Echoes in the Walls

by V. C. Andrews

  “You think?” She looked at me, excited.

  “I think he’s right,” I said. Every minute with Dillon was like wiping fog off a picture. What I was seeing now was someone who was not only bright and creative but self-confident, too.

  We continued with more enthusiasm. We were all really into it now, with Dillon providing suggestions and direction. No one paid attention to time. When I finally did think about it, I realized it was nearly five forty-five. I’d never be home by six.

  “Oh, no. My mother’s going to be upset,” I said.

  “Avoid it,” Dillon said.

  “Avoid it? How?”

  “Call her and tell her the truth, that we ran over and we’ve decided to go for pizza. I’ll be bringing you home.”

  “Are we?” Ivy asked quickly, making sure she was included.

  “Fern?” he asked. “If she puts up a stink, you could always say you’re presently in the clutches of a vampire and have no choice.”

  “With my mother, you never have no choice if you’re doing something she doesn’t want or like. But I’ll try,” I said.

  I took out my cell phone and stepped into the hallway. I called and spoke quickly, explaining how I had lost track of time.

  “It’ll just be easier if we grab a pizza.”

  She was quiet. This was my mother’s way when she was more annoyed than she wanted to reveal. “How do you lose track of time, Fern? You have a watch.”

  “We were really enjoying the play, Mummy. It’s fun. I wasn’t thinking of anything else. Please.”

  “I want you home right after, Fern,” she said. “It’s supposed to snow hard tonight. Mr. Stark says sometime after nine, possibly, and he thinks it will begin with rain.”

  “Oh, I’ll be home well before that, Mummy. I have some serious homework. Did Dr. Davenport say anything about Ryder?”

  “We’ll talk when you’re home,” she said. “Be sure that boy drives very carefully. Cars and winter will never be a comfortable thought in this house.”

  “I’ll make sure, Mummy. Thank you,” I said.

  I took a deep breath. I never liked being a manipulator when it came to my mother. She was too good at seeing through my excuses and rationalizations, but what I had said was true. I was enjoying myself.

  “It’s okay,” I told Dillon and Ivy.

  “Let’s go,” Ivy said before we could change our minds.

  We followed her downstairs, Dillon carrying the pitcher with what remained of the lemonade. We talked about where to go for pizza while Ivy washed the glasses and put the pitcher in the refrigerator. Just like every other room in her house, the kitchen was showcase immaculate. She made sure there wasn’t a drop of water on the counter.

  We all put on our shoes. When we turned to get our coats and leave, however, the front door opened, and Ivy’s mother stepped in, a look of astonishment on her face.

  “What’s this?” she asked immediately. “Why do you have a fake mustache?”

  I was amazed myself at how we could have left with Ivy looking like that.

  “Oh. I forgot it was there. We were practicing for a play audition tomorrow,” Ivy said quickly. “I’m trying out for a part that’s usually a man. But why are you home so soon?”

  “There’s a storm coming in tonight. We saw our matinee and decided not to have dinner in the city. Where do you think you’re going at this hour?”

  “We were going to get pizza,” Ivy said.

  “I just said there’s a storm coming in.” She looked at Dillon. “Is your mother letting you drive tonight?”

  Before he could answer, I stepped forward.

  “The storm’s not due until after nine,” I said. “Mr. Stark, the manager of Wyndemere, keeps track of those things. We’ll be home long before that.”

  “Just turn yourself around, Ivy Mason. We’re having dinner here now,” her mother said. She kept the door open, not so subtly saying Dillon and I weren’t invited.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Mason,” I said.

  “Yes, thank you,” Dillon added. He paused. “You have an . . . immaculate house.” He flashed a smile and followed me out.

  When we got into his car, we looked at each other and both started to laugh.

  “I hope I didn’t leave any blood on Ivy’s carpet,” he said. He started his car. “I know a place not far from Wyndemere. That way, I’ll get you home way before the storm hits. Hey,” he realized, “that might mean no school tomorrow, and that means no audition until the day after. Maybe later in the day tomorrow, when the roads are cleared, we could practice some more.”

  “Let’s take it a pint at a time,” I said.

  He smiled. I sat back.

  I hadn’t thought seriously about Ryder once for nearly three hours and had only mentioned him when I spoke to my mother. It was almost an afterthought. Was that good or bad? I suspected my father might say it was good.

  With Ivy in the room with us and working on the play lines, Dillon and I hadn’t said anything more about his first impressions of me when I entered high school last fall. Now that we were alone, his words rolled around like marbles in my head.

  How was it that I had never noticed him or even heard anyone talk about him until now? Maybe I had but didn’t think much about it. I was so fixed on Ryder in those days. I wondered if Dillon sensed that and if that was what he was implying when he said I was occupied. I wasn’t that obvious, was I?

  “I can’t imagine what would have happened if Ivy’s mother had come home after we had left for pizza and Ivy wasn’t there. She probably would have called the police. She wouldn’t get much out of my parents, that’s for sure,” Dillon said.

  “Come to think of it, don’t you have to tell your parents where you are and what you’re doing?” I asked. “Isn’t your mother expecting you to be at dinner?”

  “Lately, the three of us tiptoe around each other,” he said. He looked at me. “I get the feeling they’re suffering from buyer’s remorse these days. I suspect they considered bringing me back to the adoption agency, claiming defective parts or something. Is there a warranty on an adopted baby?”

  He smiled, but I didn’t laugh. My memories of being a persona non grata when Bea was living at Wyndemere were still too vivid.

  “Haven’t you ever spoken to them about it?”

  He looked at me with his chin down, implying that was a ridiculous question.

  “Did you at least try, Dillon? Ever?”

  “When you meet them, you’ll see what a waste of time that would be. My mother makes a nervous chicken look like a cool cucumber, and my father thinks there are two worlds: his in his business and hers in the house and bringing up baby. He’s never changed a diaper or made anything to eat besides a peanut butter sandwich when my mother was in the hospital for a hysterectomy. At a very early age, I might add. Oh, he will make a cup of tea but teabag only.”

  “What does your father do?”

  “He sells drugs.”

  “What?”

  “Legally. He works for Novartis. Twice a year, he goes to Switzerland for meetings. Before you ask, he keeps his samples in a safe in the house. Not even my mother knows the combination.”

  “Why do you think they adopted you?”

  He thought a moment and smiled. “My mother wasn’t biologically capable of having a baby. My father isn’t fond of pets. My mother wasn’t satisfied with her part-time dental hygienist work. She always wanted to be more needed. In the end, I think it was either adopt a baby to keep my mother busier and happier or buy a puppy.”

  “Buy a puppy? That was the choice?”

  He smiled.

  “I don’t know whether to believe anything you say,” I said.

  “That makes two of us.”

  I had to laugh. When it came to dissing himself, Dillon didn’t hesitate. He might not respect most of the others in our school, but not all loners were arrogant, I thought. Now that I had grown to know him more, I would never characterize him that way.

 
We pulled up in front of a small pizza restaurant I had never been to. A big sign in green, white, and red announced it as Nick’s Pizza Kitchen. It was squeezed between a hardware store and a pharmacy, in a red-brick building that had what looked like an apartment above it.

  “How did you find this place? I never heard anyone mention it.”

  “My mother’s maid—she needs a maid but complains about the maid’s work and redoes almost everything after the maid leaves—her husband owns the restaurant. She’s from Chile. Before you ask how a guy from Chile knows how to make great pizza, I’ll tell you she’s married to a man from Naples, where supposedly the best pizza in Italy is. As you can see, his name is Nick, and he claims it all has to do with the stone in the pizza ovens. He had their stone shipped from Italy.”

  We got out of the car. The sky was increasingly overcast. Some of the clouds looked like they were rolling over one another. I wondered if Mr. Stark had miscalculated the arrival time of the storm.

  Dillon looked up, too. “We should be all right,” he said, but he seemed concerned. “If it starts, we’ll leave and take the pizza with us.”

  The wind seemed to have gotten stronger as well. It whipped around the corner of the street in a gust that made me cover my face. Everything not tied down on the sidewalk and in the street did a flip-flop.

  “Maybe Mr. Stark underestimated the start of the storm,” I said.

  As if she could hear our conversation from miles away, my mother called my cell phone. Dillon had just opened the restaurant’s front door to rush us in.

  “Hi,” I said, stepping into the entryway.

  “Mr. Stark says the storm’s coming in much faster than anyone predicted. He thinks you should start for home now. The temperature is dropping to freezing, and it will begin with rain, Fern.”

  “We’re just at the restaurant,” I said. She was silent. “Okay,” I said, my voice dipped in disappointment. I hung up and told Dillon what my mother had said.

  “I don’t want to get on your mother’s bad side,” he said, opening the door again.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Nature can be a pain in the ass,” he said.

  We got back into his car.

  “My father’s first wife was killed in a car accident in winter. She drove off the road. I never knew her, of course, but in a way, she’s never left Wyndemere.”

  “Ghosts?” he asked as he turned the car around and started for my house.

  “Maybe. Whatever, it always looms in everyone’s mind when we have our first snow or icy rain. A great deal of sadness clings to the Wyndemere mansion. I mean, it’s grand and all, but . . .”

  “If you still live in someone’s memory, you are still alive,” he said. “Doesn’t have to always be a bad thing, either. My problem is I don’t have anyone in my memory. I don’t consider my father’s brother and sister or my mother’s brother as my relatives, really, so I don’t remember all that much about things we did with them. Don’t care to. Despite the faces they put on when they visit occasionally, very occasionally, I’ve always felt a distance, felt I wasn’t really one of them.”

  “Which is why I still think you should try to find your real mother, at least.”

  “Did it make a difference in your life when your father finally stepped up to the plate, besides what you will inherit, I mean?”

  How could I tell him without crying? “A little,” I said. “It takes time, in my case. My father’s got to get used to being my father. He’s avoided and ignored it for most of my life.” I paused. I was already revealing more than I had intended.

  “He shouldn’t have to work too hard at that. Anyone should be happy to acknowledge you and get you to love him.”

  I smiled just as the first fat, nearly frozen drop hit the windshield. A bad patch of clouds had begun to unload a wave of rain ahead of us. My body trembled. Although it had still been spring, this was how the storm on the lake had begun. Dillon slowed. The windshield wipers started.

  “We’re just a few miles away,” he said. “It’s the winds over the lake. They twist and turn in surprising ways.” He looked at me. I was sure I looked terrified. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m practically down to the speed of a walk. I’m sure you didn’t notice, but I have snow tires. I took driver’s education, and I passed my driver’s test the first time I took it. My mother once revealed that my father didn’t pass his until the third time. I think he went through a stop sign the first time and forgot to signal a turn the second.”

  I sat back, and then he hit the brakes. Someone had panicked and driven into the back of another vehicle. A patrolman was directing traffic around the crash. Both drivers, one an elderly lady, were outside their vehicles, gazing at the damage. The rain began to come down harder.

  “It’s not freezing yet,” Dillon said, more to himself than to me.

  “Mr. Stark says most people don’t know how to drive in the rain, much less freezing rain and snow.”

  Dillon waited for the patrolman to wave us on, and we continued, but neither of us felt like talking. The rain had gotten more intense. By the time we reached Wyndemere, it was coming down in a steady downpour. The moment we drove into the driveway, the front door opened, and my mother, snapping an umbrella open, walked to the edge of the portico. Drops striking the front of Dillon’s car now were bouncing off with the texture of ice.

  “I’ll get as close as I can,” Dillon said, moving along the driveway. “Don’t slip and fall. I need you at the audition.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and opened the door. My mother started toward us. I rushed to her side.

  Dillon raised his hand to wave good-bye.

  “He shouldn’t be on these roads,” my mother said. She didn’t move. “Tell him to come in,” she added after a moment’s thought.

  “But it will only be getting worse.”

  “Tell him to come in,” she repeated with more authority.

  I beckoned to him. He looked confused until my mother did it, too. Then he shrugged, shut off his car, and got out. We turned to the house. He ran to reach us, his head, pants, and shoes soaked by the time he stepped up to the door my mother was holding open.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “You can’t drive on these roads yet,” she said. “You can call your parents and tell them you’re staying here.”

  “I am?”

  “Inside,” she ordered. She closed the umbrella and then closed the door when we stepped into the house. “Take off your shoes. Your socks are probably soaked as well.”

  “I’m getting so used to this I’ll probably start doing it before I enter my own house,” Dillon said as he slipped off his shoes, which were really not the right ones to be wearing in this weather. They were low-riding loafers.

  “Take him to the powder room so he can dry his hair. Leave your coat hanging here,” she told him. “You’ll take off your pants, and I’ll put them in the dryer. Fern will get you a robe.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  He looked at me and widened his eyes, obviously impressed with my mother’s authoritative demeanor, but she had been running this mansion and the staff for years. She took his wet socks.

  “Do you have a cell phone?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Call your mother immediately and tell her what you’re doing. I’m sure she’s worried.”

  He nodded. I was afraid he might say she wasn’t.

  I led him down the hall. Of course, he had never been inside Wyndemere. Despite dripping with cold rain, he walked slowly, taking it all in.

  “Your mother’s pretty take-charge,” he said when I had brought him to the downstairs bathroom.

  “As Mr. Stark will eagerly tell you,” I said, smiling. I urged him into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. My mother was waiting in the lobby near the sitting room.

  “Go up to one of the guest rooms and get a robe,” she told me.

  Every bedroom in Wyndemere was always kept as though someo
ne was about to stay in it. The cabinets in the bathrooms were stocked with sundries, including new toothbrushes and new hairbrushes.

  “After I throw his pants into the dryer, I’ll find him a clean, dry pair of socks. Go on, Fern. Bring him some slippers, too. The dinner is still hot. Mrs. Marlene made her version of Irish stew, which is perfect for this weather.”

  “Is my father here?”

  “No. He’s remaining at the hospital. He has an early call to do a triple bypass. Your sister is in the dining room complaining about your not being there and being permitted to go for pizza in a storm.”

  I hurried up the stairs to the bedroom a door down from mine. Inside the en suite bathroom were two fresh robes with slippers beneath them. Everything seemed to be happening so quickly. Within forty-eight hours, Ryder was swept off and returned to the clinic. I was clearly more involved with Dillon Evans, and as if nature had made a serious decision for us, Dillon was not only the first boy ever to be invited to dinner with me and my family, but he was also going to sleep just down the hall from me.

  A part of me was excited about it all, very excited, but there was another part of me that was afraid, afraid of Wyndemere, the mansion that could snap Dillon up and into its mysteries and dark history through the portal of his dreams and easily turn his whole life into one of its cherished secrets.

  Hadn’t it done that to me?

  11

  SAMANTHA WAS SPEECHLESS at the sight of Dillon. That alone was enough to bring a smile to my face. Even my mother looked a little impish, her violet eyes sparkling when Dillon entered the dining room with me. He was wearing the robe and slippers and had blow-dried his hair.

  “I don’t know if you’ve ever met my sister, Dillon. This is Samantha. This is Dillon Evans, Samantha.”

  “No,” he said. “How ya doin’?”

  I indicated that he should take the seat on my right so I could sit between Samantha and him. She was still staring at him with her mouth open.

  “Why did you come here in a robe?” she asked.

  Even my mother had to laugh aloud.

  “He didn’t come here like that, Samantha,” I said.

  “It’s storming out there, and I got soaked. Ms. Corey is drying my pants and socks. I think I stepped in a puddle,” Dillon told her.