Echoes of Dollanganger Read online

  “What?” I asked.

  “That was exactly how your mother would put it when she wanted to end a discussion. ‘Period, end of sentence,’ ” he said.

  He walked off, shaking his head, and left me standing there a little amazed myself. I couldn’t say where the words often came from, words I didn’t recall hearing my mother say, or anyone else, for that matter. They just came. Worried that he was taking this all too seriously, I watched him for a few moments, but he got right back into his work. I was tempted to leave, but I didn’t. Instead, I started to walk around the developing house, now pausing when I reached the rear to look up at how high I envisioned it had been once from the pictures and drawings I had seen.

  But I also imagined Christopher and Cathy lowering themselves out of the attic on their sheet ladder for their swim that night. Now that the grounds were cleared, I had a better sense of what it must have been like, the distance they had to travel, constantly terrified that they’d be seen. I could almost see them, disappearing like ghosts into the protection of the trees. I looked toward the lake before starting around to return to look closer at the pool being constructed.

  “Isn’t it very big?” I asked Todd. My father was talking to one of the workers.

  “Biggest I’ve seen at a private house. You should have been here when they started digging the hole for the pool,” he added.

  “Why?” I had been to many of my father’s job sites and enjoyed seeing how he made something out of nothing or turned a pig into a princess, but I wasn’t terribly excited about watching the actual work, especially the tedious work of digging a hole for a pool.

  “They kept looking for the skeleton of a child,” he said. “Every time they hit a stone or saw some tree roots, they paused, thinking they had found some bones.” He laughed.

  My father turned and looked at us, his face full of questions. He walked over to us, expecting me to tell him why Todd was laughing and I wasn’t.

  “I’ve got to go home,” I said. “To get ready for dinner with Kane’s sister and her boyfriend.”

  “Oh, right. What time are you going?”

  “Six thirty.”

  “Right. I should be back by six. See you before you leave.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I looked at the structure, the grounds, the pool construction, the place on the property where there would be a tennis court, and imagined all of it from the landscape plans I had seen on my father’s desk. There were to be fountains and walkways, gardens and ponds. It was as if whoever was behind this really wanted to develop a property that would erase practically all memory of what it had been. I knew that was the reason my father was aboard so fast.

  “It will be something, Dad. You’ll be proud of it. No one will think of it as Foxworth Hall anymore.”

  He smiled, nodded, and returned to the work. I headed for my car. I didn’t regret taking the ride over to see my father and what had been done, but I couldn’t shake off this dark feeling of dread that had come over me. Maybe it was that overworked imagination of mine, but suddenly, there were more clouds, shadows grew deeper and longer, and the mountains in the distance looked higher and reminded me of clutches of people who had hoisted their shoulders as if they all had experienced the same sudden chill because something had frightened them. It filled me with a strange sense of foreboding.

  I had asked myself many times since my father opened that metal box and handed me the leather-bound book if I should continue to read it. My father’s displeasure about that notwithstanding, I had my own hesitations and cautions now. Kane would laugh at me if I even mentioned the idea that the devil had been in that house and maybe had invaded Christopher’s diary. Yet look at how it was affecting the two of us already.

  Ever since I had begun to read the diary, everything I looked at, every laugh I heard coming from my friends, and almost every comment any of them made seemed to reach me through the prism of Foxworth Hall’s attic. In the morning, it was like waking up in two bodies, Cathy’s and mine, and carrying her inside me through the day. Finally, she could be released up in my attic as soon as Kane had begun to read. Was I possessed? Was Kane? How would it end?

  Dressing and preparing to go out for dinner took my mind off these bleak and dismal thoughts. Somehow, because we were going to be double-dating with college-age people, this date was extra special. I wanted to look my best, dress up, and wear the jewelry that my father had given me, jewelry that was my mother’s. In the back of my mind was the idea that we should look older, more mature. I would never tell Kane that; he would laugh for sure.

  I was going down the stairs when my father arrived. He stood back and watched me descend, as if I was making some dramatic entrance in a scene in a movie or on a stage.

  “Excuse me,” he said when I stood before him, “but do you know where my daughter might be?”

  “Very funny, Dad. I look all right?”

  “All right? That’s not half the way I’d put it.”

  I saw his eyes go to my mother’s necklace.

  “How proud she’d be,” he said, touching it and then drawing his hand back quickly.

  I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “I don’t believe you. Fathers are supposed to exaggerate.”

  “I’m not exaggerating. Blow something up bigger than it really is, and it will burst in your face someday.”

  “Okay, Dad,” I said with the tone of someone who had heard that a thousand times, probably because I had.

  “Where do I have to take you to get you to dress like this for me?” he asked.

  “Anywhere but Charley’s.”

  “Right. Well, I’ve got to go shower and dress. I’m going out to dinner tonight, too.”

  “You are? With whom? Where?” I asked in shotgun fashion.

  “The Johnsons again. Tiramisu.”

  “Well, you always say that’s the best Italian food in Charlottesville.”

  “Right, but I’m a little suspicious about the invitation this time.”

  “Why?”

  “Something about a good friend of his wife’s mother they want me to meet. Supposedly a professional home decorator, and this is just to—how did he put it?—marry it well to the architecture. Note the word ‘marry.’ ”

  “Don’t be so suspicious. Maybe that’s all there is to it.”

  He smirked. “I wasn’t born yesterday,” he said. “You have a great time.” He hugged me and started for the stairs.

  “You, too,” I called after him. He nodded and continued up.

  Actually, I was surprised he had agreed to go out. He was relentless about avoiding setup dates. What had suddenly changed him? I didn’t think I had to look too hard for the answer. It surely had started when he had heard Kane and me in the shower. How many times this year had he heard someone say that I would soon be leaving the nest? I had filled out college applications, and it wouldn’t be long before I would begin to get responses. One day, he and I would discuss my choices, but most likely, any of them would involve my leaving home and returning only on holidays.

  I knew it was difficult enough for parents of an only child to watch him or her go off to college or to the armed forces or to a job that took him or her out of the house, but at least those parents had each other. I had even heard some say it gave them a second honeymoon. For my father, my leaving would only add the memory of a second pair of footsteps to the ones he heard after my mother’s death. He would sit at the breakfast and dinner table alone all week. He surely had thought about it often, but in his way, he had put it aside or ignored it.

  And then here I came along and demonstrated how fast I was maturing, how independent I was becoming, and how quickly I was leaving behind the little girl he knew and becoming the woman I was supposed to be. Not that showering with a boyfriend was exactly that. It just made it clear that I wasn’t thinking only about lollipops and dolls anymore.

  The sound of Kane’s horn sent a little shock through me because I was so deep in though
t. He had gotten out of his car and was on his way to my front door when I opened it to step out.

  “I see your dad’s home. Shouldn’t I say hello?”

  “He went up to get dressed. He has a dinner . . . appointment,” I said, rather than date. Would that word “date” always get stuck in my throat when it applied to him?

  “Okay,” he said, unable to keep the relief from washing over his face. He stepped back abruptly and paused, finally looking at me. “Holy smokes,” he said, a smile curling his lips with delight. “You look fantastic.”

  “Why should that surprise you?” I teased, spinning around like a fashion model.

  He did look very handsome himself, wearing a fitted light blue seersucker sport coat, a rose-pink shirt, and a black tie, with a dark blue pair of slacks and black laced shoes. I saw he was also wearing a much more expensive-looking watch than he usually wore. His smile broadened.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “I only meant . . .”

  “You’re very handsome tonight, Kane. You almost look like that emperor of car dealerships.”

  “Huh?”

  It was my turn to laugh.

  “Wise-ass.” He held out his arm and escorted me to the passenger side of a black S-class Mercedes. It looked brand-new.

  “What’s this car?”

  “Demonstrator my father loaned me for tonight,” he said. And then he added, “A bribe.”

  The car had that brand-new car scent and soft leather seats with expensive-looking woodwork. He got in, looking very taken with himself, very unlike the Kane Hill I was used to seeing. Maybe in the end, despite your rebellious ways and thoughts, your heritage exerts itself, I thought.

  “Is the bribe working?” I asked.

  “It is tonight,” he said, instantly returning to that offbeat smile that annoyed some but also could be enchanting. “Although the pressure’s off me working weekends at one of the dealerships until I get my math grades up. Plan A is successful. For now.”

  “What’s plan B?”

  “Running away from home. Who knows?”

  We drove off. I looked back at the house and wondered if my father would use my car or take his truck tonight. He had never bought himself a new car after my mother died. I couldn’t imagine him going on a date in his truck, not that he would go out with any woman who would think it beneath her to ride in his truck. It was just that whether he said so or not, I knew that he always saw my mother beside him in that truck.

  “So I didn’t say anything to Darlena about Foxworth, the story, anything,” Kane began, “but apparently, soon after she and Julio had arrived, my mother mentioned that I was seeing you, and then there was some talk about what your father’s doing, so she asked me about it tonight before I headed out to pick you up.”

  “Asked about what?” A little tremor moved through my body in anticipation. From the day I had revealed what the book under my pillow was, I had dreaded the possibility that other people would find out and that my father would be very upset, especially now when he was working on the property.

  “The construction of a new building at Foxworth.”

  “Oh,” I said, a little relieved.

  “But then she told Julio the high points of the story, which we know now was mostly developed through rumors and legends. I didn’t say a word,” he added quickly, “but like most everyone who knows about your family, she mentioned that you were a distant cousin of Malcolm Foxworth.”

  “Great. He’ll be looking at me expecting some sort of weirdness or madness.”

  “Just don’t eat all your food with only a knife,” he said.

  I poked him in the shoulder. “It’s not funny.”

  “Okay, okay. Don’t worry about it. As soon as he sees how charming and beautiful you are, any such thought will die a quick death.”

  We arrived at La Reserve before his sister and her boyfriend, but the hostess took us to the booth they had reserved. I had never been to this restaurant and was surprised at how small it was compared with the size of its reputation. Perhaps that was why it was so expensive and why a dinner reservation usually had to be booked well in advance—maybe not for the Hills, but for most people. The maître d’ recognized Kane, just as the maître d’ at the River House had when he took me there on our first formal date.

  “I haven’t been to France,” Kane said after we were seated, “but my mother told me this is very much like a good restaurant in Paris.” He leaned over. “Both Darlena and Julio can drink. Maybe we can have a taste of champagne. Darlena loves champagne.”

  “You can have a taste. I can have a glass,” I teased, and he laughed.

  Although my father and I didn’t often go to fancy restaurants, like most people who could manage it, we did so on occasion. He told me my mother could be comfortable in any setting. A restaurant like La Reserve or the River House did not intimidate her. “She looked like she belonged wherever we went,” he’d recalled, his own precious memories streaming before him. “I used to call her my chameleon, because she could just blend in. Not that she wouldn’t be noticed,” he’d added quickly. “She was too beautiful not to be noticed.”

  The way he clung to anything that reminded him of my mother always impressed me. He was still sacrificing for her, thinking first of her and not himself. It occurred to me that this was what was missing from Christopher’s descriptions of his mother. If she talked about his father, it was only to explain the situation they were now in, how their romance and marriage had put them in this place, but she didn’t keep his memory as close to her heart as my father kept my mother’s memory. If she mentioned Christopher Sr., it seemed clear to me that she did it to manipulate Christopher Jr. more. And apparently, she was already having a serious new romance at the point we’d read to in the diary.

  Would Christopher Sr., even for one minute, tolerate what she was putting their children through now? That was a question I wondered if Christopher Jr. would be able to answer for me, for us, even for himself.

  I felt Kane’s hand take mine, and I snapped out of my reverie.

  “Where’d you go?” he asked. “I finally realized I was talking to myself.” I leaned forward to tell him my thoughts, but he interrupted me. “Here they are.”

  I turned to see Darlena and Julio enter the restaurant and start in our direction. I hadn’t seen his sister for a long time, but my memory of her was that she was very pretty. She looked taller and more elegantly beautiful and graceful now, her soft chestnut-brown hair floating over her shoulders, a stylish sweep of strands just inches from her right eye. The chandeliers captured the dazzle of her unique amber eyes. She had a svelte Nicole Kidman figure enhanced by her form-fitting half-sleeved black dress with a lace bodice.

  Julio looked a little more than six feet tall. He had a dancer’s physique and seemed less comfortable in his dark blue suit. His ebony hair had a silky sheen. His more caramel complexion made his black-marble eyes stand out. I thought he was quite handsome but a little more rugged-looking than a typical male model.

  Kane stood to greet his sister. Her face seemed to explode into a bright smile of delight. They kissed each other’s cheeks as if they had not just been together in their home but instead hadn’t seen each other for years. Julio looked awkward for a moment in the shadow of Kane and Darlena’s dramatic greeting, and then he rushed to introduce himself to me. I felt calluses on his palms and thought of my father’s hands. Darlena slid in beside me, and Julio sat across from her.

  “You look so grown-up, Kristin,” Darlena said. “I love your dress.”

  “Thank you. You look more beautiful than ever, Darlena.”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you since . . . since when?” she asked Kane.

  “Who knows?” he replied. “Probably before you started college.”

  “No kidding. That’s true. How’s your father?” she asked me. “I do remember seeing him a few times during the summer. He was always so nice to me. He always reminded me of a Southern gentleman out
of some romance novel. I bet he makes every one of your friends feel special.”

  “In his way,” I replied. “I can tell you he always makes me feel special.”

  She held her smile, but her eyes were full of questions, surely about what it was like to live without a mother or to have a father whose wife had died so unexpectedly. I felt the urge to tell her we were fine.

  “My dad’s in construction, too,” Julio said, even though no one had mentioned what my father did. “He builds modular houses for a national company. It’s dull factory work. He’d rather be doing what your father does,” he added quickly. “I work with him sometimes, and I know I’d rather be doing that.”

  “I’d rather be in Philadelphia,” Kane said.

  “Pardon?” Julio said.

  “Nothing,” Darlena said. “He’s just being a wise-ass.”

  “Moi?” Kane said, pretending outrage.

  “What’s it mean?” Julio asked.

  “It’s something my father loves to say. It’s on W. C. Fields’s tombstone,” Darlena explained. Julio still didn’t understand. His quizzical smile looked frozen on his face. Darlena touched his hand, obviously a gesture meant to comfort him. “It’s silly. Fields just wanted everyone to know he’d rather be anywhere than dead.”

  “Oh.” He looked at Kane, who shrugged.

  The waiter approached, and just as Kane had predicted, Darlena ordered a bottle of champagne. The waiter looked at Kane and me suspiciously, but he didn’t say anything.

  Darlena giggled. “We’re on Daddy’s account tonight,” she said, smiling like a child told she could have anything in the store. “He told us on our way out, so go for broke.”

  Julio smirked, seeming embarrassed to have Darlena and Kane’s father paying for him. “I told your father this was supposed to be my treat,” he said. He looked like he was saying it more for my benefit.

  “Don’t make it harder for my father to sound like a big shot,” Darlena joked, but he still didn’t look happy about it.

  I started to ask them both questions about college to get him more relaxed and talkative. Every once in a while, I glanced at Kane and saw a proud look on his face because I was carrying the conversation. The champagne came. The waiter brought only two glasses for it. We then ordered, and when he left, Darlena poured some champagne into Kane’s water glass and some into mine.