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! (94 page)

Cordially yours, the ballerina doll,
Catherine Dollanganger Marquet

Each day I waited for a check to come in the mail. Each day I was disappointed. I wrote another letter, then another, and another. Each day for seven days I mailed off a letter to her, with a fierce anger growing in my heart. What was one measly million to her who had so many? I wasn’t asking for too much. Part of that money belonged to us anyway.

Then, after fruitless months of waiting while Christmas and the New Year came and went, I decided I’d waited long enough. She was going to ignore me. I looked up a number in the Greenglenna telephone book, and in no time at all I had an appointment to see Bartholomew Winslow, Attorney at Law.

It was February and Jory was three. He was to spend the afternoon with Henny and Carrie as I, dressed in my very best with my hair becomingly styled, sauntered into the posh office to gaze upon my mother’s husband. At last I was looking at him up close—and this time he had his eyes open. Slowly he rose to his feet, wearing a bemused expression—as if he’d seen me before and couldn’t quite remember where. I thought back to the night I had stolen to Momma’s grand suite of rooms in Foxworth Hall and found Bart Winslow asleep in the chair. He’d had a big dark mustache then, and I had dared to kiss him while he dozed. Believing as I did that he was fully asleep . . . and he hadn’t been! He’d seen me and thought me part of his dream. Because of one stolen kiss that Chris was to hear about later, the repercussions had led Chris and I down a path we’d determined never to follow. Now we were paying the price—and it was
her
fault that Chris was now living apart from me, trying to deny what she’d started. I could not accept Paul as my husband until I had made her pay—and not just in money.

He smiled at me then, my mother’s ruggedly handsome husband, and I saw for the first time the dazzling charisma of him. A light of recognition came into his dark brown eyes. “As I live and breathe, if it isn’t Miss Catherine Dahl, the lovely ballerina who takes my breath away even before she dances. I’m enchanted you have need of a lawyer and you chose me, though I cannot possibly imagine why you are here.”

“You’ve seen me dance?” I asked, stunned to hear he had. If he had seen me, then Momma must have too! Oh, and I never knew! Never knew! I glowed, I dimmed, saddened, became confused. Somewhere deep within me, despite all the hate on top, I still felt some of the love I’d had for her when I was young and trusting.

“My wife is a ballet buff,” he went on. “Actually, I didn’t care much for it when she first started dragging me to every one of your performances. But soon I learned to enjoy it,
especially when you and your husband were featured in the lead roles. In fact, my wife seemed to have no interest in ballet at all unless you and your husband
were
featured. I used to fear she had a crush on your husband—he looks a little like me.” He took my hand and lifted it to his lips, flashing his eyes upward and smiling with the easy charm of a man who knew what he was, a ladies’ man used to putting notches on his belt. “You are even more beautiful off stage than on. But what are you doing in this part of the country?”

“I live here.”

He pulled out a chair for me, sat me down so close he could watch my legs when I crossed them. He perched on the edge of his desk to offer me a cigarette, which I refused. He lit one for himself, then asked, “You’re on vacation? Visiting your husband’s mother?”

I realized he didn’t know about Julian. “Mr. Winslow, my husband died from injuries sustained in an auto accident more than three years ago—didn’t you hear about it?”

He appeared shocked and a bit embarrassed. “No, I didn’t hear. I’m very sorry. Please accept my belated condolences.” He sighed and ground out his half-smoked cigarette. “The two of you were sensational on stage—it’s a terrible pity. I’ve seen my wife cry she was so impressed.”

Yeah! I’ll bet she was impressed. I shrugged off more questions and came directly to the object of my visit by handing him Julian’s insurance policy. “He took out this policy shortly after we were married and now they won’t pay because they think he cut the intravenous tube that was feeding him. But, as you can see, after two years the suicide clause is no longer in effect.”

He sat down to read it carefully, and then looked up at me again. “I’ll see what I can do. Are you in immediate need of this money?”

“Who isn’t in need of money, Mr. Winslow, unless they are millionaires?” I smiled and tilted my head in the manner
of my mother. “I have hundreds of bills and I have a small son to support.”

He asked the age of my son; I told him. He appeared puzzled and confounded in more ways than one as I looked at him with sleepy, half-closed eyes, my head tilted backward and slightly to one side, in a mannerism that was my mother’s way of looking at a man. I was only fifteen when I’d kissed him. He was far more handsome now. His mature face was long and lean, his bones too prominent, but in a very virile, masculine way he was strikingly good looking. Something about him suggested an exaggerated sensuality. And no wonder my mother hadn’t sent a check. Probably all my blackmail letters were still following her from place to place.

Bart Winslow asked a dozen or more questions, then he said he’d see what he could do. “I’m a pretty good lawyer once my wife allows me to stay home and get my hand into a practice.”

“Your wife is very rich, isn’t she?”

This appeared to annoy him. “I suppose you could say she is,” he answered stiffly, letting me know he didn’t like discussing the subject.

I stood to leave. “I’ll bet your rich wife leads you around like a pet poodle on a jeweled leash, Mr. Winslow. That’s the way rich women are. They don’t know the least thing about working for a living, and I wonder if
you
do.”

“Well, by God,” he said, jumping off the desk and standing with feet wide apart, “why did you come if you feel that way? Go to another attorney, Miss Dahl. I don’t want a client who insults me and has no regard for my abilities.”

“No, Mr. Winslow, I want
you
. I want
you
to prove you know your business as you claim to. Maybe, in a way, you can then prove something to yourself as well—that you aren’t after all, just a rich woman’s bought little plaything.”

“You have the face of an angel, Miss Dahl, but a bitch’s
tongue! I’ll see your husband’s insurance firm pays off. I’ll petition them to appear in court, and threaten to sue. Ten to one they’ll settle within ten days.”

“Good,” I said. “Let me know, for as soon as I have the money, I’m moving.”

“Where?” he asked, striding forward to take hold of my arm.

I laughed, looking up into his face and using the ways a woman had to make a man interested, “I’ll let you know where I go, in case you want to keep
in touch
.”

*  *  *

In ten days, true to his word, Bartholomew Winslow came by the dance school to hand me the check for one hundred thousand dollars, “Your fee?” I asked, waving off the girls and boys who came running to surround me. I was wearing a tight practice outfit, and he was all eyes.

“Dinner at eight, next Tuesday night. Wear blue to match your eyes, and we’ll discuss the fee then,” he said, then turned to leave, not even waiting for my answer.

When he was gone, I turned around and looked at the children doing their warm-up positions, and somewhere above I hovered, looking down, and feeling scorn for the pitiful thing I was that innocence should admire me so much. I felt sad for them, for me.

“Who was that man who came to give you check?” Madame Marisha asked me when class was over.

“An attorney I hired to force Julian’s insurance company to pay off—and they did.”

“Ah,” she said, falling into her old swivel desk chair, “now you have money and can pay off bills—I suppose you will quit working for me and go off somewhere, yah?”

“I’m not sure just what I plan to do yet. But you must admit, Madame, you and I don’t get along very well, do we?”

“You have too many ideas I don’t like. You think you know more than me! You think now that you work here few months, you can go away and start new school of your own!” She smiled
evilly to see my start of surprise, revealing the truth she only guessed at. “So . . . you think me stupid too! You’ll look all your life before you find another as smart as me. I read your mind, Catherine. You don’t like me, never have, never will . . . yet you come to work for me to learn the business, right again? I don’t care. Dancing schools come and dancing schools go, but the Rosencoff School of Ballet go on forever! Once I thought I’d leave it to Julian, but he’s dead, then I thought when I die, I’d leave it to you—but I won’t if you take your son away so I can’t teach him!”

“Madame, that is your choice, but I am taking Jory away.”

“Why? You think you can teach him as well as I can?”

“I don’t know for certain, but I think I can. My son may not choose to be a dancer,” I continued, ignoring her hard stony eyes. “If he does decide one day, I think I will make an able teacher—as good as any.”

“If he choose to dance!”
Words like cannonshot. “What other choice does Julian’s son have
but to dance
? It is in his bones, in his brain—and most of all in his blood and in his heart!
He dances—or he dies!”

I got up to leave. It was in my heart to be kind to her, to let her share in Jory’s life . . . but the meanness in her hard eyes changed my mind. She would take my son and make of him what she’d made of Julian, someone who could never find fulfillment because life offered to him but one choice.

“I didn’t expect to say this today, Madame, but you force me. You made Julian believe if he couldn’t dance, then life held nothing. He would have recovered from that broken neck and his internal injuries, except you said he would never dance again—and he overheard you. He wasn’t sleeping. So, he chose to die! The very fact that he could move the arm that wasn’t strapped down, enough to steal the scissors from that nurse’s pocket, proved he was already recovering but all he could see was a bleak desert where the ballet didn’t exist!
Well, Madame . . . you
are not doing that to my son!
My son will have the chance to choose for himself what kind of life he wants—and I hope to God it is
not
the ballet!”

“You fool!” she spat at me, jumping up to pace back and forth in front of her old, beat-up desk, “there is nothing better than adulation from your fans, the sound of thundering applause, the feel of roses in your arms! And soon enough you will find that out for yourself! You think to take my husband’s grandson away, and hide him from the stage?
Jory will dance, and before I die I will live to see him on stage—doing what he must—or he too will die!

“You wanna play ‘mommy,’” she sneered, curling her lip scornfully, “and ‘wifey’ to that big handsome doctor too, perhaps? And make another child for him, yah?
Well . . . to hell with you, Catherine, if that is all you want out of life.
” She broke then, and sobs came from deep down in her depths, to make her voice when she spoke again harsh and husky, when before it had been high and shrill. “Yess, go on . . . marry that big doctor you’ve had a yen for since you came starry-eyed and fresh faced as a kid to me—and ruin his life too!”

“Ruin his life too?” I repeated dully.

She spun about.
“You got something eating at you, Catherine, Something gnawing at your guts. Something so bitter it simmers in your eyes and grits your teeth together! I know your kind. You ruin everyone who touches your life and God help the next man who loves you as much as my son did!”

Unexpectedly, some enigmatic, invisible cloak dropped down to wrap me in my mother’s cool, detached poise. Never before had I felt so untouchable. “Thank you for enlightening me, Madame. Good-bye and good luck. You won’t be seeing me again, or Jory.” I turned and left. Left for good.

*  *  *

Tuesday night Bart Winslow showed up at my cottage door. He was dressed in his best, and I was wearing blue; he smiled, pleased I’d obeyed. He took me to a Chinese restaurant where
we ate with chopsticks, and everything was black or red.

“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, with the exception of my wife,” he said while I read my fortune cookie slip. “
Beware of impulsive actions.”

“Most men don’t mention their wives when they take another woman out—”

He interrupted: “I am not an ordinary man. I’m just letting you know, you are not the most beautiful woman I know.”

I smiled at him sweetly, closely watching his eyes. I saw I irritated him, charmed him, but most of all intrigued him, and when we danced, I also learned I excited him. “What is beauty without brains?” I asked, my lips brushing his ear as I stood on tiptoes. “What is beauty that is growing old, and overweight, and no challenge at all?”

“You are the damndest female I’ve ever known!” His dark eyes flashed. “How dare you imply my wife is stupid, old and fat? She looks very young for her age!”

“So do you,” I said with a small mocking laugh. His face reddened. “But don’t worry, Mr. Attorney . . . I’m not competing with her—I don’t want a pet poodle.”

“Lady,” he said coldly, “you won’t have one, not in me. I’m leaving soon to set up my offices in Virginia. My wife’s mother isn’t well and needs some attendants. As soon as you’ve settled your account with me, you can say good-bye to a man who obviously brings out the worst in you.”

“You haven’t mentioned your fee.”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

*  *  *

Now I knew where I was going—back to Virginia to live somewhere near Foxworth Hall.

Now I could begin the real revenge.

“But Cathy,” wailed Carrie tearfully, very upset because we were leaving Paul and Henny. “I don’t want to leave! I love Dr. Paul and Henny! You go anywhere you want to, but leave me here! Can’t you see Dr. Paul doesn’t want us to go? Don’t
you care when you hurt him? You’re always hurting him! I don’t want to!”

“I care very much about Dr. Paul, Carrie, and I don’t want to hurt him. However, there are certain things I must do, and I must do now. And Carrie, you belong with me and Jory. Paul needs his chance to find a wife without so many dependents. Don’t
you
see, we are an encumbrance to him?”