It was one thing to praise one of your children because he or she had done something spectacular. Everyone knew stories about fathers who favored one son over the other because he was a hero on the football field or got good grades. The same was true for a daughter who might please her mother more by being more responsible, being talented in music or art, or maybe just being prettier.
But none of this could apply to identical twins, not in our mother’s way of thinking.
According to Mother, Haylee had no talents that I didn’t have, and I had none that she didn’t have. Certainly, neither of us could be prettier than the other. Our voices were so similar that people never knew which one had answered the phone. Even Daddy was confused sometimes when he called. There was always a question mark in the air first. “Haylee? Kaylee?”
When we were a little older, Haylee often pretended to be me on the phone. I think she worried that Daddy liked me more and wanted to see how he would speak if he thought I was the one answering the phone. I suspected he did like me more than he liked her, and she knew it. Once she said, “If he doesn’t know which one of us it is, he’ll say your name because he hopes it’s you.” I didn’t know if she was right. I didn’t keep as close a count as she did.
Maybe it was simply because he wasn’t around us as much as he should have been, but if I suddenly came upon him while he was reading or if Haylee did, Daddy would look at whomever it was, and his eyes would blink for a moment as his mind settled on which one of us was there. Anyone could see that he was struggling with it because Mother had him terrified about calling me Haylee or calling her Kaylee. Mother insisted that he must know which of us was which.
After all, how could our own father not know us? He agreed, and when he did get it wrong, he blamed himself for not concentrating or paying attention enough. However, he admitted that there were times when he was actually mistaken even though he was concentrating.
“They’re so alike!” he cried, hoping to be excused when Mother blew up at him for it, but all that did was prove her point and make her even more obsessive about how we were supposed to be treated.
“Of course they’re so alike. That’s always been my point. You have to try even harder, Mason, and be more careful about it,” she told him. “You never liked it when your father called you by your brother’s name, and you weren’t even twins. He is two years older than you are, but how did you feel, Mason? Go on, confess. You felt he was thinking more of him than he was of you, right?”
Daddy had admitted that to her once, so what could he do but retreat with the look of a punished puppy? I always felt sorrier for him than I did for us. Sometimes I pretended I was Haylee if he called me that, just so he would get away with it, but if Mother was there, that was impossible. She never made a mistake. I never knew why not, except to think that it was true that mothers knew their children better.
There were so many rules of behavior toward us that Mother laid down, with the power and importance of the U.S. Constitution, our own Ten Commandments:
Thou shalt not call Haylee “Kaylee,” or vice versa.
Thou shalt not buy one a gift that you do not buy the other.
Thou shalt not take one somewhere and not the other.
Thou shalt not kiss one without kissing the other.
Thou shalt not hug or hold the hand of one without hugging or holding the hand of the other.
Thou shalt not say good morning or good night to one without saying it to the other.
Thou shalt not ask one a question you do not ask the other.
Thou shalt not introduce one to someone without introducing the other.
Thou shalt not tell one a story without telling it to the other.
Thou shalt not smile at one without smiling at the other.
Because of all the rules, I often thought our house was more of a laboratory than a home. I think Daddy did, too. Even Haylee admitted to feeling as if we were under observation in a glass bubble while strange and new experimentation on bringing up identical twins was being conducted. Many of Mother and Daddy’s friends often looked as if they believed that, too. I once heard someone whisper that maybe Mother was giving reports to a special government agency. I know that, like me, Haylee felt this all made us seem strange to anyone who witnessed our upbringing. There were other twins in our community, even on our street, but they were not identical, and they seemed no different from kids who had no twins. They were permitted to wear different clothes and do different things, and their mothers weren’t so uptight about potentially devastating personality complexes.
But our mother would point or nod at them and say, “Look. Look how competitive their parents have made them. They enjoy making each other feel bad. You’ll never do that,” she would add with a confident smile. “You will always consider each other’s feelings first.”
She had no idea about what was coming, crawling along on the tails of shadows toward our home and our family as we grew older.
ABOUT
One of the most popular authors of all time, V.C. Andrews has been a bestselling phenomenon since the publication of Flowers in the Attic, first in the renowned Dollanganger family series, which includes Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and Garden of Shadows. The family saga continues with Christopher’s Diary: Secrets of Foxworth, Christopher’s Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger, and Secret Brother. V.C. Andrews has written more than seventy novels, which have sold over 106 million copies worldwide and have been translated into twenty-five foreign languages.
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V.C. Andrews® Books
The Dollanganger Family Series
Flowers in the Attic
Petals on the Wind
If There Be Thorns
Seeds of Yesterday
Garden of Shadows
Christopher’s Diary: Secrets of Foxworth
Christopher’s Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger
Secret Brother
The Audrina Series
My Sweet Audrina
Whitefern
The Casteel Family Series
Heaven
Dark Angel
Fallen Hearts
Gates of Paradise
Web of Dreams
The Cutler Family Series
Dawn
Secrets of the Morning
Twilight’s Child
Midnight Whispers
Darkest Hour
The Landry Family Series
Ruby
Pearl in the Mist
All That Glitters
Hidden Jewel
Tarnished Gold
The Logan Family Series
Melody
Heart Song
Unfinished Symphony
Music in the Night
Olivia
The Orphans Miniseries
Butterfly
Crystal
Brooke
Raven
Runaways
The Wildflowers Miniseries
Misty
Star
Jade
Cat
Into the Garden
The Hudson Family Series
Rain
Lightning Strikes
Eye of the Storm
The End of the Rainbow
The Shooting Stars Series
Cinnamon
Ice
Rose
Honey
Falling Stars
The De Beers Family Series
“Dark Seed”
Willow
Wi
cked Forest
Twisted Roots
Into the Woods
Hidden Leaves
The Broken Wings Series
Broken Wings
Midnight Flight
The Gemini Series
Celeste
Black Cat
Child of Darkness
The Shadows Series
April Shadows
Girl in the Shadows
The Early Spring Series
Broken Flower
Scattered Leaves
The Secrets Series
Secrets in the Attic
Secrets in the Shadows
The Delia Series
Delia’s Crossing
Delia’s Heart
Delia’s Gift
The Heavenstone Series
The Heavenstone Secrets
Secret Whispers
The March Family Series
Family Storms
Cloudburst
The Kindred Series
Daughter of Darkness
Daughter of Light
The Forbidden Series
The Forbidden Sister
“The Forbidden Heart”
Roxy’s Story
The Mirror Sisters Series
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Broken Glass
Shattered Memories
Stand-alone Novels
Into the Darkness
Capturing Angels
The Unwelcomed Child
Bittersweet Dreams
Sage’s Eyes
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Following the death of Virginia Andrews, the Andrews family worked with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Virginia Andrews’s stories and to create additional novels, of which this is one, inspired by her storytelling genius.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Vanda Productions, LLC
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Pocket Books mass market edition August 2016
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Interior design by Leydiana Rodríguez
Cover design by Anna Dorfman
Cover photos © Jill Hyland/Arcangel (woman), Caroline Devulder/Shutterstock (fern)
ISBN 978-1-5011-3940-6
ISBN 978-1-5011-3942-0 (ebook)
Whitefern Page 28