From far away I faintly heard the kitchen door open and close. The chef leaving for his apartment over the garage I thought—or maybe Chris. Hopefully I turned toward the garage. No bright blue eyes, no ready smile and arms outstretched to hold me. No one came through the door.
Minutes passed as we all stared at each other uncomfortably. My heart began to throb painfully; it was time he was home. Time enough.
Joel was staring at me, his lips cocked in a peculiarly hateful way, as if he knew more than he’d said. I turned to Jory, knelt beside his chair, and allowed him to hold me close. “I’m scared, Jory,” I sobbed. “He should be home by now. It couldn’t take him three hours even in the winter with icy roads.”
No one said anything, Not Jory, who held me tight. Not Toni. Not Bart or even Joel. The very show of all of us being together, waiting, waiting brought back only too vividly the scene of my father’s thirty-sixth birthday party and the two state policemen who’d come to say he’d been killed.
I felt a scream in my throat ready to sound when I saw a white car heading up our private road, a red light spinning on the top.
Time turned backward.
NO! NO! NO! Over and over again, my brain screamed even as they spilled out the facts about the accident, the doctor who’d jumped out of his car to help the injured and dying victims laid on the roadside and as he ran to cross the highway, he’d been struck by a hit-and-run driver.
They carefully, respectfully put his things on a table, just as they’d dumped my father’s possessions on another table in Gladstone. This time I was staring at all the items that Chris usually carried in his pockets. All this was unreal, just another nightmare to wake up from—not my photograph in his wallet, not my Chris’s wristwatch and the sapphire ring I’d given him for Christmas. Not my Christopher Doll, no, no, no.
Objects grew hazy, dim. Twilight gloom pervaded my entire being, leaving me nowhere, nowhere. The policemen shrank in size. Jory and Bart seemed so far away. Toni loomed up huge as she came to lift me to my feet. “Cathy, I’m so sorry . . . so terribly sorry . . .”
I think she said more. But I tore from her grip and ran, ran as if all the nightmares I’d ever dreamed in my life were catching up with me. Seek the tarnish and you shall find.
On and on running, trying to escape the truth, running until I reached the chapel where I threw myself down in front of the pulpit and began to pray as I’d never prayed before.
“Please, God, you can’t do this to me, or to Chris! There’s not a better man alive than Chris . . . you must know that . . .” And then I was sobbing. For my father had been a wonderful man, and that hadn’t mattered. Fate didn’t choose the unloved, the derelicts, the unneeded or unwanted. Fate was a bodiless form with a cruel hand that reached out randomly, carelessly, and seized up with ruthlessness.
* * *
They buried the body of my Christopher Doll, not in the Foxworth family plot, but in the cemetery where Paul, my mother, Bart’s father, and Julian all lay under the earth. Not so far away was the small grave of Carrie.
Already I’d given the order to have the body of my father moved from that cold, hard, lonely ground in Gladstone, Pennsylvania so he, too, could lie with the rest of us. I thought he would like that, if he knew.
I was the last of the four Dresden dolls. Only me . . . and I didn’t want to be here.
The sun was hot and bright. A day for fishing, for swimming, for playing tennis and having fun, and they put my Christopher in the ground.
I tried not see him down there with his blue eyes closed forever. I stared at Bart, who spoke the eulogy with tears in his eyes. I heard his voice as if from a far-far distance, saying all the words he should have said when Chris was alive and he could have appreciated hearing those kind, loving words.
“It is said in the Bible,” began Bart in that beautiful, persuasive voice he could use when he wanted, “that it is never too late to ask for forgiveness. I hope and pray this is true, for I will ask of this man who lies before me that his soul will look down from Heaven and forgive me for not being the loving, understanding son I could and should have been. This father, that I never accepted as my father, saved my life many times, and I stand here, shafted to my heart with all the guilt and shame of a wasted childhood and youth that could have made his life happier.”
His dark head bowed so the sun made his hair and his falling tears gleam. “I love you, Christopher Sheffield Foxworth. I hope you hear me. I hope and pray you forgive me for being blind to what you were.” Tears flowed down his cheeks. His voice turned hoarse. People started to cry.
Only I had dry eyes, a dry heart.
“Doctor Christopher Sheffield denied his surname of Foxworth,” he went on when he found his voice again. “I know now he had to. He was a physician right up to his last moment, dedicated to doing what he could to relieve human suffering, while I, as his son, would deny him the right to be my substitute father. In humiliation, in remorse, and in shame, I bow my head and say this prayer . . .”
On and on he went while I closed my ears and turned away my eyes, gone numb from grief.
* * *
“Wasn’t it a wonderful tribute, Mom?” asked Jory one dark day. “I cried, couldn’t help it. Bart humbled himself, Mom, and in front of that huge crowd. I’ve never seen him humble before. You have to give him credit for doing that.”
His dark blue eyes pleaded with me.
“Mom, you’ve got to cry, too. It’s not right for you to just sit and stare into space. It’s been two weeks now. You’re not alone. You have us. Joel has flown back to that monastery to die there with that cancer he says he has. We’ll never see him again. He wrote his last words, saying he didn’t want to be buried on Foxworth ground. You have me, you have Toni, Bart, Cindy, and your grandchildren. We love you and need you. The twins are wondering why you don’t play with them. Don’t shut us out. You’ve always bounced back after every tragedy. Come back this time. Come back to all of us—but come back mostly for Bart’s sake, for if you allow yourself to grieve to death, you will destroy him.”
For Bart’s sake I stayed on in Foxworth Hall, trying to fit myself into a world that didn’t really need me anymore.
* * *
Nine lonely months passed. In every blue sky I saw Chris’s blue eyes. In everything golden I saw the color of his hair. I paused on the streets to stare at young boys who looked as Chris had at their ages; I stared at young men who reminded me of him when he was their age; I gazed longingly at the backs of tall, strong-looking men with blond hair going gray, wistfully hoping they’d turn and I’d see Chris smile at me again. They did turn sometimes, as if they felt the yearning hot blaze of my eyes, and I’d turn away my eyes, for they weren’t him, not ever him.
I roamed the woods, the hills, feeling him beside me, just out of reach, but still beside me.
As I walked on and on alone, but for Chris’s spirit, it came to me that there was a pattern in our lives, and nothing that had happened was coincidental.
In all ways possible Bart did what he could to bring me back to myself, and I smiled, forced myself to laugh, and in so doing I gave him peace and the confidence he’d always needed to give him a feeling of value.
Yet, yet, who and what was I now that Bart had found himself? That feeling of knowing the pattern grew and grew as I sat often alone in the grand elegance of Foxworth Hall.
Out of all the darkness, the anguish, the apparently hapless tragedies, and pathetic events of our lives, I finally understood. Why hadn’t all of Bart’s psychiatrists realized when he was young that he was testing, seeking, trying to find the role that suited him best? Through all that childhood agony, throughout his youth, he’d chiseled at his flaws ruthlessly, backing off the ugliness he believed marred his soul, steadfastly holding on to his credence that good eventually won over evil. And in his eyes, Chris and I had been evil.
Finally, at long last, Bart found his niche in the scheme of what had to be. All I had to do was turn on the TV on any Sunday mor
ning and sometimes during midweek and I could see and hear my second son singing, preaching, acknowledged as the most mesmerizing evangelist in the world. Rapier-sharp, his words stabbed into the conscience of everyone, causing money to pour into his coffers by the millions. He used the money to spread his ministry.
Then came the surprise one Sunday morning of seeing Cindy rise and join Bart on the podium. Standing beside him, she linked her arm through his. Bart smiled proudly before he announced, “My sister and I dedicate this song to our mother. Mother, if you are watching, you’ll know exactly how much this song means not only to both of us, but to you, as well.”
Together, as brother and sister, they sang my favorite hymn . . . and a long time ago I’d given up on religion, thinking it wasn’t for me when so many were bigoted, narrow-minded, and cruel.
Yet, tears streaked my face . . . and I was crying. After all the months since Chris had been struck down on that highway, I was crying dry that bottomless well of tears.
* * *
Bart had hacked off the last rotten bit of Malcolm’s genes and had left only the good. To create him, the paper flowers had bloomed in the dusty attic.
To create him, fires had burned houses, our mother had died, our father, too . . . just to create the leader who would turn mankind away from the road to destruction.
I switched off the TV when Bart’s program was over. His was the only one I watched. Not so far away, they were building a huge memorial honoring my Christopher.
THE CHRISTOPHER SHEFFIELD MEMORIAL CANCER RESEARCH CENTER, it was to be called.
In Greenglenna, South Carolina, Bart was also the founder of a grant for struggling young lawyers, and this was called THE BARTHOLOMEW WINSLOW LEGAL GRANT.
I knew Bart was trying to return good for the evil he’d done by denying the man who’d tried his best to be his father. A hundred times I reassured him that Chris would be pleased, very pleased.
* * *
Toni had married Jory. The twins adored her. Cindy had a film contract and was a fast-rising star. It seemed strange, after living a lifetime of giving, first to my mother’s twins, then to my husbands, and my children and grandchildren, not to be needed, not to have a place of my own. Now I was the odd one out.
“Mom!” Jory told me one day, “Toni is pregnant! You don’t know what that does for me. If we have a boy, he will be called Christopher. If we have a girl, she will be Catherine. Now, don’t you say we can’t do that, for we will anyway.”
I prayed they’d have a boy like my Christopher, or my Jory, and one day in the future, I prayed Bart would find the right woman to make him happy. And only then did I realize that Toni had been right, he was looking for a woman like me, without my weaknesses, wanting her to have only my strengths, and perhaps with me as a living model—he’d never find her.
“And Mom,” Jory had gone on during that same conversation, “I won my first prize, in the watercolor division . . . so I’m on my way to another successful career.”
“Just as your father predicted,” I answered.
* * *
All of this was in my mind, making me vaguely happy for Jory and Toni, happy for Bart and Cindy, as I turned toward the dual winding staircase that would take me up, up.
I had heard the wind from the mountains calling me last night, telling me it was my time to go, and I woke up, knowing what to do.
Once I was in that cold dim room, without furniture or carpet or rugs, only a dollhouse that wasn’t as wonderful as the original, I opened the tall and narrow closet door and began my ascent up the steep and narrow stairs.
On my way to the attic.
On my way to where I’d find my Christopher, again . . .
Epilogue
It was Trevor who found my mother up there, sitting in the windowsill of what could have been the window of the schoolroom that she’d mentioned so often in the stories of her imprisoned life in Foxworth Hall. Her beautiful long hair was loose and flowing over her shoulders. Her eyes were open and staring glassily up at the sky.
He called to tell me the details, heavy sorrow in his voice, as I beckoned Toni closer so she could listen too. Too bad that Bart was away on a tour around the world. For he would have flown home in a minute if he’d even guessed she needed him.
Trevor went on. “She hadn’t been feeling well for days, I could tell. She was so reflective, as if she were trying to make sense out of her life. There was that terrible sadness in her eyes, that pathetic yearning that made my heart ache to see her. I went searching to find her, and eventually I used the second set of narrow, steep stairs to the attic. I looked around. It surprised me when I saw that she must have, for some time, been decorating the attic with paper flowers . . .”
He paused as I choked up with tears, with regrets that I hadn’t done more to make her feel needed and necessary. Trevor went on, a strange note in his heavy voice. “I must tell you something strange. Your mother, sitting there in the windowsill, looked so young, so slender and frail—and her face even in death held an expression of great joy, and happiness.”
Trevor gave me other details. As if she knew she was soon to die, my mother had glued paper flowers on the attic walls, including, too, a strange-looking orange snail and a purple worm. She had written a note that was found in her hand, clutched tight in her death grip.
There’s a garden in the sky, waiting there for me. It’s a garden that Chris and I imagined years ago, while we lay on a hard black slate roof and stared up at the sun and the stars.
He’s up there, whispering in the winds to tell me that’s where the purple grass grows. They’re all up there waiting for me.
So, forgive me for being tired, too tired to stay. I have lived long enough, and can say my life was full of happiness as well as sadness. Though some might not see it that way.
I love all of you, each equally. I love Darren and Deirdre and wish them good luck throughout their lives, as I wish the same for your child-to-be, Jory.
The Dollanganger Saga is over.
You’ll find my last manuscript in my private vault. Do with it what you will.
It was meant to be this way. I have no place to go but there. No one needs me more than Chris does.
But please don’t ever say I failed in reaching my most important goal. I may not have been the prima ballerina I set out to be. Nor was I the perfect wife or mother—but I did manage to convince one person, at last, that he did have the right father.
And it wasn’t too late, Bart.
It’s never too late.
FORBIDDEN SISTER
V.C. Andrews
Available from Gallery Books February 2013
Turn the page for a preview of Forbidden Sister
My father was always the first to rise in the morning, even on weekends. He was never quiet about it either. All three bedrooms in our town house just off Madison Avenue on East 81st Street in New York were upstairs. It was a relatively new building in the neighborhood, and Papa often complained about the workmanship and how the builders had cut corners to make more money. He said the older structures on the street were far more solid, even though ours cost more. Our walls were thinner, as were the framing and the floors.
Consequently, I could hear him close drawers, start his shower, close cabinets, and even talk to Mama, especially if their bedroom door was open. The cacophony of sounds he made was his rendition of army reveille. Of course, being the son of an army general, he actually had heard it most of his young life. His family had often lived that close to the barracks, depending on where his father had been stationed, but especially when they were overseas. When I commented about it once, Mama said the volume of the noise he made after he awakened in the morning was a holdover from the days when Roxy lived with us. Her bedroom was on the other side of theirs. She would never wake up for school on her own so Papa would be sure to make all this noise to get her up much earlier than was necessary. No matter what Mama said, he was stubborn about it. Maybe Roxy had inherited that obstinac
y from him. Who could be more inflexible when he made up his mind than my father?
Even though he basically had defied his own father’s wishes and chosen a business career rather than a military one as his older brother Orman had, Papa still believed in military discipline. Disobeying an order in our house could lead to the equivalent of being court-martialed. At least, that was the way it felt to me, and I’m sure it had felt the same way to Roxy, especially when he told her to leave the house. To her it must have been like a dishonorable discharge. Perhaps, despite what Papa said, she felt some shame. I imagined she would, even though I couldn’t remember her that well anymore. After all, it was now a little more than nine years since I had last seen her or heard her voice.
I often wondered if she had seen me and secretly watched me growing up. During these years, did she hide somewhere nearby and wait for a glimpse of either my mother or me? One of the first things I used to do when I stepped out and often still do was look across the street, searching for someone Roxy’s age perhaps standing behind a car or off to the side of a building, watching for any sight of us. Even if I didn’t see her, I couldn’t help but wonder if she followed me to school.
Sometimes, I would pretend she was, and then I would stop suddenly and turn to catch her. People behind me always had either an annoyed or frightened look on their faces. Whenever I walked in the city, whether it be to school or to the store or just to meet friends, I would scan the faces of any young woman who would be about Roxy’s age. I often studied some young woman’s face so hard, she flashed anger back at me, and I quickly looked away and sped up.
One of the first things my parents had taught me about walking the streets of New York was never to make too much eye contact with strangers. I suppose Roxy would be like a complete stranger to me now. I even had trouble recalling the sound of her voice, but I did sneak looks at the pictures of her Mama had hidden every chance I had.
Of course, I believed Roxy would be as curious about me as I was about her. Why shouldn’t she be? Although I feared it, it was hard for me to accept that she hated Mama and me because of what Papa had done to her. Despite his stern ways, it was also hard for me to believe she hated him. Maybe, it was difficult only because I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t even want to think that someone with whom I shared so much DNA could be that bad, that immoral? Or did it mean that somewhere deep inside me there was a strain of evil that would someday rise to the surface, too? How would it show itself? What emotions, lusts, and desires exactly did we share?
The Flowers in the Attic Series: The Dollangangers: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and a New Excerpt! Page 158