Echoes of Dollanganger Read online

  “You want to stay for dinner? My father’s definitely going to be late,” I said.

  “What’s for dinner?”

  “It’s his meat loaf, my mashed potatoes, and string beans.”

  “Sure. I love meat loaf,” he replied, and then returned to the diary as if his eyes were pulled to it beyond his control.

  I put my books on my desk and, after looking at him again, began to attack my homework. Even though I glanced at him from time to time, neither of us spoke for a good hour or so. Finally, I heard him sigh deeply, and I turned and saw that he had sat up and was holding his hands over his face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “This was one bright kid, this Christopher Dollanganger. He writes well, but he sounds like he’s afraid of his own emotions, afraid that he’s going to explode or something. I get the feeling he was walking around holding his breath most of the time, especially after they were brought to the mansion. And how about that grandmother? She’d give Norman Bates from Psycho nightmares. He’s putting up with a lot more than I would, even at that age.”

  “Yes. He’s doing a great deal for his little brother and sister and for Cathy, and he has to keep the lid on.”

  “I can’t wait to see if he does. Cathy sounds more difficult than the twins.”

  “She has a lot to be unhappy about, Kane. She’s cut off from all her friends, everything that once made her life exciting, and look at the new responsibilities dropped on her. It wasn’t fair.”

  He nodded. “Makes sense. So you like her?”

  “Why not? It’s not her fault that they are where they are.”

  “You sound very defensive. Maybe there’s more Cathy in you than either of us knows.”

  “What?”

  He smiled and picked up the diary again.

  “Are you going to catch up to me in one day?” I asked, sounding a bit annoyed now.

  “You bet.”

  “What about your homework?”

  “I told you, I don’t have that much, and besides, I’ll do it when I get home.”

  I looked at my watch. “I’m going down to start on dinner. We’ll eat in about a half hour. I hope you can tear yourself away. You’re not bringing it to the dinner table,” I warned.

  He didn’t respond. He was already back into the diary so much that he didn’t hear me. I paused in the doorway and looked at him, with the book up and his face blocked. I thought of Cathy, bored in that attic, looking at Christopher and seeing him deep in one of his science books, in his own world. That was probably his only escape, but it had to be frustrating for her. She had no one else to talk to but the twins.

  I didn’t know why exactly, but Kane’s attraction to the diary was making me irritable. Anyone might think I was jealous of how passionate he had become about it. It was as though he appreciated it more than I did or something. I banged things around a bit more than necessary and mumbled under my breath as I set the table.

  Kane came down exactly thirty minutes later. I turned, surprised.

  “Wow! You could break away, after all.”

  “Smelled the aroma and got hungry,” he said. “How can I help?”

  “Take this jug of water to the table. Everything else is done,” I told him.

  I began to bring in the food.

  “It looks terrific,” he said.

  I began to serve him. Then I served myself and sat.

  “How did you like how their grandmother fed them?” he said. “It was like leaving crumbs out for birds. I think the servants knew what was going on, or at least one or two did.”

  “Why?”

  “Think about it. She’s making food, putting together food, and taking it to them. She doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who would slink about. If any of them saw her, she would tell them to buzz off.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. Maybe it was good to have someone else reading it at the same time after all.

  I started eating and so did he. “This meat loaf is the best I’ve ever had,” he said.

  “My father will be happy to hear it. I tried making it a few times, but it’s never as good. He has little secrets he keeps even from me. He promises he’ll reveal all when I get married.”

  Kane paused and looked thoughtful again.

  “What?”

  “There were so many secrets going on in that mansion that it’s a wonder it didn’t explode before it burned down. What’s really going on between Corrine and her parents? Christopher is limited in what he can write, so we might not discover that. He doesn’t really know what’s happening in the rest of the mansion. He’s never even seen the grandfather. Who knows if the old goat is really that sick?”

  “You think their mother deliberately lied about that? Why?”

  “I don’t know.” He was thoughtful for a few moments and then said, “The jury’s not in on it, and maybe it will never be. As you said, we’re getting it from Christopher only. Even with only what I’ve read until now, I can’t imagine him ever calling his mother a liar. And not only because he’s a respectful, obedient kid. I’d like to read her diary. That would be a page-turner, I bet. We’d learn a lot more if we could compare.”

  “I do have one other source of information,” I said.

  He looked up sharply. “What? Your father?”

  “No, especially not him. I told you, he doesn’t like me reading it, and he doesn’t like talking about it.”

  “So?”

  “It’s my uncle Tommy, my father’s younger brother. He met someone who claimed he had known a servant who worked at the original Foxworth Hall.”

  “No kidding. And?”

  “He said this man told him the servant claimed their grandfather knew they were up there.”

  “See? Like I said, the servants probably saw the old hag carrying food and told the old man, or maybe he and the Friday the Thirteenth grandmother plotted together.” He thought a moment and then brightened and asked, “Did your uncle say Corrine knew that her father knew?”

  “He didn’t say, and back then, I didn’t know enough to ask many questions. I wasn’t old enough to appreciate the answers anyway, and because of how my father was about it, I didn’t want to think about it.”

  Kane sat back and nodded. “There’s a lot to discover. I like mysteries. I’m not going home tonight until I catch up to you,” he declared.

  “I want to emphasize that I don’t want my father to know about this.”

  “I wonder what’s making him so uptight about it. Did you ever come right out and ask him?”

  “No. And we’re not going to ask,” I said firmly.

  He smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t want to get him even slightly mad at me.” I was about to smile, thinking he meant that would risk his being with me, but then he went for another forkful of meat loaf and added, “I might not get any more of his home cooking.”

  I laughed. Maybe my father was right. Maybe I would win Kane through his cooking.

  Kane skipped dessert so he could get back up to my room. He offered to clear the table and help in the kitchen, but I told him just to go back to the diary. He’d only rush and break something. He didn’t need to be told twice.

  While I was finishing up, my father came home. “Where’s Kane?” he asked immediately when he entered the kitchen. “I see his car’s still here.”

  “Oh, he’s up in my room doing homework.”

  “Enjoy the dinner?”

  “You have a devoted fan.”

  “Didn’t offer to help with the dishes?”

  “He offered,” I said. “Let’s just say he’s not used to working in a kitchen, and like you always say, when someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing assists you, it makes for twice the work.”

  “Not surprised he’s unaccustomed to KP duty, but I’m surprised he left you alone. He could have at least watched. He’s that into his homework?”

  “He had more than I did tonight. We don’t have the same classes. How’s everything at
the building site?” Get him talking about the project quickly, I told myself. I hated coming up with all these white lies. I was with Huckleberry Finn. Why tell the truth and hurt someone?

  “Usual bureaucratic delays with inspectors, but we’re muddling through.”

  I wiped my hands. “Everything’s hot and ready for you. Go sit, and I’ll bring it in.”

  “I’m not ready yet. I want to shower and change first, baby. You better get back to that homework,” he added with a bit of an impish smile.

  I threw the dish towel at him and hurried up the stairs.

  “Break out your textbooks,” I warned Kane. “My father’s here.”

  He nodded and slipped the diary under my pillow. By the time my father knocked on the door, Kane was doing his math.

  “Smells like a library in here,” my father joked when he saw us both into our textbooks.

  “Hi, Mr. Masterwood. Fantastic meat loaf.”

  “Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it. I’ll get changed so I can eat it myself and see if you’re giving me a false compliment,” my father said, and then he winked and left us.

  Kane closed his textbook. “Gotta confession,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I caught up to you.”

  “What? How could you?”

  “You’re not even half through it, you know, and I read fast when I’m really interested in what I’m reading.”

  I nodded, thinking about how I did labor over some sentences and events, always trying to imagine how Cathy was feeling. “I guess so.”

  “And I read another page before I realized it. I’ll reread it tomorrow . . . aloud. Up in the attic,” he added, and closed his textbook. “I’d better get going. I forgot to call my mother to tell her I wasn’t coming home for dinner,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ve done it before, and it’s never a big shock, anyway. Tell your father good night for me.”

  He gave me a very quick kiss on the cheek and a playful pat on the top of my head.

  I was expecting him to kiss me before he left, but not like a brother.

  * * *

  I had been nervous while Kane was reading the diary to catch up with me, so I hadn’t done my homework as quickly as I could. I had some left to complete. Nevertheless, I went down to sit with my father while he ate. He was surprised Kane had left so early.

  “Maybe he really was here just to do homework,” he playfully suggested.

  “Did the new owner come around again?” I asked, again looking to change the topic quickly.

  “He did.”

  I could see that he was into one of his deep thoughts again because of my question, a thought he wasn’t eager to reveal to me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You still reading that diary?”

  I was surprised he asked. He had told me recently that he wouldn’t inquire about it anymore and that when I was finished, he wanted me to give it back to him. I had the feeling he really would burn it, so I was debating whether I ever would give it to him.

  “On and off,” I said, as nonchalantly as I could. The words almost got stuck in my throat.

  “Has there been any mention of anyone else in the house? I mean other than their mother, grandmother, and grandfather?”

  “Well, servants are mentioned but not by name,” I said.

  “No one specifically, then?”

  “Not yet as far as I have read. Why? Who do you think was there? Someone from town knew about them?”

  “It’s not important,” he said, and continued eating.

  “If it wasn’t important, you wouldn’t mention it,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I swear, Kristin, if I closed my eyes when you were talking sometimes, I’d think your mother was sitting there.”

  Whenever he said anything like that, making comparisons between my mother and me to point out how much I was like her, I felt the struggle between two conflicting emotions, happiness and sadness. I loved the idea that I was anything like her, but just the reference to her stirred the well of tears that would forever be there, ready to rise and overflow before I could do anything to stop them. If I cried in front of my father, he would cry all night, I thought, and turned away.

  He didn’t say anything else about it, and I didn’t pursue it. Don’t bring up the diary, I told myself. In fact, don’t bring up Foxworth Hall if you can help it until you and Kane are finished reading the diary.

  I cleared away his dishes and did everything that had to be done in the kitchen before I returned to my room to finish my homework. I knew I wasn’t giving it my best. I was rushing now, because I didn’t want him to know how distracted I had been. He knew how responsible I was and how dedicated I was to getting my schoolwork done and done well. He would never suspect the diary, especially because Kane was there. He would think it was because of something else, obviously something that had to do with my private time with Kane. I was confident that he wouldn’t come right out and ask, “Did you guys spend all your time doing assignments from your teachers, or did you come up with your own homework?” He could tease a little, skirt around it by asking me to tell him how serious we were becoming, but making reference to something explicitly sexual just wasn’t something my father would do. He wasn’t a prude. He was just a shy man who was left to do and worry about things my mother was supposed to handle.

  The irony was that we had done nothing my girlfriends were suspecting we did. All the girls believed that Kane was not timid about making love, and we’d been alone in my bedroom. Not only them but any parent would suspect more intimacy. All my girlfriends talked about the suspicions their parents had. Suzette went so far as to tell us her mother had given up on her, telling her not to expect her to come rushing in to rescue her. “You’re old enough to know better,” she’d said.

  My father would never say such a thing, no matter what I did, I thought.

  Before I went to sleep, I went down to wake him up and tell him it was time to go to sleep. It was a constant joke between us. He’d watch television and drift off. I would turn it off, and he’d wake up surprised. Then he would kiss me and go to his room to sleep with his memories.

  I got into bed and lowered my head to the pillow, Christopher’s words rambling on under it, below me in the forbidden diary.

  And Kane’s questions and thoughts rambling right along with them.

  * * *

  Kane amazed me the following day. He was so excited about what he had read and what we were going to do that I thought for sure he would be talking about nothing else, but from the first moment he set eyes on me in the morning, he seemed to know that to keep me from having any anxiety, especially while we were at school, the diary should remain under my pillow, physically and mentally. Neither of us would mention it. To show me I could rely on him for that, he talked about everything and anything else on our way to school and during the day. He went on and on about a party Tina Kennedy was planning. I knew she was always chasing him, and he enjoyed teasing me about it. He was so good at ignoring the diary, in fact, that it felt like I had dreamed the entire thing—his discovering the diary under my pillow and our plans for where and how to read it together. However, it couldn’t be completely ignored until the moment we took it out from under my pillow again. For one thing, just like Christopher at this point in his diary, we were a week away from Thanksgiving. Finally, on the way to my house after school, Kane mentioned that.

  “Quite a coincidence that the time period coincides,” he said.

  Neither of us had to say it, but we both thought that was a little eerie. Why had the diary been discovered now? And how coincidental was it that my father would be the one to locate the locked metal box after all these years? Other people, young people, searched in the debris because there were so many rumors and stories about hidden wealth at Foxworth Hall. Malcolm was supposed to be a miser, spending his money mainly on church or some religious charity. The story was that he distrusted everyone, especially bankers, and was one of those people who
literally kept money buried somewhere, yet no one had managed to uncover the metal box that contained Christopher’s diary—no one until my father was sent to evaluate the foundation for a new prospective buyer.

  “I can’t imagine what he’ll write about their Thanksgiving shut up like that. If the legendary story about them is true, they spent more than one Thanksgiving and Christmas in that attic and more than one birthday. We’ve got thirty-five people coming for dinner at our house,” he continued when I didn’t comment. “My parents don’t do much. There’s a full kitchen staff, waiters, and a bartender. It’s more like a party than a family gathering, even though two of my uncles and aunts are there with their children, who I don’t see very much. That’s a good thing. Their pictures are right beside the word ‘brat’ in the dictionary. I’m glad Darlena comes home from college, though. What about you? What goes on in your house?”

  “As you can imagine, my father fixes quite a dinner. He has a sweet potato pudding to die for.”

  “Just the two of you?”

  “No. My aunt Barbara, my father’s sister, has come occasionally and might come this time, but my father always invites his chief assistant, Todd Winston, and his wife and their two children, and Mrs. Osterhouse, who does his bookkeeping and would like to do more for him, and I don’t mean at work. She’s a widow who has been with him for a long time.”

  “Ah. Do you like her?”

  “Yes, she’s nice.”

  “Nice enough to be a new mother?”

  “I’ll never have another mother, Kane. Even a saint couldn’t step into her shoes.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry I put it that way. What about your father? Any interest? Has he dated her?”

  “No. He’s polite to her, but I think she tries too hard.”

  “Like Tina Kennedy when it comes to yours truly?”

  “No, not quite as obvious as that,” I said, and he laughed. “But my father likes subtlety when it comes to women.”

  “He’s not so subtle when it comes to you.”

  “No,” I said, smiling, “and I’m not when it comes to him, either.”