Secrets of Foxworth (34 page)

“Okay,” I said, deciding I would trust him. “When my father was first inspecting the foundation at Foxworth, I went along, and he and one of his employees found a locked box. They thought they had found something valuable, like jewelry or even money, but when it was opened, this was in it.”

“Foxworth? You mean, that diary belonged to someone who lived there?”

“Someone who didn't want to live there. This is Christopher Dollanganger's diary, his story about what happened in the attic.”

Kane's face lit up with surprise and excitement. “I never believed most of it. I thought it was all just exaggerated and distorted.”

“The basic story is true. Four children were locked in the house and spent years mainly in the attic. Christopher was the oldest. I've read up to here slowly,” I said, indicating my bookmark. “It's not easy to take.”

“Is that why your father doesn't want you to read it?”

“Yes. He's afraid it will have a bad effect on me. They are, as you know and I'm often reminded, distant relatives of mine.”

Kane smiled. “I don't see how it could harm you. It's just someone's diary.”

“It's more than that. There's no way for you or anyone else to understand until you read it.”

“I see. From the little I did read, it looks like it's well written. He must have been a pretty smart kid.”

“Very intelligent.”

“I'd like to read it, too,” Kane said. “With you, I mean. I would have to catch up to where you are, of course.”

“Really?”

“Sure. It's obvious that it's important to you, and what's important to you is important to me, but I guess I'm also very curious about it.”

“I don't know.”

“It's better to have another opinion about it all, Kristin, and from the way it sounds, your father's not going to read it.”

“Hardly.”

“So?”

“We'd have to read it here. I wouldn't let this out of my house.”

“Tell me something hard to do,” he replied. “I'll tell you what. Once I catch up to where you are, I'll read it aloud to you. It's written by a boy, so I'll pretend to be him.”

“You'd want to do that?”

“Absolutely. It'll be more . . . interesting for both of us. What is it they always tell us in literature class, you've got to identify with the character, care about him or her, to really enjoy or get into the story?”

“Yes.”

He reached for the diary. “So. Let's do it the right way,” he said.

I gave it to him, and he stared at it and then looked at me.

“We're going to do this secretly, I imagine.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “My father would be very upset with me otherwise.”

“Then I have another idea.”

The way he was looking at me actually gave me a chill for a moment. “What?” I whispered.

“We'll read it only when you're home alone.
Mostly after school but also on weekends while your father's at work on his new project.”

“Yes, of course, but . . .”

He looked up at the ceiling and nodded to himself.

“What?” I asked.

“And to get into it, really get into it, we'll read it up in your attic,” he said.

I didn't say yes to that immediately. The idea was both exciting and frightening to me. Kane was right. It would get us both into the story and the situation quickly and dramatically, but did I want to be in it that deeply? I was already finding myself identifying so closely with both Christopher and Cathy that I feared what he feared, cried when she cried, and felt the claustrophobia they both felt. My attic wasn't as large by any means, but it was still closed in and full of memories. Just like the Dollanganger children had to keep what they were doing secret from all but their grandmother and their mother, we would have to keep what we were doing secret from my father.

I had never kept anything as serious as this secret from my father. What secrets had I kept? What I had bought him for his birthday and Christmas? He knew everything I did at school and everything that happened to me there. He knew every one of my friends. Oh, I didn't talk about what girls talked about, and I didn't give him a blow-by-blow description of my dates, especially with Kane, but these weren't secrets so much as what gave me my independence and my
femininity. He didn't expect to know or hear any of that.

What was more important, perhaps, was that I had never really disobeyed him. I had already done so by telling Kane what the diary was and how I had come to have it. Somehow, in the end, I had to believe in my heart that my father would understand.

“My attic is nothing like the one they were in. I mean, it's probably not even a tenth of the size.”

He shrugged. “It's like being on a movie set. Movie sets are only suggestions of what places are really like, but you get the sense of it.”

It was a weird idea, but I thought Christopher would approve of it. He'd want me to fully grasp what they had experienced.

I nodded slowly. “Okay. We'll start tomorrow after school. Right now, I want to get back to our dinner,” I said.

“You need help?”

“No, I've done everything. Just like a man to ask afterward,” I added, and he laughed.

“Okay. I'll start catching up. Call me when you want me to come down,” he said.

I had to smile. He was into this almost as much as I was. “Put it back under the pillow when I call you.”

“Yes, Mommy,” he said.

I felt the blood rise in my face. Cathy Dollanganger had just stepped into her mother's shoes firmly and perhaps forever.

I nodded and started to leave the room. I looked
back. He was sprawled on my bed, and as crazy as it might seem, I didn't see him.

I saw Christopher Dollanganger.

Waiting.

For me to join him in the attic.

Read on for a sneak peek at what happens next in

Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger

By V.C. Andrews®

Available in February 2015 from Pocket Books

The shorter days of approaching winter darkened every corner of my attic earlier and earlier every afternoon. Usually, when you think of yourself ascending, whether it's hiking up a mountain, flying in an airplane, or walking to the top floor of your house, you imagine moving into brighter light. But as my boyfriend Kane Hill and I walked up the attic stairway for the first time together, I could almost feel the shadows growing and opening like Venus flytraps to welcome us.

The stairs creaked the way they always had, but it sounded more like a warning this time, each squeak a groan of frantic admonition. Our attic didn't have an unpleasant odor, but it did have the scent of old things that
hadn't seen the light of day for years: furniture, lamps, and trunks stuffed with old clothing too out of fashion to care about or throw out when the previous owners left. They were still good enough for someone else to use. All of it had been accumulated by those my father called “pack rats,” but he also admitted to being one himself. Our garage was neat but jammed with his older tools and boxes of sample building materials, my first tricycle, various hoses, and plumbing fittings he might find use for someday.

The attic floor was a dark brown hardwood that had worn well and, according to my father, was as solid as the day it had been laid. He looked in on it once in a while, but I would go up regularly to dust a bit, get rid of spiderwebs, and clean the two small windows, spotted with small flies and other tiny bugs who thought they had died outside. I felt I had to maintain the attic mostly because my father kept my mother's things in an old wardrobe there, a hardwood with a walnut veneer that had embossed cherubs on the doors, another antique. Even after nearly nine years, my father couldn't get himself to throw out or give away any of her things: shoes and slippers, purses, dresses, blouses, nightgowns, coats, and sweaters.

Just like in the Foxworth attic Christopher had described in his diary, there were other larger items that previous occupants had left, including brass and pewter tables and standing lamps, a dark oak magazine rack with some old copies of
Life
and
Time
, some black and silver metal trunks that had once worn their travel labels proudly, bragging about Paris, London, and Madrid, and other pieces of furniture that had lost their places in the living room and the bedrooms when the decor had been changed.

Despite being thought useless and relegated to this vault, to my father they were almost a part of the house
now. He said that their having been there so long gave them squatters' rights. It really didn't matter whether they had been there long or whether they would find another home, fulfill another purpose. Memories, no matter whose they were, were sacred to him. Things weren't ever simply things. Old toys were once cherished by the children who owned them, and family heirlooms possessed history, whether or not you knew exactly what that history was. It didn't surprise me that a man who built and restored homes had such respect for what was in them. I just hadn't paid much attention to any of it until now.

I was still not convinced that what Kane Hill had suggested the day he discovered Christopher's diary under my pillow was a good idea. At first, I suspected that he might be playing with me, humoring me, when he had said he would read it aloud to me, pretending to be Christopher Dollanganger, the oldest of the four children who had been incarcerated in Foxworth Hall more than fifty years ago. I didn't want to diminish the diary's historical importance for Charlottesville or in any way make fun of it. He had assured me that he wouldn't do that.

And then he had added, “To get into it, really get into it, we'll read it up in your attic.”

The Foxworth attic was where the four Dollanganger children spent most of their time for years, there and in a small bedroom below. According to what I knew and how Christopher had described it, the attic was a long, rambling loft that they had turned into their imaginary world because of how long they had been shut away from the real one. The idea of reading Christopher's thoughts and descriptions aloud in a similar environment both fascinated and frightened me. We would no longer be simply observers. In a sense, by playing the roles of Christopher and Cathy, we would empathize, and not just sympathize, with them.

As soon as he had said it, Kane saw the indecision in my face, however, and went on to explain that it would be like acting on a movie set. Movie sets in studios were suggestions of what really was or had been, weren't they?

“This is no different, Kristin,” Kane said.

I pointed out that my attic was so much smaller than the one in Foxworth, but he insisted that it was an attic, a place where we could better pretend to be imprisoned and therefore better understand what Christopher and Cathy had experienced.

He thought we'd get a more realistic sense of it. “It will be like reading
Moby Dick
while you're on a ship on the ocean. This way, you'll appreciate what happens to the older sister more, and I'll appreciate Christopher's words more, I'm sure.”

Of course, I had found myself empathizing with Cathy often when I read Christopher's diary, anyway, but not to the extent he was suggesting. It was more like putting on her clothes and stepping into her shoes. In moments, I would lose myself completely and for a while become her. Maybe I did have to be in an attic for that. However, what frightened me about pretending to be her in front of someone else was the possibility that I would be exposing my own vulnerabilities, my own fears and fantasies. Everyone knew the Dollanganger children were distant cousins of mine.

What if I was more like her than I imagined?

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 saga, which includes
Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday,
and
Garden of Shadows.
Today, more than seventy of V.C. Andrews's novels have sold worldwide and been translated into twenty-five foreign languages.