Echoes of Dollanganger Read online

  There was no longer a doubt in my mind.

  We were in the Foxworth Hall attic.

  In the short silence that passed between us, I felt my sister’s warmth in a way I never had felt it. It’s difficult to explain, but perhaps because of our circumstances, all that had happened, the emotional roller coaster we were on, I wasn’t thinking of her as my sister. I was sensing her more as a girl, young, of course, somewhat frightened, but also desperate for my touch, my warmth. It aroused me in ways I hadn’t expected.

  I started babbling about everything, defending Momma again, and talking about how we had all changed. She perked up, now interested in how I thought she had changed. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her she was more mature, she was even prettier, but something kept me from saying it. I was afraid to say it.

  Instead, I started to talk about what I had discovered when I had snuck out. I told her I heard the party winding down and went to spy on them and that many of them looked drunk. I saw the nurse wheel out our grandfather. Moments after, I saw Momma come up the stairs with Bartholomew Winslow, who asked to see her special bed. I thought it was just a clever way to get into her room with her. I hesitated to tell Cathy any more, but she insisted. I had to tell her about how they kissed and how he touched Momma. I knew it would make her angry but not angrier than it made me. I told her how he still insisted on seeing the famous swan bed, which I had overheard had been our great-grandmother’s. To get off the topic, I described wandering into a trophy room with dozens of animal heads on the walls and the portrait of our grandfather, Malcolm Neal Foxworth. She didn’t want to hear any of that.

  Again, I hesitated, but I had promised I would tell her everything I saw, so I couldn’t leave it out, even though I knew it was going to disturb her. I described what I had seen of Momma’s suite of rooms, with that enormous swan bed, when the door opened. There was no way not to say it; it was the bedroom of a princess.

  Momma was living in luxury, while we were wallowing in a small room and an attic full of antiques, dust, and no sunshine. The air was stale. We were shut away and drawing closer to each other daily to find the comfort and the hope anyone our ages should have the moment he or she opens his or her eyes. Maybe legally we weren’t orphans, but the only thing that separated us from them was a second death certificate—our mother’s.

  Darkness was never darker; silence was never deeper. We were in a world where it was futile even to cry. Who would hear us? Who would wipe away our tears? How different we were already from the children who had been brought here. We were frightened, and we were unhappy, but we had been dressed in hope. Momma’s voice had been so full of promise. Really. Where else could we have gone but to her to find a reason to continue, to grow, to dream again of any future for ourselves?

  Kane stopped reading and turned to me. “If I were really there with her in that bed, I would say, ‘More and more, it’s looking like we’re going to have only each other, Cathy.’ ”

  “Their mother does seem so deceptive, complaining about how difficult it is for her and telling them how patient they have to be.”

  “I think Christopher knows that but can’t say a word. You can understand how alone they must feel, locked away. I can see a mother unconcerned about them in the interim, but those two little ones.”

  “Yes.” I could feel the tears coming into my eyes, and he could see them. He leaned toward me and gently kissed my eyes, his lips feeling like slightly damp tissues. Then he kissed my cheeks with small pecks, as if he was exploring and finding his way to my lips. I wasn’t terribly experienced at it, but I could sense that Kane was a very good kisser. He pressed just so hard and held his lips on mine just long enough to keep the tingling lingering after we parted.

  “And we can understand why they would need more from each other, more comfort, more love,” he whispered, his lips just under my ear and just close enough to graze the peach fuzz on my cheek. He caressed my breasts, lifting my left breast gently, and with his left hand, he reached down to get under the hem of my mother’s nightgown, sliding it softly but quickly up my thigh to my waist and turning me to him more for another long and passionate kiss that seemed to draw the last drops of resistance from me.

  When he started to draw back, I was the one who pursued, bringing my lips back to his. Then I stiffened when his hand reached my breasts, naked under the nightgown. His fingers nudged my nipple as he lowered his mouth to my neck. I was surprised at how I suddenly stiffened and pulled back. I could feel myself sliding down that dangerous slope my aunt Barbara had described, when she had come to visit and play the role of a mother educating her daughter about her own sexuality.

  “It’s all right,” Kane said, kissing my forehead and trying again to bring his fingers to my erect nipples, but I moved back even farther.

  “They wouldn’t do this,” I told him. I knew it was a strange thing to say the second after I said it.

  He smiled. “Right, right. We’ll continue this downstairs. I think we’ve done enough today, anyway,” he said, and rose. He looked down at me to see if I would follow, if I wanted to continue. The candles he had lit inside me were still flickering and did not go out. So many places on my body still longed to be touched. Now it felt like I had suffered sunburn. My skin tingled.

  I nodded and started to get up. As he dressed and then began to put everything back to the way it was, I dressed, too, and rehung my mother’s nightgown. I closed the windows, and then we left the attic, both of us pausing first to look back at it, me to be sure it didn’t reveal what had been happening in it and him looking back with the expression of someone who was remembering having been there for years and finally leaving.

  He took my hand. The passion that had blossomed between us was still as heavy as honey on our lips. My body still tingled, and both of us were as flushed as the moment we had touched and caressed. Neither of us spoke. We were hurrying down to my bedroom, where I was almost certain now I would do what my girlfriends and I jokingly referred to as “crossing the Rio Grande.”

  We had just gotten down the stairs and started toward my room when I heard the front door open and close. We both froze for a moment. Without speaking, I hurried him to my room.

  “Does anyone else have the key to your house?” he asked.

  “No. It has to be my father,” I said, slipping the diary under the pillow and flopping onto the bed with my history text open to where I was actually supposed to be reading.

  Obviously frustrated, Kane reluctantly took his books out of his bag and slapped his math text onto my desk. “If there’s anything that could keep you from feeling romantic, it’s studying math,” he muttered.

  We could hear my father coming up the stairs. I brushed back my hair and gave my clothes a once-over just before he knocked.

  “Hey,” I called, and he opened the door.

  He peered in at us. Kane turned as if he hadn’t heard him coming because he had been so entranced with his intermediate algebra.

  “If this keeps up, you’ll both be competing for valedictorian,” my father said.

  I could tell from the look in his eyes, the way he tightened his lips and moved his ears slightly back, that he really didn’t believe what he was seeing. I imagined we looked too perfect, too innocuous, or perhaps our faces were still flushed. We hadn’t had time to throw cold water on them. He didn’t look angry as much as he looked a little more concerned this time.

  Seeing the knowing expression on his face made me wonder why any teenager, boy or girl, believed he or she could completely fool parents, anyway. My father wouldn’t tell me, I’m sure, but in his youth, he was surely in some similar circumstance. Yes, teenagers today were probably more sexually active than they were in my dad’s time, I thought. Eighth-graders were getting pregnant. The attitude about virginity seemed completely upside down. Once, a girl could be proud she had held out until she met the man she loved and who loved her, but now, girls even considered carrying virginity into their late teens to be so
me sort of failure.

  My father worked hard. He didn’t socialize as much as everyone else’s parents did, but he wasn’t oblivious to the way things were today. Just because he trusted me not to get into trouble, that didn’t mean he would never worry that I would, maybe especially now that I was dating a boy as carefree and privileged as Kane Hill.

  “Hey, Mr. Masterwood,” Kane said. “No worries. Kristin is so far above me in grade point average, I need a telescope to see her scores.”

  Dad smiled. “I bet.”

  “What are you doing home so early? I thought you said you would be late all week,” I said.

  “I have to change and put on some formal duds. I’ve been invited to dinner at Spencer’s.”

  “Spencer’s? Très top-notch,” Kane said. “My father goes there to close deals.”

  Dad nodded.

  “Who invited you?” I asked him.

  “Mr. Johnson. He wants me to meet someone,” he added. I knew he didn’t want to say any more in front of Kane.

  “Your blue suit was dry-cleaned a month ago,” I said. “It’s on the right side in your closet.”

  “I was thinking about that. Good.”

  “And wear the light blue shirt with that tie I bought you last Christmas,” I added as he started to back up.

  He glanced at Kane, a little embarrassed, but nodded and backed out, closing the door softly.

  The look on Kane’s face made me laugh.

  “Yes?”

  He shook his head. “You really take care of him, don’t you?”

  “We take care of each other, Kane.”

  He looked very sad for a moment and then turned back to his math homework. “Let me know when you’re hungry,” he said. “I’ll order and go pick it up.”

  “I can just throw something together here, but you had better remember to call home and tell your mother this time,” I warned. “Stay on your homework. I’ll be back,” I told him, and went down to see what I could make us for dinner. I was pretty good at pasta with olive oil, cheese, and some eggplant. Everything was there, so I started.

  I heard someone coming down the stairs about twenty minutes later and saw my father standing in the doorway.

  “Well?” he asked, gesturing like a six-year-old boy waiting for his mother’s approval.

  “You look very handsome, Dad.” I walked over to him and brushed his hair back a little before kissing him on the cheek.

  “I always feel a little awkward in a jacket and tie, especially after a day in the field.” He looked back at the stairway. “Staying for dinner, I see,” he added, glancing at my preparations.

  “Yes, I thought I’d do a nice pasta, some salad. Defrost and heat up that Italian bread we have in the freezer. Nothing fancy.”

  “You’ll probably eat better than I will. I don’t like dinner meetings. Everyone waits for the right pause in chewing and drinking to say the important things after the mandatory small talk.”

  “You and Uncle Tommy are really different, from the sound of how he runs his business. He says the better the deal, the better the restaurant, or vice versa.”

  “He was spoiled from the get-go.”

  “So who is going to be at this dinner?” I asked, and then held my breath to see if he would tell me.

  “Someone who flew in just for it, apparently. I don’t know whether to be flattered or nervous.”

  “You don’t know his name?”

  “I was simply told it was a major stockholder in the trust involved. I’m beginning to think I’m deep in some tax-avoidance scheme. I was starting to suspect that this whole sweet deal was too good to be true. Anyway, don’t worry about it. It will all work out.”

  “You used to say it would come out in the wash.”

  “Yeah, but no one’s doing any washing in particular right now. Enjoy your dinner,” he said, then kissed me and started out.

  He did look handsome, as handsome as I could ever remember him being, but I didn’t have to be a sophisticated, mature older woman to realize there was still something very important missing. There was a light, that joie de vivre that a truly happy man had. He had carried his sorrow too long. It had lost no weight and still put darkness in places where there should be none. It kept his enthusiasm for almost everything contained, chained to a sense of guilt, perhaps. How could he be happy without her? The moment he laughed, felt a smile break out on his face, let something exciting quicken his pace, he felt his loss, remembered she wasn’t there beside him to share in the joy. Every laugh, every smile, gave birth to another tear. He went to sleep apologizing for being alive.

  I knew all this, and it broke my heart. Right now, it made me feel even guiltier about what Kane and I were doing. I had never kept anything this serious a secret from him. How was I going to explain it to him afterward? My fear was that I would not only hate myself for having done it but also hate Kane for encouraging me with his own obvious interest and excitement. Could I explain this to him and stop? Had we gone too far to stop? And would the effect on our relationship be the same? Would he now feel betrayed? Already, he had confided in me about himself and his family more than he had confided in anyone else.

  I returned to preparing dinner, these thoughts like little pinpricks on my heart. I cut some onions for our salad, but the tears that came to my eyes were not a result of that. I tried to pull myself together when I heard Kane descending.

  “You didn’t come back up,” he said.

  “I thought I had better get started on dinner. I’m hungry, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, for lots of things.” I smirked, and he smiled. “I left a message on my mother’s cell and a message with Martha, the maid who looks after her things, which include me,” he added. “Your father left?”

  “Yes. He hates business dinners.”

  “My father has business breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. He once even had a business New Year’s,” he said, and leaned against the doorjamb.

  “Oh, c’mon.”

  He raised his right hand. “I kid you not. He invited all these car company executives and their wives to our home on New Year’s Eve, and they talked about business right up to the clock striking twelve. I was only eleven at the time, but I remember it well, because my sister and I were spying on the party just the way Christopher and Cathy were spying on their grandparents’ gala. We got bored, however, and returned to our own rooms. I remember thinking that if that’s what adults did to celebrate, I was going to remain a kid.”

  “And you have,” I said.

  He laughed. “I’ll set the table this time.” I looked at him, surprised. “Hey, I’m not spoiled. I’m corrupted but not spoiled,” he said. “I think I was two when my mother had me instructed on how to place silverware, fold a napkin, and organize the wine and water glasses.”

  “Not two.”

  “Well, close to it. I had to live up to being a prince, didn’t I?”

  He went for the dishes and silverware, and I continued preparing our meal. Occasionally, we gave each other a look that reminded us of the passion that had just passed through us, but neither of us said anything. It was just dinner now and more discussion about what we had read of the diary.

  “I really have to get to my homework this time,” I said, when we were cleaning up. “I have a test in history and a quiz in English tomorrow.”

  “Don’t throw me out. I promise I won’t touch you,” he said. “I’ll just work on my own.”

  “Why is it I get the impression you’re in no rush to go home . . . ever?”

  “Maybe because I make it so obvious,” he said.

  We returned to my room, and we did do our homework. Close to nine o’clock, he closed his books and declared that I was turning him into a better student. He couldn’t stand it any longer. We both laughed, and I let him kiss me, but he could feel that we were going no further. I was anticipating my father returning any moment, anyway.

  “I’m off,” he said. “I’ll be in your driveway waiting for you
in the morning.”

  “I’m going to forget how to drive.”

  “If you would agree to bring the diary to my house . . .”

  “No,” I said sharply. He put up his hands and then, with that cute smirk on his face, began to back up toward the doorway.

  “Don’t shoot. I’m going, I’m going.” He threw me a kiss and disappeared.

  I went to the window and watched him leave. Literally seconds later, I saw my father pull into the driveway. I could tell from the way he came into the house and started up the stairs that he was tired. I stepped out to greet him in the hallway.

  “Hey,” I said. “How was your dinner?”

  “It was okay. The steak was a little overdone for me.”

  “I don’t mean the food, Dad,” I said.

  He stood there looking at me.

  “So?”

  “Remember how I once told you that getting to know someone is like peeling an onion?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, getting to know what’s behind the building of a new mansion on the foundation of Foxworth Hall is like peeling an onion, too.”

  I thought he was going to leave it at that, but it was just a long pause as he put his own thoughts about it together. I waited.

  “The man I met tonight still isn’t the man behind the project. Arthur Johnson was one layer of onion, and the man I met tonight is another. You know how I feel about navigating through mazes.”

  “Who did you meet tonight?”

  “A Dr. Martin West,” he said.

  I saw that he was waiting to see if I knew that name from reading the diary. I shook my head. “What kind of a doctor is he?”

  “He’s a psychiatrist.”

  Again, he waited for my reaction. Again, I shook my head. “How is he involved in all this?”