Echoes of Dollanganger Read online

  “It has gotten to me. I didn’t want to say anything this morning when you told me you hadn’t slept well. I had all sorts of nightmares after reading to catch up, especially after I read that part about Cory accidentally getting locked in that trunk. I’m not claustrophobic, but I don’t think I ever get into an elevator without wondering what I’d do if it broke down.” He looked at the diary in his hands. “Maybe you should be the one reading it aloud.”

  “Oh, no, Kane, you read the diary well,” I said, and I smiled. “You even read Cathy well. Maybe you should go out for the spring play. Mr. Madeo would love you in the drama club, I’m sure.”

  “No thanks. This is the only stage I want to be on right now, and with only you as an audience.” He laughed. “If any of my buddies knew what I was doing—”

  “Which they’ll never know,” I said sharply.

  “Not from me. That’s for sure.”

  He stood up and looked around the attic with his shoulders up, embracing himself, and for the moment looking like someone who really was imprisoned, diminished by the small space and crawling into himself. He continued to look around, turning his head slowly and pausing at the windows.

  “Even convicts in real prisons get time outside,” he muttered.

  His gaze stopped when he reached me. It was as if he had forgotten that I was up here with him. He stared for a moment, and then his body seemed to fall back into the Kane I knew, his shoulders just a little slumped, his face framing that impish, offbeat smile that was so sexy.

  “Speaking of spending time in an attic, however, I wouldn’t mind being locked in here with you for a while,” he said. He sounded more like himself again. He started toward me, his eyes full of passion.

  I held up my hand like a traffic cop. “But I’m your sister,” I said, and he stopped. “Up here, as long as we’re up here, I’m your sister. We behave toward each other like they do; otherwise, your whole theory of why we’re here is lost.”

  I wasn’t saying it to be impish or defensive. I really believed it now.

  I could see his mind spinning with conflicting desires. Was this it? Would he give up reading the diary in my attic? Or reading it at all? Is that what I wanted, what I hoped to hear? Was it unfair of me to tease him with the promise that it would be different once we left the attic?

  “Right,” he said. He stepped back, looking insulted, taking on Christopher’s posture again. “What kind of a brother do you think I am? You sound like you believe what the grandmother from hell believes about us.”

  I started to laugh. He was so convincing, but then I decided to get right into it and be just as convincing. “Sorry. Oh,” I moaned as dramatically as I could, “I’m so sorry for doubting you, Christopher.”

  “Right. You should be sorry. We Dollangangers, Foxworths, whatever we are, need to stick together.”

  “Desperately,” I said. I was expecting him to laugh, but he didn’t.

  He nodded instead and returned to his chair, looking even more determined.

  “I guess we’ll have to wait to see what kind of a brother you really are. Won’t we?” I teased, but that didn’t bring a smile, either. He picked up the diary, glared at me defiantly, snapped his arms out firmly, and began to read again.

  Christmas Eve now loomed on our horizon, but not like Christmas Eves before. This threatened to be dark and horrible, a pending electric storm of broken promises and memories dangling like broken tree ornaments. When Cathy muttered one night that it would soon be Christmas and reminded me that we had been here just about five months, I felt panic rise through me. Five months! One look at the twins, who were still so fragile and so subdued since their stubborn colds, and I knew I had to come up with something that would stave off any more sadness and disappointment.

  “We’ll make them gifts,” I declared. It seemed to distract her, which was my purpose, and then one night, I came up with the idea that we should even make our grandmother a Christmas present.

  “Why would we do that?” Cathy asked.

  “To win her over. She’s still our grandmother,” I told her, even though the words nearly choked me.

  She stared at me. Was she going to scream or laugh? I saw her giving it serious thought. Then she smiled, realizing I was suggesting we do something to manipulate her for a change. “You really think that might work?”

  I shrugged. “Why not try? Daddy used to say, ‘You can get more with honey than vinegar.’ ”

  Maybe that was underhanded, quoting Daddy for this, but I knew it would move Cathy to cooperate, and cooperate she did. She decided that whatever we made, it had to be perfect. “We’ll show her,” she said, and I smiled to myself. My plan, at least for now, was working.

  She came up with the idea to bond tan linen to a stretcher frame and glue on a variety of colored stones with gold and brown cording. She worked on it more intensely than she had ever worked on anything, telling me our grandmother was obviously a perfectionist and would only appreciate this if it was perfect. Whatever, I thought. At least it was keeping her occupied and not thinking about the rest of it.

  And then Momma justified the faith I had in her. One afternoon, she came with a live Christmas tree in a small wooden tub. She helped us trim the tree and hang miniature ornaments. For a while, it was as though we were back home again, being the family we were. She gave us four hanging stockings and promised that next year at this time, we would be living in our own home. Cathy was still skeptical, especially since Thanksgiving, but amazingly, we woke up on Christmas morning and found the stockings stuffed and gifts under the tree. After we unwrapped our gifts, Cathy looked at me with eyes drowning in tears. I knew why. She was sorry she had ever doubted Momma.

  “It’s all right,” I told her, and kissed her forehead. “The main thing is, she cares as much about us as ever.”

  Later, our grandmother arrived with a picnic basket. She said nothing, not “Merry Christmas” or anything, but I nodded at Cathy, and she approached her and handed her our gift. I held my breath. Would this be a wonderful Christmas after all? Would everything finally change?

  Grandmother Olivia looked at us and at the gift, then handed it back to Cathy without a word and left. I was stunned by her insensitivity, but Cathy went wild. She stomped on the gift, smashing it and screaming about how horrid our grandmother was and how angry she was at Momma for leaving us in this place at the mercy of that monster. Her rage brought tears. I had to calm her down, embrace her, and rock her like a child, assuring her that we had done the right thing. Our grandmother was the one in the wrong.

  “And you can’t blame Momma, Cathy. It’s not Momma’s fault that she has a mother like that. Now we can understand why she was so eager to leave with Daddy and give up inheriting a fortune,” I told her.

  That seemed to make sense to her. Cathy saw how the twins were taking her outburst and my trying to calm her. She nodded. “You’re right,” she whispered, then flicked away her tears and went to them. I watched her calm them and cheer them up again, just the way a mother would do.

  It wasn’t a perfect Christmas; it was a Christmas, however, and Christmas always made you hopeful.

  Miraculously, just at the right time, Momma returned with more gifts, one being a large dollhouse that she said had been hers. It was done in amazing detail, with furniture and little servants. The twins were fascinated, as was I. I was sure Momma was right. It was a very expensive toy. Cathy was still very down, though, and when Momma asked why, I told her about the way our grandmother had reacted to our gift.

  “Oh, you have to ignore her,” she told me. “She’s always been hard to please. She’s not a happy woman. She’ll never be a happy woman, even with all the wealth. She doesn’t know how to use it to bring happiness, but believe me, I do, and I will. In fact—”

  Suddenly, she burst into a new smile, hurried out, and then returned with a small television set. She told us that for now, it would be our window on the world. But even this didn’t please Cathy. Finally,
Momma embraced both of us, gave us each a hug, and announced that the end was near.

  “This is my real Christmas gift,” she said. “My plan is working. My father has called for a lawyer to put me back in his will. Step one,” she declared with happy tears, “has been accomplished, and you’re all just as responsible for my success as I am.”

  I couldn’t help it. I almost burst into tears of happiness myself.

  I looked at Cathy. When she was little, she didn’t want me to always be right, but this time, she looked grateful, maybe more than grateful. I think she was looking at me and thinking I was really quite brilliant.

  And she was happier than ever that I was her brother. I couldn’t hope to replace the father we had lost, but I was so grateful that I was able to get as close to that as possible.

  For both our sakes.

  Kane set the diary on the small table beside his chair and took a deep breath. He had read it with such intensity, the intensity of someone who had been there. He was wiping a few tears off his cheeks. I was emotionally frozen for a moment, from both what he had read and how he was reacting.

  “Phew,” he said, shaking his head. “That was intense. Do you realize how often Christopher is on the verge of exploding, pounding on that door, and demanding an end to it all? I can’t imagine how he sleeps at night and how he holds himself together, seeing what’s happening to his brother and sisters. I don’t care how much faith he has in his mother or whatever.”

  “Christopher? How about Cathy?”

  “She’s always exploding,” he said. He laid his head back and closed his eyes.

  I never expected him to react this way. Many times when I was reading the diary alone in my room, I would find myself as deeply emotionally involved as he looked like he was now, but I just assumed it was a girl thing, especially because of how closely I identified with Cathy. I realized that no one knew this side of Kane Hill, his sensitivity, maybe not even his parents.

  Whenever I had an emotional reaction to something in the diary, I realized that whatever it was, it resonated because of something similar, some similar fear or sadness in my own life. What was Kane finding similar to his own life, which everyone at school, including me, saw as about as perfect and privileged as life for someone our age could be?

  “That’s enough for today, Kane,” I said, standing. “I really want to get to my homework before my father comes home.”

  He looked up at me with what I thought was both anger and disappointment in his face.

  “I mean, we don’t have to rush through it, do we? It’s better if we take our time so we won’t miss something important.”

  He thought a moment and then nodded and stood up. “Of course. You’re right. Let’s get at some homework, and then how about my taking you to have some pizza or something? We’ll go to the Italian Stallion.”

  “I’ll have to call my father and see what he’s doing for dinner later,” I said.

  We left the attic, and Kane paused in the doorway to look back as though he had forgotten something. I had taken the diary from him. There was nothing else. I looked at him quizzically, and he hurried past me and down the stairs.

  “Wait!” I called.

  He stopped. “You want to keep going?”

  “No. You opened the window, remember? I told you we always have to remember to leave things as they were.”

  “Oh.” He started up.

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  He waited for me on the stairway. “Sorry. I won’t forget next time.”

  I nodded, and we headed for my room. I slipped the diary under my pillow and went to my phone while he took his books out of his book bag.

  “What’s up?” my father said, but not until after the third ring. I’d been preparing to leave a message.

  “Are you busy?”

  “Debating with the building inspector, which is par for the course. So?”

  “You’re not coming home in time for dinner, right?”

  “Right. I might have a bite with Mr. Johnson. His architect suggested some changes that will create new issues. I don’t know where some of these ideas are coming from.”

  “What ideas?”

  “Never mind. Why are you asking about dinner? There’s that roast chicken I prepared and—”

  “Kane wants to take me for pizza at the Italian Stallion.”

  He was silent for a few moments.

  “Dad?”

  “Sure. Have a good time. I’ll spend some time with you afterward. That is, if you have your homework done,” he added almost sarcastically, which was a real change for him. Something was bothering him, I thought.

  “I’ll have it done,” I said, then added, “Don’t be a worrywart,” which was another one of his favorite expressions.

  “Okay. Gotta go,” he said. “My torturer is getting impatient.”

  “Everything all right?” Kane asked as soon as I hung up.

  “Yes. Just some of the usual complications involved in building a house,” I said, as if I really knew.

  He nodded and returned to his homework. I dug in to mine, and nearly an hour later, I heard him slap his history book closed.

  “I’m starving,” he said.

  “Okay. I can handle what I have left later. Let me freshen up a bit first,” I said, and went into the bathroom. While I was brushing my hair, I heard him on the phone talking to his mother.

  I had yet to spend any real time with his parents. He really hadn’t spent any quality time with my father, either. It wasn’t as if we were on the verge of getting engaged or anything, but some of the parents of my friends made a big thing about meeting people they dated and getting to know them better. It was important to my father but so far not a big thing for Kane’s parents. Parents wanting to get to know people you went out with seemed to be truer for girls than for boys. If some of them only knew how their daughters could be a lot worse.

  It wasn’t my intention to eavesdrop on Kane, but something his mother had said seemed to have irritated him, and he raised his voice.

  “Yes, I’m at her house. I plan on being here a lot. Don’t worry about it,” he said sharply. It got quiet, so I imagined he had ended the call, but when I stepped out, he was still on my phone, listening. “You’re lucky she’s even coming home,” he finally said, and ended the call.

  “Everything all right at home?”

  “Just the usual turmoil. I have to hear my mother rant about my sister, Darlena, because my father refuses to listen to any of it.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Darlena wants to bring her boyfriend home for Thanksgiving.”

  “And your mother doesn’t like him?”

  “Let’s just say she’s reluctant about it. He has a bit of Hispanic heritage.”

  “What? What’s a bit?”

  “His mother is from Chile,” he said with a smile.

  “And that matters?”

  “She’ll never come out and say it. My mother was brought up to be a princess. My parents met on some billionaire’s yacht, you know. Anyway,” he said, smiling, “you should hear how fluently Darlena speaks Spanish now. I think she does it just to drive my mother nuts.”

  “What’s your father say about it?”

  “If he can make a lot of money, it won’t matter if he’s half Eskimo. My father is an equal opportunity capitalist.”

  “Sometimes you sound like you don’t like your parents, Kane,” I said. I was back to peeling that onion again. We were both uncovering more and more about ourselves, and I couldn’t help being more interested in him after seeing how he reacted to what Christopher had written in his diary.

  He looked at me. “Probably so.”

  “What?” I was shocked at his candor.

  “We can love them, but we don’t have to like them,” he said. “Don’t look so surprised. Lots of kids, maybe even most, don’t want to be replicas of their parents.”

  “Doesn’t mean they don’t like them.”

 
“They don’t like enough of them, and they want to be different, right?”

  “I guess so. But not for me,” I added quickly.

  “Yeah, but maybe that’s what eventually happened to Christopher and Cathy when it came to their mother. Maybe they still loved her but they didn’t like her. I don’t like her,” he added. “Even if Christopher does.”

  “But you really don’t like your own mother?”

  He shrugged. “Let’s put it this way, Kristin. I don’t have trouble imagining her locking me away in an attic if it meant she’d inherit a fortune.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  He smiled. “Wait until you get to know her better,” he said. “When she lets her hair down. Sometimes my mother reminds me of Lady Macbeth.”

  He made me think. I had been at the homes of many of my friends, eaten dinner with their families, watched television with them, and slept over, but did I really know what their family life was like? How much of it was a show for me, the nearly orphaned girl? Don’t let her see any family problems. Be grateful you’re not in her situation.

  The neighbors the Dollangangers had before Christopher Sr. was killed probably thought of them as a precious little family full of love and beauty. Could any of those neighbors and friends, any who had been waiting for Christopher Sr. at his birthday party that fateful night, ever have imagined those children locked away by their own mother and grandmother for years?

  We left for the restaurant.

  “Promise me you won’t read the diary without me,” Kane said after we had sat in a booth at the Italian Stallion and ordered our pizza. “To make this real for us, we have to make the discoveries together.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I can tell from the expression on your face if you do,” he warned.

  “You want me to make your famous blood oath?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” he said, and then he laughed.

  We talked a lot about events in the earlier part of the diary. Kane found it hard to believe that Christopher Sr. had left his family so destitute.

  “The man has no life insurance? He had four children. There’s something odd about it, about the way they behaved together, anyway. It was like a family of children. They lived in a bubble, and the bubble burst. They thought all they had to do was change their name to Dollanganger, and they could make the past disappear. You know what I think? I think by the time we get to the end, Christopher Jr.’s going to think his parents were just plain irresponsible. You saw the way he began to doubt his father, thinking he might have been some kind of dreamer who talked a good game but never had his grasp of anything substantial. Even his job might have been all fluff.”