“I really owe it to you,” she said. “Ever since I took your advice and let Clifford know about my feelings, he’s been warmer and more loving.”
“We have to celebrate this,” I said.
“We will. We’re all going to the Underground. Liam talked Clifford into it. It’s time we all let our hair down a little,” she added. “Anyway, it won’t be long before we’ll have another wedding on the estate.”
“I’m really happy for you, Julia.”
“Your coming here was truly a blessing for this family,” she said. She had no idea why that made me feel so terrible. I forced a smile, but she knew me well enough by now to see through it. “What’s wrong, Lorelei? Is it your father?”
“Yes.”
“Well, don’t be nervous about it. I’ll be there for you. We’ll all be. Even Clifford,” she added with a bigger smile.
I had to relax. I had to overcome my fears, at least for the time being. What could happen next was something I tried desperately to avoid imagining. At some point, however, there would be no way to distract myself. The weight of concern would drag me down and make me the dark and unenthusiastic one in the room.
Julia hugged me again, and then we drove on.
“We’ll worry about me later. Right now,” she said, “we have to concentrate on your wedding. But just think how much I will learn from it. I’ll avoid all your mistakes,” she added, laughing.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m the test pilot.”
“You are, but you’ll have a wonderful wedding and a great honeymoon, I’m sure.”
Only if Daddy lets me, I thought, and couldn’t imagine why he ever would. Julia couldn’t stop talking, and I couldn’t stop looking everywhere and at every person, waiting to see Ava or even Daddy standing off to the side watching me. I didn’t see either of them, but that didn’t bring any relief. I still had the feeling that I was being closely observed. I knew they would let me see them when they were ready. There was no catching either of them off-guard.
We had a great time at the dress fitting and then at lunch. Now that Julia was engaged, we had more in common. We were chattering away and laughing so much that I forgot all of my fears for the moment and luxuriated in the freedom and joy that the immediate future promised. Surely, I thought, when Daddy saw me, he would realize that it would be wrong to force me to come back. Wrong or not, another voice said, he can’t let you go in front of the others. The danger was that they would think he was weak, and it wouldn’t be only my sisters who would think it. There would be Mrs. Fennel and the others, the external family, as he once called them. When I was younger, I had been introduced to them as if they were uncles and aunts. Maybe they were, in a real sense. There was still so much I didn’t know about Daddy’s world, so much I was supposed to start learning.
Everything continued so smoothly that I began to wonder if it all might happen after all. Daddy had not appeared mysteriously in my room and told me to leave. He had put in the money for the wedding and apparently had good conversations with Mr. Dolan. Ava had not appeared at the front of the Winston House again. What was going on? They had done something to poor Collin Nickels, hadn’t they? Was this just their way of tormenting me, hoping that I would throw up my hands and surrender? Were they hoping that I would choose to return without any further encouragement or threat?
Surely, my steadfastness and determination had given them second thoughts. Could Daddy have concluded that it made no sense now to pull me back into their world, that the best solution was to carry on the deception and let me go?
Should I pray?
Would the God who hadn’t taken interest enough in all these centuries to stop Daddy and his kind suddenly care about my small soul?
The answers were finally revealed on Saturday night, when Julia, Clifford, and Liam came by to pick me up so the four of us could celebrate at the Underground. The joviality in the car resembled a New Year’s Eve celebration. I welcomed it, thinking that yes, maybe this was the end of one story and the beginning of another. I’d be a different kind of Cinderella at midnight. Magically, I would stop being a princess in Daddy’s kingdom and become an ordinary young woman in the world I longed to enjoy.
20
The four of us were more carefree and loose than we had ever been, together or separately. We were quickly the center of attention, especially out on the dance floor, sometimes moving together, exchanging partners, even dancing woman-to-woman and man-to-man. The music couldn’t be too loud for Clifford right now. He was pretty buzzed very quickly, I thought, and I suspected that he and Julia might have begun celebrating before Liam had driven them to the Winston House to get me. They’d be sorry in the morning, I told myself. Alcohol didn’t have anywhere near the effect on me that it had on them, but I was a good actress, mimicking and pretending that it did.
We took breaks to eat a little, drink a little more, toasting to our future and especially to the success of Liam’s and my wedding. Just when I thought everyone had been sufficiently exhausted, they wanted to go back on the dance floor. To me, it seemed that Julia was finally letting go, doing what she always wanted and dreamed she would do, having a wild and carefree time with the man she loved. The more she got Clifford to do, the happier she was. It was as if it confirmed for her that they would have a good marriage after all.
It was going so well that I ignored any small alarms sounding inside me. After all, I wanted to drive back dark thoughts or worries as much as any of them and welcomed the way we infected one another with our excitement, our laughter, and our hugs and kisses. Only once did I pause to wonder if this was the way people had behaved right before the Titanic hit an iceberg. The glitter, the champagne, the wonderful food, and the music cloaked them in such joyous elation that they were oblivious to anything threatening and evil outside their warm embrace of deep joy.
And then I saw her, my own private iceberg.
She was suddenly there, dancing right beside us, drawing Liam’s and Clifford’s eyes to her with her ebullient sexuality, her ravishing beauty heightened in her electric eyes, her silky hair and bulging bosom drawing them deeper into her cleavage until they literally began to sway to her rhythm, not ours.
I screamed like someone who had stepped on a nail. It broke the spell. Both Clifford and Liam turned to me. I pretended to have twisted my ankle. The three of them surrounded me. Liam threw my right arm over his shoulders and, with his left around my waist, guided me hopping on one foot off the dance floor to our table. Swaying, unsteady himself, Clifford was down on his knees examining my ankle. I sat back, exaggerating the pain, gasping.
“She’s probably strained a tendon,” Clifford said. “Not too bad, no swelling or bruising around the joint. I don’t feel anything broken, but an X-ray can’t hurt.”
&nbs
p; “You would suggest it,” Julia said, trying to lighten the moment. “I think he gets a commission.”
I looked past them onto the dance floor. She was gone.