me, he said, “Let’s go.”
It was a ten-mile trip to the hospital. When we got on the road, I thanked my father for understanding my eagerness to get to Josiah as soon as possible.
“I didn’t agree to this for your sake—I did it for your mother and brothers and sisters.”
My father had always spoken to me gently throughout my life, even when I was younger and just learning discipline and self-control. His harsh tone tonight brought tears to my eyes. I didn’t understand his apparent lack of concern for me.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You know what I mean. Your mother doesn’t understand what those eyes signify—she doesn’t know any English people. But I work with them every day on construction sites. I hear them talk about things in the world.”
I shook my head, the tears spilling over now. “What ‘things?’”
He flicked the reigns, urging the horses to move faster. “I know what lilac-colored eyes mean. You’ve given yourself to one of those unholy creatures. And I can’t risk letting you be around your mother and siblings. I will take you to the hospital, but you are not to come home.”
“What? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t given myself to anyone, not Josiah or to any English boys.”
That had to be what he meant by “unholy creatures.” Though even if I had slept with someone outside of marriage, forbidding me from seeing my family ever again seemed like an overly harsh punishment.
From time to time in our community, a girl became pregnant before marriage, and there would be a quicker than usual wedding ceremony. Shunning wasn’t common.
“I’m not speaking of the English, and you know it,” my father spat out.
His beard quivered with emotion. “I’m speaking of vampires. You’ve been with a vampire.”
5
Final Farewell
You’ve been with a vampire.
The accusation reverberated through my body like a physical blow. Though he was wrong about the nature of our interaction, I knew my father was right.
That was who the strange group of people at the accident site had been.
And that was how I’d been able to walk and move freely today, without pain, when I remembered my body being broken and nearly lifeless in the aftermath of the crash.
The beautiful woman hadn’t kissed my hand before leaving me. She’d bitten me. I just hadn’t been able to feel it because my spinal cord had been severed.
Raising my hand to inspect it in the moonlight, I searched my palm for the evidence. There, at the fleshy base of my thumb, was a small scar.
It looked like the vestige of a long-ago entanglement with a barbed wire fence, or maybe a paring knife.
Though she’d bitten me only last night, there was no pain or even redness—it had fully healed.
“It was a woman,” I told my stoic father. “She was there after the crash. I didn’t do anything wrong. I was lying in the road. I couldn’t move. She was kind to me.”
Her words came back to me, along with a vision of her face. Would you like to come with us? she’d asked.
“I could feel myself dying. I think maybe she bit me to save my life.”
“Your old life is over now,” my father said bluntly. “Knowing your mother, she will have compassion and want to keep you with us, even with the danger. Neither do I blame you. I know if you’d had a choice, you’d have chosen to die on the road instead of being... preserved in this unnatural state. But I have heard the English men talk of creatures like you. It isn’t safe for you to live among our people anymore.”
Creatures?
My throat closed around a hard knot. “They’re my people, too, you know.”
It was the closest I’d ever come to talking back to my father, having been raised to show him ultimate respect.
He cleared his throat. “Not anymore. You have a new... community now. You should go and live among them and learn how to... how to carry on.”
The buggy stopped, and I looked away from his solemn face to see a red and white illuminated sign that read, “Emergency.”
It seemed appropriate for the moment in every possible way.
“This is where I’ll say goodbye,” Dad said. “I think you should go in and make your peace with Josiah and then... then it’s best you leave Lancaster County.”
The disbelief was almost overwhelming now.
“And go where? I don’t even know the woman who bit me. I don’t know where to look for this new ‘community’ you mentioned. How will I