I laughed. “You’re something else, Vincent. Maybe you are Paris.”
“No greater compliment. Merci.”
“À bientôt.”
“I will keep calling.”
“I hope so,” I said, and left it at that.
That night, Uncle Alain did take me to dinner. We had a warm and wonderful time. He told me more about my mother’s family, and we made plans to see relatives. I asked him if he had heard at all from Roxy. I could see he was hesitant.
“What? S’il vous plaît, Uncle Alain.”
“She calls often, Emmie, but she didn’t want me to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“She wants you to be independent of her. Don’t blame her. It’s the life she has known. She thinks it’s best for you to be stronger.”
“It doesn’t weaken you to have family,” I said, and he smiled.
“Almost my exact words. Let her find her way back herself. She’s happy. I can tell you that, but she’s frightened it won’t last and she’d be bringing you into her troubles again.”
“I understand. I’ll be fine, Uncle Alain.”
“I know you will,” he said.
We walked back to his home arm in arm. Like all cities, much of Paris went to sleep at night, but so much would never sleep through a night. It seemed as if people tried to surprise it at all hours, appearing here and there, laughing or just walking quietly, as we were. Lights danced on the Seine. Despite all the beauty surrounding me, I couldn’t help but think back to earlier days.
There was a time—rare, I know—when we were almost a family. A truce was called between my father and Roxy. My mother was very happy. The four of us were doing something very simple, walking through Central Park on a warm spring day. I was too young to remember real details, but I could vividly remember a feeling. It was warm and hopeful. Love seemed so strong, invulnerable. Nothing could harm us. There wasn’t even a rain cloud in the distant sky.
Roxy walked ahead and then paused and waited for me. I took her hand. I looked back at my mother and my father. They had never looked as young to me.
We walked on, lost in our own thoughts, drifting into tomorrow and the promises we hoped to keep.
Which was what Uncle Alain and I were now doing.
Isn’t that what we all do?
Pocket Books
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the first book in the Forbidden series . . .
Forbidden Sister
V.C. Andrews®
Available now from Pocket Books
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Forbidden Sister . . .
Prologue
My mother wasn’t supposed to have me. She wasn’t supposed to get pregnant again.
Nearly nine years before I was born, she gave birth to my sister, Roxy. Her pregnancy with Roxy was very difficult, and when my mother’s water broke and she was rushed to the hospital, Roxy resisted coming into the world. My mother says she fought being born. An emergency cesarean was conducted, and my mother nearly died. She fell into a coma for almost three days, and after she regained consciousness, the first thing her doctor told her was never to get pregnant again.
When I first heard and understood this story, I immediately thought that I must have been an accident. Why else would they have had another child after so many years had passed? She and Papa surely had agreed with the doctor that it was dangerous for her to get pregnant again. Mama could see that thought and concern in my face whenever we talked about it, and she always assured me that I wasn’t a mistake.
“Your father wanted you even more than I did,” she told me, but just thinking about it made me wonder about children who are planned and those who are not. Do parents treat children they didn’t plan any differently from the way they treat the planned ones? Do they love them any less?
I know there are single mothers who give away their children immediately because they can’t manage them or they don’t want to begin a loving relationship they know will not last. Some don’t want to set eyes on them. When their children find out that they were given away, do they think about the fact that their mothers really didn’t want them to be born? How could they help but think about it? That certainly can’t be helpful to their self-confidence.
Despite my mother’s assurances, I couldn’t help wondering. If I wasn’t planned, was my soul floating around somewhere minding its own business and then suddenly plucked out of a cloud of souls and ordered to get into my body as it was forming in Mama’s womb? Was birth an even bigger surprise for unplanned babies? Maybe that was what really happened in Roxy’s case. Maybe she wasn’t planned, and that was why she resisted.
Wondering about myself always led me to wonder about Roxy. What sort of a shock was it for her when she first heard she was going to have a sister, after having been an only child all those years? She must have known Mama wasn’t supposed to have me. Did she feel very special because of that? Did she see herself as their precious golden child, the only one Mama and Papa could have? And then, when Mama told her about her new pregnancy, did Roxy pout and sulk, thinking she would have to share our parents’ attention and love? Share her throne? Was she worried that she would have to help take care of me and that it would cut into her fun time? Although I didn’t know how she felt about me for some time, from the little I remembered about her, I had the impression that I was at least an inconvenience to her. Maybe my being born was the real reason Roxy became so rebellious.
My mother told me that my father believed her complications in giving birth to Roxy were God’s first warning about her. However, despite her difficult birth, there was nothing physically wrong with Roxy. She began exceptionally beautiful and is to this day, but according to Mama, even when Roxy was an infant, she was headstrong and rebellious. She ate when she wanted to eat, no matter what my mother prepared for her or how she tried to get her to eat, and she slept when she wanted to sleep. Rocking her or singing to her didn’t work. My mother told me my father would get into a rage about it. Finally, he insisted she take Roxy to the doctor. She did, but the doctor concluded that there was absolutely nothing wrong with Roxy. My father ordered her to find another doctor. The result was the same.
Roxy’s tantrums continued until my mother finally gave in and slept when Roxy wanted to sleep. She even ate when Roxy wanted to eat, leaving my father to eat alone often.
“If I didn’t eat with her, she wouldn’t eat, or she’d take hours to do so,” my mother said. “Your father thought she was being spiteful even when she was an infant.”
According to how my mother described all this to me, Roxy’s tantrums spread to everything she did and everything that was done with her or for her. My father complained to my mother that he couldn’t pick Roxy up or kiss her unless she wanted him to do so at that moment. If he tried to do otherwise, she wailed and flailed about “like a fish out of water.” My mother didn’t disagree with that description. She said Roxy would even hold her breath and stiffen her body into stone until she got her way. Her face would turn pink and then crimson.
“As red as a polished apple! I had no doubt that she would die before she would give in or get what she wanted.”
I was always told that fathers and daughters could have a special relationship, because daughters often see their fathers as perfect, and fathers see their daughters as little princesses. My mother assured me that nothing was farther from the truth when it came to Roxy and my father.
“Mon Dieu. I swear sometimes your father would look at Roxy with such fire in his eyes that I thought he’d burn down the house,” my mother said.
Although she was French, my mother was fluent in English as a child, and after years and years of living in America, she usually reverted to French with my father and me only when she became emotional or wanted to s
tress something. Of course, I learned to speak French because of her. She knew that teaching it to me when I was young was the best way to get me fluent in the language.
“Your sister would look right back at him defiantly and never flinch. He was always the first to give up, to look away. And if he ever spanked her or slapped her, she would never cry.
“Once, when she was fourteen and came home after two o’clock in the morning when she wasn’t even supposed to go out, he took his belt to her,” my mother continued. “I had to pull him off her, practically claw his arm to get him to stop. You know how big your father’s hands are and how powerful he can be, especially when he’s very angry. Roxy didn’t cry and never said a word. She simply went to her room as if she had walked right through him.
“She defied him continually, breaking every rule he set down, until he gave up and threw her out of the house. You were just eight and really the ideal child in his eyes, une enfant parfaite. Why waste his time on a hopeless cause, he would say, when he could spend his time and energy on you instead? He was always afraid she’d be a bad influence on you, contaminate you with her nasty and stubborn ways.
“Your sister didn’t cry or beg to stay. She packed her bags, took the little savings she had, and went out into the world as if she had never expected to do anything different. She didn’t even look to me to intercede on her behalf. I don’t think she ever respected me as a woman or as her mother, because I wouldn’t stand up to your father the way she would. Sometimes she wouldn’t even let me touch her. The moment I put my hand out to stroke her hair or caress her face, she recoiled like a frightened bird.
“Maybe your father hoped she would finally learn a good lesson and return, begging him to let her back into our home and family and promising to behave. But if he did have that expectation, he was very good at keeping it secret. After she left, he avoided mentioning her name to me, and if I talked about her, he would get up and leave the room. If I did so at dinner, he would get up and go out to eat, and if I mentioned her when we were in bed, he would go out to the living room to sleep.
“So I gave up trying to change his mind. Sometimes I went out looking for her, taking you with me, but this is a very big city. Paris is a bigger city, but more people live here in New York. It was probably as difficult as looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“Didn’t you call the police, try to get her face on milk cartons or something?”
“Your father wouldn’t hear of it for the first few months. Later, there were newspaper stories and a magazine article about lost girls, and your sister was featured. Nothing came of it. I used to go to other neighborhoods and walk and walk, hoping to come upon her, especially on her birthday, but it wasn’t until five years later that your father revealed that he had seen her. He told me only because he thought it proved he was right to throw her out.
“He was at a dinner meeting with some of his associates at the investment bank. After it had ended, one of them told him he had a special after-dinner date. They walked out together, and a stretch limousine pulled up. The man winked at your father and went to the limousine. The chauffeur opened the door, and your father saw a very attractive and expensively dressed young woman inside the limousine. At first, he didn’t recognize her, but after a few moments, he realized it was Roxy. He said she looked years older than she was and that she glared out at him with the same defiance he had seen in her face when she was only five.
“Later, he found out she was a high-priced call girl. She even had a fancy name, Fleur du Coeur, which you know means ‘Flower of the Heart.’ That’s how rich men would ask for her when they called the escort service.
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu! It broke my heart to hear all of that, but I didn’t cry in front of him.”
Even now, talking about it brought tears to her eyes, however.
My mother told me more about Roxy after my father had passed away. I was devastated by my father’s death, but now that he was no longer there to stop it, I wanted to hear as much as I could about my forbidden sister, the sister whose existence I could never acknowledge.
I had no trouble pretending I was an only child. Since the day Roxy had left, I was living that way anyway. My father had taken all of her pictures off the walls and shelves and dressers. He had burned most of them. Mama was able to hide a few, but anything else Roxy had left behind was dumped down the garbage chute. It was truly as if he thought he could erase all traces of her existence. He never even acknowledged her birthday. Looking at the calendar, he would do little more than blink.
He didn’t know it, but I still had a charm bracelet Roxy had given me. It had a wonderful variety of charms that included the Eiffel Tower, a fan, a pair of dancing shoes, and a dream catcher. My mother’s brother had given it to her when my parents and she were in France visiting, and she gave it to me. I never wore it in front of my father for fear that he would seize it and throw it away, too.
Of course, I could never mention her name in front of my father when he was alive, and I didn’t dare ask him any questions about her. My mother was the one who told me almost all I knew about Roxy after she had left. She said that once my father had seen Roxy in the limousine, he had tried to learn more about her, despite himself. He found out that she lived in a fancy hotel on the East Side, the Hotel Beaux-Arts. I had overheard them talking about it. The Beaux-Arts was small but very expensive. Most of the rooms were suites and some were full apartments. My mother said that my father was impressed with how expensive it was.
“The way he spoke about her back then made me think that he was impressed with how much money she was making. Before I could even think he had softened his attitude about her, he added that she was nothing more than a high-priced prostitute,” she said.
She didn’t want to tell me all of this, but it was as if it had all been boiling inside her and she finally had the chance to get it out. I knew that she went off afterward to cry in private. I was conflicted about asking her questions because I saw how painful it was for her to tell these things to me. I rarely heard my parents speak about Roxy, and I knew I couldn’t ask my mother any questions about her in front of Papa. If I did ask when he wasn’t home, my mother would avoid answering or answer quickly, as if she expected the very walls would betray her and whisper to my father.
However, the questions were there like weeds, undaunted, invulnerable, and as defiant as Roxy.
What did she look like now?
What was her life really like?
Was she happy? Did she have everything she wanted?
Was she sad about losing her family?
Mostly, I wanted to know if she ever thought about me. It suddenly occurred to me one day that Roxy might have believed that my father risked my mother’s life to have me just so he could ignore her. He was that disgusted with her. Surely, if Roxy thought that, she could have come to hate me.
Did she still hate me?
The answers were out there, just waiting for me. They taunted me and haunted me.
I had no doubt, however, that I would eventually get to know them.
What I wondered was, would I be sorry when I did get to know them?
Would they change my life?
And maybe most important of all, would I hate my sister as much as my father had?
The Forbidden series continues in . . .
Roxy’s Story
V.C. Andrews®
Available September 2013 from Pocket Books
CLICK HERE TO ORDER
Turn the page for a preview of Roxy’s Story . . .
Prologue
“You see the door?” my father asked, pointing his thick right forefinger at the entrance of our East Side town house in New York City. “Pack your things and get out. Go on, get out,” he added, poking his finger in the air repeatedly, as if he were trying to hit the invisible button that would make me
disappear.
Mama stood next to him looking even more terrified than I did, her beautiful cameo face shattering beneath the storm of his rage. She was always easier to read than I was. I never showed my father fear, cowered, or retreated, which only made him angrier. In fact, my defiance usually grew stronger as the volume and intensity of his anger boiled over like hot milk. There was simply no middle ground for either of us to occupy, no well of compromise from which either of us could draw a cup of calmness. Ironically, I was too much like him.
“You think I won’t?” I fired back.
“No. I think you had better,” he replied with a level of determination I had never seen him reach. There was no hesitation in his eyes and nothing that suggested an empty threat. This time, there was no doubt that he meant what he had said and how he had said it.
I glanced at Mama again. She looked far more surprised at his firmness than I had ever seen her look. She confirmed his determination for me. She could see that Papa wasn’t simply having one of his spontaneous temper tantrums. Her eyes were wide open now, her lips trembling. In fact, her whole face looked as if it was vibrating as she paled. She even stepped away from him. I had no doubt that throughout their twenty years of marriage, she had never confronted or witnessed such fury in him and had no idea what else he might do. We had been circling each other like two martial-arts warriors for months lately. This confrontation was inevitable.
“Yes, sir,” I said, then clicked my black leather shoe boot heels together and saluted him. The proper way to salute was one of the first things he had taught me when I was a little girl. After he taught that to me, emphasizing how smart and snappy it had to be, with my palm to the left, my wrist straight, and my thumb and fingers extended and joined, I saluted him every time I saw him. In the beginning, even he was satisfied, and Mama thought it was cute, but after a while, he saw that I was really mocking the salute, doing it so often, practically every time he looked at me, and he began to be annoyed by it and eventually forbade me to do it.