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! (53 page)

So many questions I had to ask—but there was Carrie, clinging to me, staring up at me. I didn’t want her to know Cory had died from any but natural reasons. It was then Chris put the bag with the evidence in my hands. “It’s up to you to decide. You and your intuition were right all along—if I’d have listened, Cory would be alive today.”

There is no hate such as that born out of love betrayed—and my brain screamed out for revenge. Yes, I wanted to see Momma and the grandmother locked up in jail, put behind bars, convicted of premeditated murder—four counts, if intentions were counted, too. They’d be only gray mice in cages, shut up like us, only they’d have the benefit of being in the company of drug addicts, prostitutes, and other killers like themselves. Their clothes would be of gray prison cotton. No trips twice a week to
the beauty salon for Momma, no makeup, no professional manicures—and a shower once a week. She’d even lose the privacy of her most personal body places. Oh, she’d suffer without furs to wear, and jewelry, and warm cruises in southern waters when the winter rolled around. There wouldn’t be a handsome, adoring young husband to romp with in a grand swan bed.

I stared up at the sky where God was supposed to be—could I let Him in His own ways, balance the scales and take the burden of justice from me?

I thought it cruel, unfair, that Chris should put all the burden of decision on my shoulders. Why?

Was it because he would forgive her for anything—even the death of Cory, and her efforts to kill all of us? Would he reason that such parents as hers could pressure her into doing anything—even murder? Was there enough money in the whole world to make
me
kill my four children?

Pictures flashed in my mind, taking me back to the days before my father died. I saw us all in the back garden, laughing and happy. I saw us at the beach, sailing, swimming, or in the mountains skiing. And I saw Momma in the kitchen doing her best to cook meals to please us all.

Yeah, surely her parents would know all the ways to kill her love for us—they’d know. Or was Chris thinking, as I was, that if we went to the police and told our story, our faces would be splashed on the front pages of every newspaper in the country? Would the glare of publicity make up for what we’d lose? Our privacy—our need to stay together? Could we lose each other just to get even?

I glanced up at the sky again.

God, He didn’t write the scripts for the puny little players down here. We wrote them ourselves—with each day we lived, each word we spoke, each thought we etched on our brains. And Momma had written her script, too. And a sorry one it was.

Once she’d had four children she considered perfect in every way. Now she had none. Once she had four children who loved
her, and considered
her
perfect in every way—now she had none who saw her as perfect. Nor would she ever want to have others. Love for what money could buy would keep her forever faithful to that cruel codicil in her father’s will.

Momma would grow old; her husband was years younger. She’d have time to feel lonely and wish she’d done it all differently. If her arms never ached to hold me again, they’d ache for Chris, and maybe Carrie . . . and, most certainly, she’d want those babies that would be ours one day.

From this city we’d flee southward on a bus to make of ourselves
somebodies.
When we saw Momma again—and to be certain fate would arrange it that way—we’d look her straight in the eyes, and turn our backs.

Into the nearest green trashcan I dropped the bag, saying good-bye to Mickey, and asking him to please forgive us for what we did.

“C’mon, Cathy,” called Chris, stretching forth his hand. “What’s done is done. Say good-bye to the past, and hello to the future. And we’re wasting time, when already we’ve wasted enough. We’ve got everything ahead, waiting for us.”

Just the right words to make me feel real,
alive, free!
Free enough to forget thoughts of revenge. I laughed and spun about to run back to where I could put my hand in his, stretched ready and waiting. With his free arm, Chris swooped down to pick up Carrie, and he hugged her close and kissed her wan cheek. “Did you hear all of that, Carrie? We are on our way to where the flowers bloom all through the winter—in fact, flowers bloom all year long down there. Does that make you want to smile?”

A tiny smile came and went on pale lips that seemed to have forgotten how to smile. But that was enough—for now.

I
t is with relief that I end the telling of our foundation years, on which we were to base the rest of our lives.

After we escaped Foxworth Hall, we made our way, and managed, somehow, to always keep striving toward our goals.

Our lives were always to be tempestuous, but it taught both Chris and me that we were survivors. For Carrie, it was far different. She had to be persuaded to want a life without Cory, even when she was surrounded by roses.

But how we managed to survive—that’s another story.

For Bill & Gene
Who remember when . . .

O’er the earth there comes a bloom;
Sunny light for sullen gloom;
Warm perfume for vapor cold—
I smell the rose above the mold!

—Thomas Hood

H
ow young we were the day we escaped. How exuberantly alive we should have felt to be freed, at last, from such a grim, lonely and stifling place. How pitifully delighted we should have been to be riding on a bus that rumbled slowly southward. But if we felt joy, we didn’t show it. We sat, all three, pale, silent, staring out the windows, very frightened by all we saw.

Free. Was ever a word more wonderful than that one? No, even though the cold and bony hands of death would reach out and drag us back, if God wasn’t up there somewhere, or maybe down here on the bus, riding with us and looking out for us. At some time in our life we had to believe in someone.

The hours passed with the miles. Our nerves grew frazzled because the bus stopped often to pick up and let off passengers. It stopped for rest breaks, for breakfast, then to pick up a single huge black lady who stood alone where a dirt road met the concrete interstate. It took her forever to pull herself onto the bus, then lug inside the many bundles she carried with her. Just as she was finally seated, we passed over the state line between Virginia and North Carolina.

Oh! The relief to be gone from that state of our imprisonment! For the first time in years, I began to relax—a little.

We three were the youngest on the bus. Chris was seventeen years old and strikingly handsome with long, waving blond hair that just touched his shoulders, then curled upward. His darkly fringed blue eyes rivaled the color of a summer sky, and he was in personality like a warm sunny day—he put on a brave face despite the bleakness of our situation. His straight and finely shaped nose had just taken on the strength and maturity that promised to make him all that our father had been—the type of man to make every woman’s heart flutter when he looked her way, or even when he didn’t. His expression was confident; he almost looked happy. If he hadn’t looked at Carrie he might have even
been
happy. But when he saw her sickly, pale face, he frowned and worry darkened his eyes. He began to pluck on the strings of the guitar strapped to his shoulder. Chris played “Oh Susannah,” singing softly in a sweet melancholy voice that touched my heart. We looked at each other and felt sad with the memories the tune brought back. Like one we were, he and I. I couldn’t bear to look at him for too long, for fear I would cry.

Curled up on my lap was my younger sister. She didn’t look older than three, but she was eight years old and small, so pitifully small, and weak. In her large, shadowed blue eyes lingered more dark secrets and sufferings than a child her age should know. Carrie’s eyes were old, very, very old. She expected nothing: no happiness, no love, nothing—for all that had been wonderful in her life had been taken from her. Weakened by apathy, she seemed willing to pass from life into death. It hurt to see her so alone, so terribly alone now that Cory was gone.

I was fifteen. The year was 1960, and it was November. I wanted everything, needed everything, and I was so terribly afraid I’d never in all my life find enough to make up for what I had already lost. I sat tense, ready to scream if one more bad
thing happened. Like a coiled fuse attached to a time bomb, I knew that sooner or later I would explode and bring down all those who lived in Foxworth Hall!

Chris laid his hand on mine, as if he could read my mind and knew I was already thinking about how I would bring hell to those who had tried to destroy us.

He said in a low voice, “Don’t look like that, Cathy. It’s going to be all right. We’ll get by.”

He was still the eternal cockeyed optimist, believing, despite everything, that whatever happened was for the best! God, how could he think so when Cory was dead? How could that possibly be for the best?

“Cathy,” he whispered, “we have to make the most of what we have left, and that is each other. We have to accept what’s happened and go on from there. We have to believe in ourselves, our talents, and if we do, we will get what we want. It works that way, Cathy, really it does. It has to!”

He wanted to be a dull, staid doctor who spent his days in small examination rooms, surrounded by human miseries. I wanted something far more fanciful—and a
mountain
of it! I wanted all my star-filled dreams of love and romance to be fulfilled—on the stage, where I’d be the world’s
most
famous prima ballerina; nothing less would do!
That would show Momma!

Damn you, Momma! I hope Foxworth Hall burns to the ground! I hope you never sleep a comfortable night in that grand swan bed, never again! I hope your young husband finds a mistress younger and more beautiful than you! I hope he gives you the hell you deserve!

Carrie turned to whisper: “Cathy, I don’t feel so good. My stomach, it feels funny. . . .” I was seized by fear. Her small face seemed unnaturally pale; her hair, once so bright and shining, hung in dull, lank strings. Her voice was merely a weak whisper.