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! (179 page)

Astonishment widened my eyes. “Your fault? It was an accident, you can’t blame yourself.”

In breathless gush her words spilled forth. “You don’t understand why I feel as I do! It’s been troubling me so much I feel haunted with guilt. It’s because we’re here, in this cursed house! Jory didn’t want to have a baby until years from now. He made me promise before we married that until we’d been on the top for at least ten years, we wouldn’t start a family—but I deliberately broke my word and stopped taking the pill. I wanted to have my first baby before I was thirty. I reasoned that after the baby was conceived he wouldn’t want me to have an abortion. When I told him he blew! He stormed at me—and
demanded
I have an abortion.”

“Oh, no . . .” I was shocked, thinking I didn’t know Jory nearly as well as I’d thought.

“Don’t blame him; it was my own doing. Dancing was his world,” Melodie continued in a gasping way, as if she’d been running uphill for weeks. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. I told him I’d just forgotten. I knew on our wedding day that dancing came first with him, and I was second. He never lied or told me differently, though he loved me. Then, because I was pregnant, we abandoned our tour, came here . . . and look what happened! It’s not fair, Cathy, not fair! On this very day we’d be in London but for the baby. He’d be on stage, bowing, accepting the applause, the bouquets, doing what he was born for. I tricked him, and in so doing, I brought about his accident, and what’s he going to do now? How can I make up for what I’ve stolen from him?”

She trembled all over as I held her. What could I say? I bit down on my lip, hurting for her, for Jory. We were so much alike in some ways, for I’d caused Julian’s death by deserting him, leaving him in Spain—and that had led to his end. Never deliberately harming, just coincidentally doing what I felt was right, as Melodie did what she considered right.

Who ever counted the flowers that died when we pulled up the weeds? I shook my head, pulling myself out of the abyss of yesterdays and turned my full concentration on the moment.

“Melodie, Jory’s just as scared as you are, much more so, and with good reason. You aren’t to blame for anything. He’s happy about the baby now that it’s on its way. Many men protest when wives want babies, but when they see the child they helped create, they’re won over. He lies there on his bed, as you lie on yours, wondering how his marriage is going to work out now that he can’t dance. He’s the one who is crippled. He’s the one who has to face up to everyday life, knowing he’ll be unable to sit when he wants to; knowing he can’t sit in a regular chair and get up and down when he feels like it; nor can he walk in the rain, or run on the grass, or even go to the bathroom in a normal way.

“All the simple normal everyday things he took for granted will now be very difficult for him. And think of what he was. This is a terrible blow to his pride. He wasn’t even going to try and cope for fear he’d burden you too much. But listen to this. This afternoon when I was with him, he said he was going to make a big effort to cheer up and lift himself out of his depression. And he will. He’ll make it, and a lot of it will be because you’ve helped by just visiting and sitting there with him. Each time you go you convince him you still love him.”

Why did she draw from my arms and turn her face away? I watched her brush the tears from her face impatiently; then she blew her nose and tried to stop crying.

With effort she spoke again. “I don’t know what it is, but I keep having scary dreams. I wake up frightened, thinking
something even more dreadful is going to happen. There’s something weird about this house. Something strange and frightening. When everyone is gone, and Bart is in his office, and Joel is praying in that ugly, bare room, I lie on my bed and seem to hear the house whispering. It seems to call to me. I hear the wind blow as if it’s trying to tell me something. I hear the floor squeak outside my door so I jump up and race to throw open the door—and no one is there, no one is ever there. I suspect it’s only my imagination, but I hear, as you’ve said you do sometimes, so much of what isn’t real. Am I losing my mind, Cathy? Am I?”

“Oh, Melodie,” I murmured, trying to draw her close again, but she put me off by moving to the far end of the sofa.

“Cathy, why is this house different?”

“Different from what?” I asked uneasily.

“From all other houses.” She glanced fearfully toward the door to the hall. “Don’t you feel it? Can’t you hear it? Do you sense this house is breathing, like it has a life of its own?”

My eyes widened as a chill stole the comfort from my pretty sitting room. In the bedroom I could faintly hear Chris’s regular, heavy breathing.

Melodie, usually too reticent to talk, gushed onward breathlessly. “This house wants to use the people inside as a way to keep it living on forever. It’s like a vampire, sucking our lifeblood from all of us. I wish it hadn’t been restored. It’s not a new house. It’s been here for centuries. Only the wall-paper and the paint and the furniture are new, but those stairs in the foyer I never climb up or descend without seeing the ghosts of others . . .”

A kind of paralyzing numbness gripped me.

Every word she said was only too frighteningly true. I
could
hear it breathe! I tried to pull myself back to reality. “Listen, Melodie. Bart was only a little boy when my mother ordered it reconstructed on the foundations of the old manor home. Before she died it was up, but not completely finished inside.
When her will was read, and she left this house to Bart, with Chris as trustee to manage until he came of age, we decided it was a waste not to have it completed. Chris and our attorney contacted the architects and contractors, and the job went forward until it was finished, only the inside needed furbishing. That had to wait until Bart came here in his college days and ordered the interior decorators to style it as it had been in the old days. And you’re right. I, too, wish this house had been left in ashes . . .”

“Maybe your mother knew this house was what Bart would want most to give him confidence. It’s so imposing. Haven’t you noticed how much he’s changed? He’s not like the little boy who used to hide away in the shadows and lurk behind trees. He’s the master here, like a baron overseeing his domain. Or maybe I should say king of the mountain, for he’s so rich, so terribly rich . . .”

Not yet . . . not yet, I kept thinking. Nevertheless, her frail, whispering voice disturbed me. I didn’t want to think Bart was as overbearing as a medieval lord. But she went on. “Bart’s happy, Cathy, extraordinarily happy. He tells me he’s sorry about Jory. Then he telephones those attorneys and wants to know why they keep postponing the rereading of his grandmother’s will. They’ve told him they can’t read it unless everyone mentioned in the will is here to hear the reading, and so they put it off until the day when Jory comes home from the hospital. They will read the will in Bart’s office.”

“How do you know so much about Bart’s business?” I asked sharply, suddenly very suspicious of all that time when she was alone in this house with my second son . . . and an old man who spent most of his time in that tiny, naked room he used as a chapel. Joel would quite happily see Jory destroyed if that would satisfy Bart. In Joel’s eyes a dancing man was no better than the worst sinner, displaying his body. Leaping and bounding in front of women, wearing nothing but a loincloth . . . I stared again at Melodie.

“Do you and Bart spend much time together?”

Quickly she stood. “I’m tired now, Cathy. I’ve said enough to make you think I’m crazy. Do all expectant mothers have such fearful dreams—did you? I’m afraid, too, that my baby won’t be normal since I’ve grieved so much for Jory.”

I gave her what comfort I could when I felt sick inside, and later that night while I lay beside Chris I began to toss and turn, to flit in and out of nightmares, until he wakened and pleaded with me to let him get some sleep. Turning, I wrapped my arms about him, clinging to him as if to some unsinkable raft—as I’d always clung to the only straw that kept me from drowning in the cruel sea of Foxworth Hall.

F
inally the decorators I’d hired to do over Jory’s suite of rooms were finished. Now everything there was planned for his entertainment and comfort and convenience. With Melodie beside me, we stood and surveyed all that had been done to make the room bright and cheerful.

“Jory likes color and lots of light, unlike some who want only darkness because it’s richer appearing,” explained Melodie with a strange look haunting her eyes. Of course I knew she meant Bart. I gave her a quizzical look, wondering again how much time she spent with Bart, and what they talked about, and if he’d tried anything. Certainly all that wistful yearning I’d seen in his eyes would force him to make advances. And what better time than while Jory was away and Melodie was desperately needing? Then my safety valve turned on . . . Melodie despised Bart. She might need him to talk to, but that was all.

“Tell me what else I can do to help,” I said, wanting her to do most of it so she’d feel needed, useful. In response she smiled for the first time with some show of happiness. “You can
help me make the bed with the pretty new sheets I ordered.” She ripped open the plastic wrappings, the movement making her fuller breasts jiggle. Her jeans were just beginning to show a slight bulge.

I was almost as worried about her as I was about Jory. An expectant mother needed to eat more, drink milk, take vitamins, and then there was this unexpected reversal of her former heavy depression. She was now completely accepting of Jory’s unhappy situation. It was what I had wanted, yet it had come about too quickly, and that gave me the feeling it was false.

Then came an explanation of her newfound security. “Cathy, Jory’s going to get well and dance again. I dreamed last night he was, and my dreams always come true.”

Now I knew she was going to do what I’d done in the beginning, convince herself that Jory would recover someday, and on that kind of fantasy she was going to construct her life—and his.

I started to speak, to say what Chris had to me, but Bart stepped into the hallway outside, his large feet clumping heavily down the long, dim hall. He glowered at the once dark paneling that was now painted off white so that painting of the sea and shore would show up beautifully. Easy enough to see he was displeased with our changes.

“We did it to please Jory,” I said before he could object, while Melodie stood silent and stared at him with the wide-eyed, helpless look of a child caught in a sticky situation. “I know you want your brother to be happy, and no one loves the sea, the surf, the sand, and seabirds more than Jory. So, into this room we’re putting a bit of the sea and shore—giving him the knowledge that all the important things in life will still exist for him. The sky above, the earth below, and the sea in between. He’s not going to lack for anything, Bart. He’s going to have what it takes to keep him alive and happy, and I know you want to do your part.”

He was staring at Melodie, not half listening to me. His eyes
riveted to those larger breasts, moving to study the curve of the baby swelling her belly. “Melodie, you could have come to me and asked before you did anything, since I’m the one who’ll pay the bills.” I was completely ignored, as if I weren’t there at all.

“Oh, no,” denied Melodie. “Jory and I have money. We can pay for the changes we’ve made in here . . . and I didn’t think you would mind since you seem so concerned about him.”

“You don’t have to pay for anything,” said Bart with surprising warmth. “The day Jory comes home, attorneys will be coming in the afternoon to read the will again, and this time I’ll know exactly my full worth. I’m damned sick and tired of having that day postponed.”

“Bart,” I said, stepping so I was between him and Melodie, “you know why they haven’t reread the will. They want Jory to be here and fully cognizant of what’s going on.”

He walked around me to deliberately lock his eyes with the huge, sad ones of Melodie. He spoke to her and her alone. “
You
just tell me what you need, and I’ll deliver it yesterday. You and Jory can stay as long as you like.”

They stood staring at each other across twenty feet of sea-blue velvet carpeting. Bart’s dark eyes probed into her blue ones before he said softly, winningly, “Don’t worry so much, Melodie. You and Jory have a home here forever if you want. I don’t really give a damn what you do with these rooms. I do want Jory to be as comfortable and happy as possible.”

Were they formula words to satisfy me—or calculated words to seduce her? Why did Melodie blush and gaze down at her feet?

Cindy’s tale resounded like distant church bells in my memory. Insurance for all the guests . . . in case of accidents. Wet sand that should have been dry sand. Sand that clumped into cement and didn’t instantly pour out to make the papiermâché columns safe.

Into my thoughts flitted memories of Bart when he was seven, eight, nine, and ten . . .

Wish I had legs as pretty as Jory’s. Wish I could run and dance like Jory. Gonna grow taller, gonna grow much bigger, gonna be more powerful than Jory. Someday. Someday.