Echoes of Dollanganger Read online

  After we got into my car and started for home, she became more serious, wanting to know how my father really was.

  “I’ve known widowers and widows,” she said, “but I’ve rarely seen any who took the loss as hard. He buried a large part of himself with your mother. If it wasn’t for you . . .”

  “He’s okay. He’s strong. Really,” I said. “We both are. We know it would wrong her to be anything else.”

  “That’s very wise, Kristin. I’m so proud of you. And you’re going to be valedictorian!”

  “That’s not for sure yet, Aunt Barbara. I’m neck and neck with someone.”

  “I’m betting on you, but you’re already valedictorian in our family,” she said. She asked who was coming to Thanksgiving dinner, and I told her about Mrs. Osterhouse.

  “I’d like to get to know the woman who thinks she could live with my brother,” she joked. “Last time I was here, I put a fork in the wrong slot in the drawer, and he was ready to ship me out.”

  We both laughed. This was going to happen, I told myself. I was going to be able to step outside the attic for days.

  My father arrived a little less than an hour after I had helped Aunt Barbara settle into the guest room, so I knew he was anxious to greet her. The three of us sat in the living room, and I listened to them catch up on their lives and their contact with Uncle Tommy, whom I could see they both really wished was with us. My father decided to take us out for dinner. His favorite restaurant besides Charley’s Diner was a Mediterranean-themed restaurant that emphasized Italian and Spanish cuisine. It had four or five stars on all the Internet sites, and I knew from the start that my father wanted to prove to Aunt Barbara that there were restaurants just as sophisticated in Charlottesville as any in her precious New York. Before the night was over, she had to admit he was right.

  He gloated, and she and I covered our smiles and winked to each other when we thought he wasn’t looking, but my father was always tuned in to what was going on around him.

  “All right,” he said. “All right. I know when I’m outnumbered and outgunned.”

  It was a wonderful first night of my Thanksgiving holiday.

  “I’m so glad I could do this,” Aunt Barbara told me before we went to sleep.

  “So am I,” I said, “and so is Dad. Very much.”

  We hugged, and I went to bed, for the first time in a long time not hearing Christopher Dollanganger whispering beneath my pillow.

  The following day was taken up with last-minute shopping for our dinner and Aunt Barbara and me getting the centerpiece and the decorations done. While we were away, Mrs. Osterhouse brought Dad the turkey he had ordered. He liked to brine it for at least one full day. He said it was the secret to perfect juicy turkey. Aunt Barbara confessed that she wasn’t much of a cook. She knew how good my father was and told me one of the main reasons she had come was for his dinner. While I drove about, she told me more stories about their youth.

  Despite how I wanted to avoid it, it seemed impossible for me now to ever hear stories about brothers and sisters without thinking about Christopher and Cathy. She told me about how protective my father was of her, and I really could appreciate how much she admired him. Perhaps just as much as Cathy admired Christopher.

  Years later, could they ever talk about what their lives were like at Foxworth? Did they have horrible flashbacks, wake up at night from images of their living nightmare? Could they comfort each other?

  As if she knew what I was thinking, on the way home, Aunt Barbara suddenly said, “So tell me about this diary that was found at Foxworth.”

  For a moment, I was too stunned to speak. Even though Aunt Barbara was my father’s sister, I never suspected that he had revealed it and discussed it with her. First, I was upset that he had done so without telling me, mainly because I believed it was something only he and I shared. I realized immediately how hypocritical being upset because of that was. After all, I had revealed it and was reading it with Kane. Second, I didn’t know what he had told her. Could it be that he knew I was reading it with Kane, and this was his way of telling me? Or he suspected it, and this was his way of finding out?

  “I didn’t know Dad had told you about it,” I began. I glanced at her and turned back to watch where I was driving. We were almost home.

  “He’s worried about your reading it,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Have you finished reading it?”

  “Not yet. I’ve been busy, and it’s not easy to take,” I said.

  “Exactly why he’s worried about it,” she said.

  “I can handle it.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt you can, but why bother now? You can’t do anything to change what happened. I remember how much it all disturbed your mother. Did you know that at one point, your parents were considering moving from Charlottesville?”

  “No. I knew she didn’t want to talk about it or hear about it, but I didn’t know it had ever been that bad.”

  “It was. A reporter from the New York Times once came to visit your mother. Of course, they were doing a Halloween special, and the story attracted an editor’s interest. When your mother refused to talk to him, he went around trying to dig up stuff and implied that your mother knew way more than she had ever revealed, even though she had little or nothing to do with the Foxworth family. That set off people she knew who were after her to confide in them. She lost friends over it.”

  “Dad never told me about that.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t tell you about the fight he got into, either,” she added, and I slowed down.

  “What fight?”

  “It didn’t last long. It was one of those one-punch deals. I forget exactly where they were, an event of some sort, and some woman made a nasty remark about your mother’s relationship to the mad Foxworth family. Your father said something to her, and then her husband came at him, and your father floored him. I just happened to talk to them that night. You weren’t even born yet,” she said. “It was around then that they toyed with moving away. The only reason I’m telling you about it is so you’ll understand why your father isn’t happy about your having that diary. You haven’t told anyone about it, have you?”

  I felt my throat tighten up. It was as if my whole body was revolting against even the possibility of my lying, and yet I didn’t want to confess to my aunt Barbara and not to my father. That would add pain.

  I shook my head.

  “How much more do you have to read?”

  “Not much.”

  She was silent.

  “Did my father ask you to tell me all this?”

  “Sorta,” she said.

  I pulled into the driveway and pressed the garage door opener.

  “Let’s just forget about it,” she said. “I can see you’re old enough to deal with anything like that anyway, and I’ll tell him not to worry about you. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “I mean it, Kristin. We don’t want to insert any darkness into this holiday and our time together.” She reached over to squeeze my hand gently.

  I nodded again, and we got out and brought everything into the house. I really worked at not showing how disturbed I was, even though I was still trembling a little inside. Right before our dinner, Kane called to tell me how things were going at his house. Relatives had arrived for the next day’s Thanksgiving “extravaganza,” as he called it.

  “Darlena, Julio, and I are going out for Chinese. My mother’s not happy about it, but my father said it would be all right. All three of us feel like sailors getting liberty at a port.” He laughed. “How’s it going there?”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to burst out with everything my aunt Barbara had told me and tell him that our reading the diary together would have to end, but I was afraid to do so. His commitment to it and how seriously he was taking it, especially now, convinced me he would take it very badly. I had no idea how that would turn out, but I was positive it would be worse than things were now.

>   “Everything okay?” he asked after I described my day with my aunt. He could hear some worry in my voice, I was sure.

  “Yes,” I said quickly. “Say hello to your sister and Julio for me, and have a good Thanksgiving.”

  “It can’t be good without you,” he said. Kane wasn’t one to layer on smooth talk with me or with anyone else. I knew he sincerely believed what he said. I didn’t respond the way most people would and automatically say the same thing.

  “Maybe next year, we’ll celebrate together,” I suggested, and immediately wondered if people our age really ever thought or talked in terms of the future with each other. In our case, we surely wouldn’t be attending the same college. No matter how intense our feelings for each other were at the moment, would they survive time and distance and, maybe more important, socializing with others? Did romances like ours simply thin out until they broke? In the beginning, did we flood every free moment with phone calls and letters and then slowly wind them down, subtly bringing it to an end?

  “Sure,” Kane said. “As long as your father prepares the dinner.”

  I had to laugh at that. He would prepare the dinner for sure.

  “I’ll see you Sunday, right?” Kane said.

  “Right. I’ll call you with our schedule for the day.”

  Later that evening, after we had eaten, we sat and talked in the living room, where my father went on about the project at Foxworth and showed Aunt Barbara the plans. Then I went up to my room, intending to go right to sleep. Aunt Barbara surprised me, however, and knocked on my door just after I had gotten into my pajamas.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” I said, a little surprised.

  “I wanted to be sure I didn’t disturb you with what I told you in your car earlier,” she began.

  “It’s okay. I’m fine with forgetting about it.”

  She gazed about my room, smiling at my collection of dolls on a shelf and some of my movie posters, then paused to look at pictures of my mother and my father when they were first married. “I remember their wedding as if it happened yesterday,” she said. “We used to worry about your father finding someone who could make him happy. He was always so demanding, expecting so much of people he said he ‘invested in.’ Then she came along and turned him into a softy.”

  “He’s still a softy, but only with me,” I said.

  She nodded. “He’s really excited about this project. I guess it’s the biggest thing he’s done.”

  “Yes.”

  She paused, looking like she was afraid to say anything more. What more was she going to tell me?

  “What, Aunt Barbara?” I asked, smiling.

  “I was curious and wondering if you would show me that diary. I don’t want to read it all, just look at it.”

  “Sure,” I said, and slipped it out from under my pillow.

  She widened her eyes at that. “That’s where you keep it?”

  “I did the first night and just kept doing it.”

  I handed it to her, and she took it gingerly, treating it like some historical parchment. I watched her open the cover and skim the first page. “So old, and yet it hasn’t been damaged by the weather.”

  “It was in a metal box,” I said.

  “He had very nice handwriting, so precise,” she said, gazing at the page. “Was he very bright? Can you tell?”

  “Oh, yes. Very bright,” I said. “He wanted to become a doctor.”

  “Really? I never paid much attention to what happened to them afterward, after the original fire.”

  “Their mother ended up in a mental clinic.”

  “What about them—the children?”

  “No one seems to know for sure. Lots of rumors suggesting they changed their names, maybe even left the country. Did my father tell you anything more about the new owner of the property?”

  “No. What more is there?”

  “Not much. There’s a corporation or something involved.”

  “It’s not going to be a hotel or something, is it?”

  “No.”

  She shrugged. “Glad someone is building there.”

  “Were you ever there?”

  “No. I never had any interest, and your mother and father never wanted to show me the property.”

  She handed the diary back to me. She looked like she wished I had told her to take it and just get rid of it or something.

  “I don’t really want to know the details,” she said. “I see enough horror stories on the daily news as it is. Well, good night. Sweet dreams.” She hugged me and left.

  I stood there thinking about her and suddenly felt myself become as paranoid about it as Kane had been. She wouldn’t come in here and just take it, I thought. But what if she did? What if she took it, and then later both she and my father told me they had decided it was better to bury it again?

  Instead of putting it back under my pillow, I shoved it down under some books in a carton at the bottom of my closet, and then I put pairs of shoes and some hangers on top of the box.

  It’s making me crazy, I thought. But I couldn’t stop what we were doing now. Maybe I would find a way to get through it faster with Kane.

  No matter what that would mean.

  * * *

  Thanksgiving dinner was as wonderful as I had hoped it would be. Todd Winston and his wife, Lisa, brought their children—Josh, who was ten, and twelve-year-old Brandy, two of the most well-behaved children I knew. Lisa was a fifth-grade teacher, a Charlottesville resident all her life, as was Todd. It was easy to see how both she and Todd had adopted my father to be their children’s grandfather. I used to be a little jealous of how much they loved him and how concerned he always was for their welfare, but I was beyond those days when my childish insecurity caused me to envy and dislike any other girl or woman he spoke to in my presence. He was, as Darlena had said, a Southern gentleman, as polite and courteous as Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind.

  Aunt Barbara and I were both attentive to every comment or look between my father and Mrs. Osterhouse, who was never as insistent that I call her Laura. I suppose I always had resisted because I knew that was the beginning of breaking down a wall I had put up between her and my father, or him and any other woman, for that matter. I caught little things this time that I hadn’t seen before. When she touched him while they spoke, he didn’t recoil. Occasionally, she whispered something to him, and he smiled. She was at his side as much as she could be, helping in the kitchen, making it possible, as she put it, for me to spend more time with Aunt Barbara. She and I smiled at that.

  “She’s very attractive,” Aunt Barbara whispered. “I usually go by first impressions. I think she adores him.”

  I looked at the two of them again and for the first time wondered if they had been seeing each other secretly, at least secretly when it came to me. I nodded.

  “You’re going off to college,” Aunt Barbara said. She didn’t have to follow it with “He’s going to be very lonely.” I knew what she meant.

  I couldn’t help thinking of how Christopher was reacting to his mother finding someone else to love. Our situations were in no way comparable, but I recognized that young children were selfish by nature. They want all the love. It takes time, years, for them to realize that their parents could have enough to go around.

  While my father and Laura cleaned up the dishes and silverware after Aunt Barbara, Lisa, and I had helped clear the table, Todd and Lisa and their children sat with us in the living room and asked Aunt Barbara questions about life in New York as if it was truly another country, even another planet. I could see how amused she was and how kind she was with her answers. She made life there seem quite nice, in fact, listing all the advantages, the theaters, the public transportation, and the variety of stores and ethnic neighborhoods.

  “Don’t be afraid of New York,” she told them. “It has a lot to offer, and you can remind yourself that you’re returning to your world here.”

  Lisa looked fascinated.

 
She and Todd and their children left first. We sat with my father and Laura for a while afterward, and then Aunt Barbara gave me a look to say we should leave them alone for a while. She didn’t wink, but I knew what she was saying, so I pretended to be much more tired than I was, and she did the same. We giggled going up the stairs. Actually, I had drunk more wine than ever, and I was a little giddy and a little more tired.

  “You want to tell me about your boyfriend?” she asked at my door. “I heard his family is rich and he’s good-looking and very popular.”

  “So you know it all,” I said.

  Her eyes widened, and then she smiled. “Got it,” she said. “I’m going to bed.” She leaned in to kiss me. “Your mother would be so proud of you.” She walked off to the guest room.

  I hadn’t meant to shut her down so quickly, but I was afraid that if I began to talk about Kane, I would slip up and reveal what we were doing. Look what was happening to me, I thought. I was afraid to talk about things, afraid to make a mistake. Was it the same for Kane? It never had occurred to me until now that he might, just as I might, slip up and reveal something about reading the diary, perhaps when talking with his sister.

  We needed to end this.

  The only way to do it was to finish it.

  I would be as determined as he was.

  * * *

  Before Aunt Barbara returned to New York, my father took her and me and, to my surprise, Laura Osterhouse to see the work accomplished at Foxworth. We followed him about as he explained the plans and helped us to visualize what would be there. Every once in a while, Aunt Barbara would look at me and with that look acknowledge how determined my father was to erase any exterior resemblance to the Foxworth property that had been there. He detailed the changes in the grounds, the driveway, the lighting, and all the new technology the house would have. This was in no way to be a restoration.

  I didn’t mention what he had told me about some of the similarities inside, but he did make the point that there would be no real attic in the new house, just a little more than a crawl space for storage. Afterward, we all went to lunch, and later that day, my father and Laura insisted on preparing leftovers. She said she wanted to watch the magic he could do with them, making it all seem like a brand-new meal.