did you.
 
Why is that?”

I looked down at
the book in my lap.
 
I wasn’t ready to
have this conversation yet.
 
I’d had an
idea of how to do this, of what ground work I needed to lay beforehand, but
Daniel had rushed ahead ruining all that.

“We’ve only been
going out for a short time.
 
To be
honest, I’m not really sure where our relationship is going yet.
 
If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have brought
him home to meet you until I had some concrete idea of how permanent a fixture
he was going to be in my life.”

“I see.” I heard
him say.
 
I still hadn’t looked up from
my book.
 

“He seems to
have designs on being something of a permanent fixture if I’m reading him
right.”

I couldn’t help
but look up in surprise.
 
Dad looked
puzzled by my reaction, but I think pleasantly so.

“I know he’s all
kinds of good looking, Sara, but don’t be taken in by it.
 
Sure, he’s also polite and well-mannered and
seems to be financially stable, but there’s more to life than that.
 
And yes, for some reason I can’t seem to
fathom, he seems to care for you, but … just be careful, honey.
 
I’d tell you to stay away from him, but I’m
not sure how much good that would do.
 
I
just want you to know that not only do I expect you to start calling us more
often, but I expect a phone call, or a text, or an email every day from you
from now on.
 
If I don’t hear from you
for more than twenty-four hours, I swear by all that’s holy, I’m getting in my
car, driving up to New Paltz and dragging you back home whether you like it or
not.
 
Am I making myself perfectly clear,
young lady?”

I nodded my
head, too in shock from his words to form a sentence.

It had been an odd conversation that I could tell had made
him as uncomfortable as it had me.
 
Mom
hadn’t said much either after her few comments in the kitchen, but the
questions behind her continued looks forced me to confess a few days later that
Daniel and I were indeed now dating.
 
I
knew she liked Daniel, but I wasn’t sure how she felt about our
relationship.
 
She just told me not to
rush into anything and had left it at that.
 

When I finally dragged my mind
back to the path, the sun had disappeared behind a blanket of gray clouds and
it was starting to snow.
 
Wishing I had
my favorite red scarf, the soft fuzzy one Mom had knitted for me, I instinctively
pulled my collar up to protect my neck from the cold.
 
Yes, it was cold, but I didn’t really
care.
 
Would it be overly corny to say
that it was the warmth of my love for Daniel that was keeping me warm?
 
I suppose so, but in truth I’d hardly noticed
the cold.
 
My mind was otherwise occupied
with the familiar faces of the people who were the most important to me.
 
Mom, Dad, Ben, Randall, Lois.
 
They all cared about me in their own ways and
they all seemed against my relationship with Daniel.
 
In my brain, I could see the logic in their
objections, but none of that mattered.
 
My heart was the one in control now.
 
All my heart knew was that we were in love.
 
What happened now?
 
Well, I guess I’d leave that in God’s
hands.
 

As I followed Daniel up the
wooded path, I thought about Randall.
 
I
think I’d finally forgiven him for his part in trying to break us up, but I somehow
couldn’t help but feel this might only be a temporary truce.
 
I knew he wasn’t being completely honest with
me.
 
Yes, he’d given Daniel his
permission, but he’d felt forced into it.
 
He was fully aware that had he not given in, we might very well have run
off together.
 
How did I know this?
 
I’m still not sure except that I think our
connection was growing stronger.
 
I was beginning
to be able to pick up on things I think he wished I wasn’t able too.
 

I knew he was
still lying to me about things he was able to block me from hearing in his
mind.
 
Unfortunately I got the impression
Randall didn’t consider lies of omission to be lies at all.
 
Right now it didn’t seem to matter, but I
knew it would someday.
 
Someday, whether
he liked it or not, I’d find out the whole truth about whatever it was he kept
behind that black veil in his mind.
 

I had a feeling
that a day of reckoning was in our future.
 
What our relationship would look like when the dust finally settled at
the end of that day ... well, that was very much a mystery to me.
 
I hoped in the end it would bring us closer,
but hoping wasn’t going to make it so.
 
He could play the kind and loving grandfather all he wanted, but I knew
there was a lot more going on underneath that charming smile than met the
eye.
 

Randall and my
parents weren’t the only family members on my mind.
 
My brother Roger wasn’t far behind them in my
concerns.
 
Roger and I had an odd
relationship for siblings.
 
He was so
much older than I was, and from a very early age had taken on the role of
surrogate father when our own father had gone away on the many last minute
business trips he’d taken when we were young.
 
I didn’t see Roger half as often as I’d have liked anymore.
 
He was married now and lived up in Hartford
with Lauri and the kids.
 
They spent half
their holidays with her family in Pennsylvania, so I’d only seen him a handful
of times in the last year or so.
 
We
talked on the phone, but it wasn’t the same.
 
Not that we ever talked about it, but he was the only other person in
the world who knew most of my childhood experiences.
 
Neither of us wanted to discuss them, but
that unacknowledged connection between us meant I could tell him anything.
 
Even though we hardly saw each other anymore,
he was still the only person I felt I could be completely honest with and find
any measure of acceptance from.
  
In my
heart I ached to tell him the truth about Daniel, but I couldn’t and it was
killing me inside.

Although Roger hadn’t
verbalized his dislike of Daniel, it was obvious he was suspicious of him.
 
I’ll admit that his unspoken recriminations
of my relationship hurt way more than my parents spoken ones.
 
Roger was my kindred spirit, my better half
in so many ways.
 
The fact that he didn’t
seem willing to even give Daniel a chance hurt deeply.
 
I wasn’t sure what I could do about it except
pray that given enough time, he’d come around to accepting him.
 
In all honesty, I had doubts about that.
 
I think it was because I knew Roger could
sense I was holding something back about this mysterious man who’d shown up on
our doorstep Thanksgiving Day.

I wasn’t sure
what I could have expected of his meeting Daniel for the first time, but the
silent looks of suspicion and hostility over the dinner table certainly weren’t
what I’d have wished for.
 
Maybe I only
had myself to blame.
 
It must have been
obvious I was hiding that Daniel and I were way more than just friends.
 

Our family was
full of secrets and small lies of omission, but we never lied to each other,
only to outsiders.
 
In hindsight, I think
Roger may have been directing some of his anger at me onto Daniel.
 
He was probably upset that I was sitting
across the table lying to him about our relationship.
 
He had to have been wondering why I felt the
need to lie to my own brother.
 
After
all, he was the only person in the world I had no secrets from.
 
Well, he had been up until I’d left for
school.

As I walked
along behind Daniel, I felt horribly guilty and resolved to call Roger before I
went to bed tonight and do a little confessing to him.
 
Of all people to deceive, Roger was the last
person I’d ever want to do that to.
 
He’d
had to suffer at the hands of our family just as I had as a child.
 
It had been for our own good, I think I’d
accepted that now, but Roger didn’t know that.
 
He was still in the dark about vampires as were the rest of the family
back home.
 

I wondered if I
should tell him.
 
I think it would give
him some measure of peace about our past as it had for me.
 
No, I couldn’t do that to him.
 
That kind of peace, I was finding, came at a
great price.
 
I had Daniel as my
consolation, but Roger wouldn’t.
 

As we continued up
the path, Daniel looked down at me and smiled as he squeezed my hand
tenderly.
 
I think he could sense the
heavy thoughts on my mind.

I smiled back
and wondered how Daniel would feel if he knew the real me.
 
I wasn’t exactly the woman he thought I
was.
 
I hid it so well and buried it so
deep, I sometimes wondered myself who I really was on the inside.
 
In the end, I liked who I was when I saw
myself reflected in his eyes, and I desperately wanted to be the woman he
thought I was.
 
I could be her for him –
and I guess I was her to a certain extent.
 

But like Daniel,
I was a person with many layers, and he’d really only scratched my
surface.
 
Not quite ready to confront my
demons yet, I guessed we’d cross that bridge when we came to it.
 
I think I just needed to have faith that he’d
love me no matter what.
 

As we walked up
the path, I realized even I had little idea anymore of who I really was deep
down at my core.
 
Maybe he knew more
about that me than he was letting on.
 
After all, he’d heard me talk in my sleep.
 
He’d never really told me what I’d said, but
it was obvious whatever it was had shaken him profoundly.
 
To be honest, I wasn’t sure I really wanted
to know.
 
He’d said it wasn’t me, but I
didn’t see how that could possibly be.
 
More likely, it was the real me.
 
Again, another bridge we’d cross when we were ready.
 

After a while we
came upon the open expanse of the orchard.
 
It looked so different now.
 
The
leaves were all gone and the bare branches were receiving a feathery dusting of
snow, making them look all silvery in the overcast sunlight.
 
He walked me down to the spot where we’d
first kissed in the grass that day.
 
He
didn’t say anything as we strolled that way, but he squeezed my hand
affectionately as if recalling the same memory I was.
 
We sat down in that same spot and stared in
wonder as the snow began to cover the valley below us in a blanket of white, as
if nature was erasing all the wrongs of the world.

“It’s so
beautiful,” I said in a whisper as I cuddled up to his side.
 
He put his arm around my back allowing me to
snuggle under his coat with him.
 
A few
minutes went by in silence where we contentedly watched the snow fall and felt
the pressure of each other’s bodies up against the other.
 
Without looking up, I could sense he had
something on his mind, but I didn’t ask what it was.
 
I suppose I had my own thoughts to occupy
mine, and I knew he’d tell me his whenever he was ready.
 

Suddenly he
pulled his arm back and turned to face me.
 
His brow was furrowed like he was nervous about something.
 
Then he reached over and tenderly moved a
lock of hair out of my face, as if pausing for a long moment to gather his
thoughts.