Heaven (Casteel Series #1)

by V. C. Andrews

  Thoughts of my life as it had been came like ghosts to haunt me—Logan, Tom, Keith, Our Jane . . .

  and Fanny—are they treating you like this, are they?

  I vacuumed, dusted, went carefully from plant to plant and felt the dirt, all damp. I returned to the kitchen to try and begin the evening meal, which Kitty said should be called dinner because Cal insisted the main meal of the day was dinner and not suppa.

  About six Cal came in, looking fresh enough to make me wonder if he did anything all day, and then he was smiling broadly. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

  How could I tell him that he was the one I instinctively trusted, that without him here I couldn't stay on another minute? I couldn't say that during our first time alone together. "I don't know," I whispered, trying to smile. "I guess I expected you to look . . .

  well, dirty."

  "I always shower before I come home," he explained with a small, odd smile. "It's one of Kitty's rules—no dirty husband in her house. I keep a change of clothes to put on after I'm finished for the day.

  Then, too, I am boss, and I have six employees, but I often like to pitch in and do the trouble-shooting in an old set."

  Feeling shy with him, I gestured to the array of cookbooks. "I don't know how to plan a meal for you and Kitty."

  "I'll help," he said instantly. "First of all, you've got to stay away from starches. Kitty adores spaghetti, but it makes her gain weight, and if she gains a pound she'll think it's your fault."

  We worked together, preparing a casserole that Cal said Kitty would like. He helped me slice the vegetables for the salad as he began to talk. "It's nice having you here, Heaven. Otherwise I'd be doing this by myself, as before. Kitty hates to cook, though she's pretty good at it. She thinks I don't earn my way, for I owe her thousands of dollars and I am in hock up to my neck, and she holds the purse strings. I was just a kid when I married her. I thought she was wise, beautiful, and wonderful; she seemed to want to help me so much."

  "How'd you meet her?" I asked, watching how he tore the lettuce and sliced everything thin and on an angle. He showed me how to make the salad dressing, and it was as if his busy hands set free his tongue, almost as if he were talking more to himself than to me as he chopped and sliced. "You trap yourself sometimes, by thinking desire and need is love. Remember that, Heaven. I was lonely in a big city, twenty years old, heading for Florida during spring break. I met Kitty quite by accident, in a bar my first night here in Atlanta. I thought she was absolutely the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen."

  He laughed hard and bitterly. "I was naive and young.

  I had come for the summer from my home in New England while I was still going to Yale, had two more years to go before I graduated. Alone in Atlanta I felt lost. Kitty was lost too, and we found we had a lot in common. After a while, we married. She set me up in business. I'd always planned to be a history professor, can you imagine? Instead I married Kitty. Haven't been on a university campus since. I've never been home again, either. I don't even write to my parents anymore. Kitty doesn't want me to contact them. She's ashamed, afraid they might find out she didn't finish high school. And I owe her at least twenty-five thousand dollars."

  "How'd she make so much money?" I asked, half forgetting what I was doing.

  "Kitty goes through men like castor oil, leaving them weak emotionally and drained financially. She told you she married first when she was thirteen?

  Well, she's had three other husbands, and each has provided for her very well—in order to get out of a marriage each must have found abominable after a while. Then, to give her credit, her beauty salon is the best in Atlanta."

  "Oh," I said, with my head bowed low. His confession was not what I'd expected. Yet it felt so good to have someone talk to me as if I were an adult.

  I didn't know if I should ask what I did. "Don't you love Kitty?"

  "Yes, I love her," he admitted gruffly. "When I understand what makes her what she is, how can I not love her? There's one thing, though, I want to say now, while I have a chance. There are times when Kitty can be very violent. I know she put you into hot water on your first night here, but I didn't say anything since you weren't permanently harmed. If I'd said something then, she would be worse the next time she has you alone. Just be careful to do everything as she wants. Flatter her, say she looks younger than I do. . . and obey, obey, and be meek."

  "But I don't understand!" I cried. "Why does she want me, except to be her slave?"

  He looked up, appearing surprised. "Why, Heaven, haven't you guessed? You represent to her the child she lost when she aborted your father's baby and ruined herself so she can never have another child. She loves you because you are part of him, and hates you for the same reason. Through you, she hopes one day to get to him."

  "To hurt him through me?" I asked.

  "Something like that."

  I laughed bitterly. "Poor Kitty. Of all his five children, I am the one he despises. She should have taken Fanny or Tom—Pa loves them."

  He turned to put his arms about me, and

  tenderly he held me the way I'd always wanted to be held by Pa. I choked up and clung to this man who was almost a stranger; my need to be loved was so great I grasped greedily, then felt ashamed and so shy I almost cried. He cleared his throat and let me go.

  "Heaven, above all, never let Kitty know what you just told me. As long as you are valuable to your father, you have value for Kitty. Understand?"

  He cared. I could see it in his eyes, and with trust that he'd always keep confidences to himself, I had the courage to tell him about the suitcase in the basement and what it contained. He listened as Miss Deale would have listened, with compassion and understanding.

  "Someday I'm going back there, Cal, to Boston, to see my mother's family. And I'll have the doll with me, so they'll know who I am. But I can't go unless I have found—"

  "I know," he said with a small laugh, his eyes sparkling at last. "You must take with you Tom, Keith, and Our Jane. Why on earth do you call your little sister Our Jane?"

  He laughed again when I told him. "Your sister Fanny sounds like a real character. Will I ever meet Fanny?"

  "Why, I sure hope so," I said with a worried frown. "She's living now with Reverend Wise and his wife, and they call her Louisa, which is her middle name."

  "Aaah, the good Reverend," he said in a solemn, slow way, looking thoughtful, "the richest, most successful man in Winnerrow."

  "You don't like him?"

  "I am always suspicious of any man that successful—and that religious."

  It was good to be with Cal in the kitchen, working alongside him and learning just by watching what he did. I'd never- in a million years have believed a week ago that I could feel so comfortable with a man I hardly knew. I was shy, yet so eager to have him for my friend, for a substitute father, for a confidant. Every smile he gave me told me he'd be all of that.

  Our casserole baked in the oven, the timer went off, and my biscuits were ready, and Kitty didn't come home, nor did she call to explain why she was late. I saw Cal glance at his watch several times, a deep frown putting a pucker of worry between his eyes.

  Why didn't he call and check?

  Kitty didn't return home until eleven, and Cal and I were in the living room watching TV. The remainder of the casserole had long ago dried out, so it couldn't taste nearly as good to her as it had to us.

  Still, she ate it with relish, as if lukewarm food gone dry didn't matter. "Ya cooked this all yerself?" she asked several times.

  "Yes, Mother."

  "Cal didn't help ya none?"

  "Yes, Mother, he told me not to prepare starchy foods, and he helped me with the salad."

  "Ya washed yer hands in Lysol water first?"

  "Yes, Mother."

  "Okay." She studied Cal's expressionless face.

  "Well, clean up, girl; then let's all go t'bed afta our baths."

  "She's sleeping down here from now on," Cal said, steel in
his voice as he turned cold eyes her way.

  "Next week we are going shopping and we are going to buy new furniture and replace all that clutter in our second bedroom. We will leave the potter's wheel and what you have locked in the cabinets, but we're adding a twin bed, a chair, a desk, and a dresser."

  It scared me the way she looked at him, at me, it really did.

  Still, she agreed. I really was going to have a room of my own, a real bedroom—as Fanny had with Reverend Wise.

  Days of school and hard work followed. Up

  early, late to bed, I had to clean up after Kitty's dinner, even if she came home at midnight. I found out that Cal liked me by his side when he watched television.

  Every evening he and I prepared dinner, and ate it together if Kitty wasn't there. I was adjusting to the busy school schedule, and making a few friends in school who didn't think I talked strange, though they never said what they thought of my too-large, cheap clothes, or my horrible clunky shoes.

  Finally it was Saturday, and I could sleep late, and Kitty had given her permission for Cal and me to shop for furniture that would be mine alone to use.

  And because of this shopping trip that loomed up bright and promising, all the early hours of Saturday I rushed about to finish the housework. Cal had half the day off and would be home by noon, expecting to eat lunch. What did city folks eat for lunch when they ate home? So far I'd eaten lunch only in school. Poor Miss Deale had tried so many times to share the contents of her lunch bag with an entire class of underfed children. I had never eaten a sandwich before she forced one upon me. The ham, lettuce, and tomato was my favorite, though Tom and Keith had liked peanut butter and jelly well enough—and, more than any other kind, tuna fish.

  Almost I could hear Tom saying: "That's why she brings six, you know. How could a petite lady like Miss Deale eat six sandwiches? So we really do help her out, don't we, when we eat up?"

  I sighed, sad to think I'd left without saying thank you to Miss Deale, and sighed again when I thought of Logan, who had not yet answered my first letter.

  Thoughts of yesterdays slowed me down, so I had to rush about to check over downstairs, the living and dining roomiagain, before I finished upstairs. I kept hoping to find shelves of books, or books put away in cabinets, but I didn't find even one book.

  There wasn't even a Bible. There were plenty of magazines, confession stories that Kitty hid in table drawers, and pretty house magazines she put on top of the coffee table in a neat stack. But not one book.

  In the small room Kitty had converted into a home ceramic hobby room, the one that was going to be mine, shelves lined the wall, and on those shelves were tiny animals and miniature people, all small enough to fit inside her little kiln. There were also cabinets lining one entire wall, all locked. I stared at those locked doors, wondering what secrets they held.

  Downstairs again, I carefully stacked the dirty dishes in the washer, filled the compartments with detergent, then stood back and fearfully waited for the thing to blow up, or discharge the dishes like bullets.

  But the darn thing still worked after almost a week of hill-scum handling. I felt strangely exhilarated, as if in learning to push the right buttons I had gained control over city living.

  Scrubbing the floor was nothing new, except this one had to be waxed, and that required more reading of directions on the bottle. I watered the many live green plants, and found that some of Kitty's plants were silk, not real at all. Lord God above, don't let her see I watered a few before I knew they weren't real.

  Noon came before I'd finished doing even one quarter of what was listed on those cards. It took so much time to figure out how to operate all the machines, and wrap the cords back like they'd been, and put the attachments on, and take them off, and put them away in neat order. Oh, gosh, at home all this had been done with one old broom.

  I was tangled up in vacuum cord when the door from the garage banged and Cal appeared in the back hall, staring at me in a strange, intense way, as if trying to see what I was really feeling. "Hey, kid," he said after his survey, his eyes sort of unhappy, "there's no need to work like a slave. She's not here to see.

  Slow down."

  "But I haven't cleaned the windows yet, and I haven't washed the bric-a-brac, and I haven't—"

  "Sit down. Take a breather. Let me fix our lunch, and then we'll go shopping for the furniture you need—and how about a movie for a treat? Now, tell me what you want for lunch."

  "Anything will suit me fine," I said guiltily.

  "But I should finish the housework . . ."

  He smiled bitterly, still eyeing me in that odd way. "She won't be home until ten or eleven tonight, and there is a special movie I think you need to see.

  Do you good to have some fun for a change. I presume you haven't had much. All life in mountain country isn't unpleasant, Heaven. Some mountains can deliver beauty, graceful living, peace, and even wonderful music . . ."

  Why, I knew that.

  It hadn't all been bad. We'd had our fun,

  running and laughing, swimming in the river, playing games we made up, chasing each other. Bad times came when Pa was home. Or when hunger took over.

  I shook my head again to clear it of memories that could make me sad. I couldn't believe he'd want to take me to the movies, not when . . . "But you have ten TV sets, two and three in some rooms."

  Again he smiled. He was twice as handsome

  when he smiled, though his smiles never lasted long enough to make him seem truly happy. "They don't all work. They're just used as pedestals to hold Kitty's works of art." He grinned ironically when he said that, as if he didn't admire his wife's artistic endeavors nearly as much as he should. "Anyway, a television is not like a movie theater, where the screen is huge, and the sound is better, and there are real people there to share your pleasure."

  My eyes locked with his a moment, then

  lowered. Why was he challenging me with his eyes?

  "Cal, I've never been to a movie, not even once."

  He reached to caress my cheek, his eyes soft and warm. "Then it's time you did go, so run on up and get ready, and I'll throw together a couple of sandwiches. Wear that pretty blue dress I bought for you—the one that's going to fit."

  It did fit.

  I stared in a mirror that had known only Kitty's kind of beauty, and felt so pretty now that my face had healed and there were no scars. And my hair shone as it never had before. Cal was kind and good to me. Cal liked me, and that proved there were men who could like me, even if Pa didn't. Cal was going to help me find Tom, Keith, Our Jane. Hope . . . I had hope . . a soaring kind of hope.

  In the long run, it would all work out for the best. I was going to have my own bedroom with brand-new furniture, new blankets, real pillows—oh, glory day, who'd ever have dreamed Cal could be like a real father! Why, I could even see Tom smiling as I ran down the stairs, to see the first movie of my life.

  My own father had refused to love me, but that didn't hurt so much now that I had a new and better father.

  fourteen

  WHEN THERE'S MUSIC

  .

  CAL'S HAM, LETTUCE, AND TOMATO

  SANDWICHES WERE delicious. And when he held the new blue coat for my arms to slip into, I said, "I can keep my head low so people won't notice I'm not really your daughter."

  He shook his head sadly and didn't laugh. "No.

  You hold your head high, feel proud. You have nothing to be ashamed of, and I'm proud to escort you to your first movie." His hands rested lightly on my shoulders. "I hope to God Kitty will never do anything to spoil your face."

  There was so much he left unsaid as we both just stood there, caught in the mire of what Kitty was, and what Kitty could do. He sighed heavily, caught hold of my arm, and guided me toward the garage.

  "Heaven, if ever Kitty is unnecessarily hard on you, I want you to tell me. I love her very much, but I don't want her to harm you, physically or emotionally. I have to admit she can do both
. Never be afraid to come to me for help when you need it."

  He made me feel good, made me feel that at last I had the right kind of father. I turned around and smiled; he flushed and quickly looked away. Why would my smile make him embarrassed?

  All the way to the furniture store I sat proudly beside him, filled with happy anticipation to have so much pleasure in one day, new furniture and a movie.

  All of a sudden Cal changed from sad to lighthearted, guiding me by my elbow when we entered the store full of so many different types of bedroom sets I couldn't decide. The salesman looked from me to Cal, pondering, so it seemed, our relationship. "My daughter," Cal said proudly. "She'll choose what she likes." The trouble was, I liked it all, and in the end it was Cal who chose what he considered appropriate for me. "This bed, that dresser, and that desk," he ordered, "the ones that aren't too girlish and will see you through to your twenties and beyond."

  A small flutter of panic stirred in my chest—I wouldn't be with him and Kitty when I was in my twenties, I'd be with my brothers and my sisters, in Boston. I tried to whisper this when the salesman stepped away. "No," Cal denied, "we have to plan for the future as if we know what it is; to do otherwise cancels out the present and makes it meaningless."

  I didn't understand what he meant by that, except I liked the feeling that he wanted me permanently in his life.

  Just thinking of how pretty my room was going to look must have put stars in my eyes. "You look so pretty—like someone just plu: led in your cord of happiness."

  "I'm thinking of Fanny in Reverend Wise's house. Now have a room as nice as hers must be."

  Just for saying that he bought a bedside table and a lamp with a fat blue base. "And two drawers in the table that lock, in case you have secrets. . ."