I didn’t move.
“You can go out and tell your young man that everything is fine and he can leave. We’ll let you do that,” Mrs. Fennel said when she saw my hesitation.
“He’d better not be out there when Daddy comes,” Ava warned.
Everyone stared at me, waiting. Some of the babies began to cry louder.
Mrs. Fennel’s smile began to fade as I remained hesitant and took a step back. Her eyes narrowed into that more familiar face of suspicion and anger. “You don’t want to do this, do you?” she asked me. “You don’t want to be one of us, after all? There is something wrong with you.”
“Wrong with me?” I shook my head. In my way of thinking, there was something right with me.
“There is no long window here, Lorelei. If you refuse your destiny now, you could end up never being one of us, never being accepted. You might even become hunted, and not only by us.”
“Don’t beg her,” Ava said. “Let her go. We don’t want an impurity in our family.”
“What family?” I asked. “This isn’t a real family. Daughters who are wives and mothers of other daughter-wives.”
“Lorelei,” my mother said. “Please.”
I backed away, shaking my head. No one moved. They all stared at me as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Only Ava looked pleased.
“You can’t have any sort of real life out there without your father,” Mrs. Fennel said. “You have his blood running through your veins. Anyone you’re with will sense something is very different about you, and if you ever did have a child with another man, you could never be sure of what and who that child would be, especially if it was a boy.”
I shook my head again.
All of the babies sounded as if they were crying now. I backed farther away from her. Still, no one moved. No one looked interested in preventing my escape.
“Lorelei,” Brianna said.
“Lorelei,” they all chanted.
I turned and ran to the front door, expecting them to follow, but no one did.
No one was chasing me, but I didn’t hesitate. There were no clouds, but a shadow moved over the light.
Daddy’s almost here, I thought, and charged toward the car.
Buddy saw that I was fleeing and started the engine, but he had forgotten to unlock the doors. I tugged madly at the handle. I could hear the babies screaming. It was a piercing sound, cutting through my brain. I put my hands over my ears. I felt myself weakening and sinking to the earth as if I were actually melting away.
And then darkness rushed in.
Epilogue
I woke in the car. We were bouncing over the gravel road, because Buddy was driving so fast. I heard the tiny stones being kicked up into the wheel wells. Buddy didn’t know I was conscious. I could see how terrified he was. I groaned and sat up.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You fainted. I got out and got you into the car as quickly as I could and drove off. What happened in there? Why did you come running out like that?”
“Did anyone come after me?”
He shook his head. “But I wasn’t going to wait around to see.”
“Good.”
We reached the smooth macadam portion of the road, and he picked up more speed.
“So? Who was in there? What did you find out? But more important, what made you run to the car like that and faint?”