I said with hard scorn, “There is no gift, Papa. I don’t believe you anymore, Papa. It’s the process of sitting and rocking and sort of hypnotizing yourself into believing anything. I pity the girl I used to be for believing so wholeheartedly in you.”
“All right,” he said. Another of those long, penetrating looks he gave me, forcing me to cast my eyes downward. Then he got up to leave, staring at me from the doorway with such sadness I had to turn my back so I wouldn’t yield to his unspoken pressure.
Now it was even clearer … I had to leave this place.
He left and slammed the door shut behind him. I fell on my bed and stared at the ceiling. To sleep, I thought, never to dream again. That’s the way I wanted it to be. I didn’t need Arden now. I had Sylvia and that was going to be enough. Yet all night long Arden flitted in and out of my nightmares so that in the morning I woke up fuzzy-headed, thick-tongued. At the breakfast table Papa didn’t speak. Usually he entered the kitchen talking and went out the same way. No talent but for running his mouth all day long, I heard my mother’s ghostly whisper say. Most of the time he was full of good spirits, always undaunted by tragedy, always a winner, but I had managed to bring him low.
Finally he spoke as Sylvia shoved food into her mouth, and Arden ate silently, without appetite. “Vera must have been there the night Ellie and I had our last argument. It was Vera who dressed her in that traveling suit, and Vera who threw those clothes into the suitcase to make us think Ellie planned to leave me.”
His head bowed down into his hands and for a moment his wide shoulders drooped, as if tragedy could touch him after all.
“I knew Ellie would never leave me. I could have given her a million dollars and still she would have stayed on. To live for years in one place puts roots deep into the ground, even when you don’t want that to happen. One day Ellie would tell me she’d be happier somewhere else, but whenever she tried to leave, she found she couldn’t. She used to say she made the biggest mistake of her life when she came back here.”
He didn’t look my way again, but I knew what he was trying to do—brainwash me into thinking I couldn’t exist outside of this house, away from his tender loving care. Telling me how he needed and wanted me to stay on, without saying it directly.
The many clocks in the house ticked away the time, each clock face now synchronized with all the others.
The kitchen faucet dripped-dropped, dropped-dripped …
Sylvia finished eating and took out her prisms and the colors flashed and the chimes in the cupola began to tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.
I shook my head to rid it of the mesmerizing spell being cast, not only by the colors but also by the familiar sounds. Papa had ruined my life by considering me a weakling unable to cope with the truth, when it was he who wasn’t able to cope. He’d lied to brainwash himself as much as me.
And he’d ruined Vera’s life as well by disliking her from the beginning because she filled him with guilt every time he looked at her black, conniving eyes so like his own. But I was going to prove to him what I was made of.
In this house I still clung to the shadows near the walls, and still avoided the colorful patterns on the floor. Still a child, arrested at the age of nine. I’d prove to Papa and to Arden that I could yank up my roots no matter how much it hurt, and from this house I’d flee. I forced myself to pull the suitcases from the closet shelves and with mad determination I began to run about, flinging garments into the bags open on my bed. I didn’t fold anything neatly, just hurled in sweaters, skirts, blouses, and I packed for Sylvia, too.
Heedlessly I threw in my underwear, stuffed in stockings, shoes, handbags, cosmetics … just like Aunt Ellsbeth had done. The clock on my night table read ten after ten, and I set my watch by that. By noon I’d be on my way with Sylvia.
“Audrina,” said Arden, coming into my room to stand close at my side, his arms trying to enfold me, “don’t turn from me.” He pulled me against his chest and tried to put his lips on mine. I moved my head to avoid his kiss. “I love you,” he said fervently, “I’ve always loved you. Terrible things, worse things happen to many people and still they stay together. They find happiness again. Help yourself, Audrina. Be brave. Help me. Help Sylvia.”
But I didn’t want to help anyone if it meant staying on.
I didn’t need Arden now. He’d failed me twice, and it stood to reason he’d fail me a third time, and would perhaps always fail me when I needed him most.
Sobbing, I jerked free of his arms and pushed him away. “I’m leaving you, Arden. I think you are no better than Papa. Both of you should have known better than to try to base my life on lies.”
No words from him this time. Nothing to say as he watched me finish packing. One suitcase full, I struggled to close and lock it. A bit of blouse sleeve showed, but I didn’t care. Arden did nothing to help me as I bore down with all my strength, trying to force it to close. Finally I had it locked. I locked all my bags, five of them. Arden sighed heavily.
“So now you plan to run off to God knows where. You don’t ask me what I want. You don’t care what I want. You won’t listen to reason or explanations. Do you call that justice? Or do you call it spite? Or revenge? Your love is a capricious thing, Audrina. Don’t you owe it to me to stay and see if our marriage can’t be salvaged?”
I didn’t look his way. “I can’t let Sylvia stay here. There’s something strange in this house that holds all memories and makes them part of the future. This house contains too many sorrows to ever let any of us have any joy. Be glad I’m leaving you. Tell yourself each day of your life that you escaped by the skin of your teeth from becoming exactly what my father is, a fraud, a cheat out to steal even from his own daughters.”
He gave me a long, hard look, turned from me and stalked to the door. From there he had to say one last painful thing. “I could say right now that Damian did try to help you, but I guess it’s too late to say that.”
I picked up an expensive paperweight and hurled it at his head. It missed and fell to the floor. He slammed out of the bedroom door.
Minutes later the door opened slowly. Quietly, on poky pussycat feet, Sylvia slipped inside the room and stood silently watching me.
“Yes, Sylvia, I’m leaving and taking you with me. I’ve packed your clothes, and I will buy you new, pretty clothes when we get to where we’re going. This is not a healthy house for you to live out your life in. I want to give you school days, parks to play in, friends your own age. Momma left us both a share of this house, so if ever we wanted to leave Papa would have to give us our share or sell the house. So, let’s happily say goodbye to Whitefern, and hello to much better lives elsewhere.”
Her aqua eyes widened as she inched away from me. Violently she shook her head. “Nooo,” she breathed, putting up her hands as if to ward off an enemy. “Sta… stay here. Home.”
Again I spoke to her about leaving with me, and just as violently as before, she told me in all ways possible without speaking that she would never, never leave Papa, or Whitefern.
I backed away this time. I wouldn’t let her devotion to Papa undermine my determination to go my own way for the first time in my life. Let her stay on with Papa in Whitefern … perhaps they deserved one another, too.
“Goodbye, Papa,” I said an hour later. “Take good care of yourself. Sylvia is going to need you even more after I’m gone.”
Tears coursed down his full cheeks and fell onto his clean shirt.
Papa’s voice followed me as I moved toward the door. I carried only one small bag. I’d come back for the others. “All I ever wanted out of life was one woman to see me as fine and noble. I thought it would be you. Audrina, don’t go. I’ll give you all I possess, everything …”
“You have Sylvia, Papa,” I answered with a tight smile. “Just remember this when I’m gone from this house. You made Vera what she was, as you made me what I am, as you’ve also shaped Sylvia’s destiny. Be kind to her, Papa. Be careful what trail you put her feet upo
n when you begin to tell her tales. I’m not truly convinced—” Here I bit down on my tongue, hesitating when I saw that Sylvia had come to pause in the foyer, just outside the Roman Revival Salon.
Terror lit up Papa’s dark eyes for a brief second. As if he knew Sylvia had mimicked me just once too often, and rocked in that chair many more times than I would let him force me.
Now she had the gift—whatever it might be, and if it could be.
“I’m going to drive your Mercedes, Papa. I hope that’s all right.”
Numbly he nodded. “Cars mean nothing to me now,” he mumbled. “My life is finished when you go.” He stared over my shoulder at Sylvia, who came to stand in the doorway. Something in her now formidable stance reminded me of Aunt Ellsbeth. There was a hint of Momma in her faint sardonic smile.
Oh, my God! My head began to ache, as I feared it would always ache in this house of spindles, bobbins and knobs, with its gold and brass gleaming, with its myriad colors confusing my thoughts and taking me away from other much more important things.
We were all a strange lot, the Whitefern girls. Daring to be different in the oddest ways. Words I’d heard Aunt Ellsbeth say to Momma and to that portrait of Aunt Mercy Marie that had made Tuesday teatimes a memorial service not to be enjoyed.
As I prepared to leave Arden and never see him again, Papa was pleading with his dark, dark eyes, even as he tried to deny Sylvia the right to take my place. Let him suffer the consequences of making her what she is … and God alone knew if it was Vera or Sylvia who hated Papa most. I suspected Sylvia would destroy any woman but me who came into Papa’s life when I left—if ever he wanted another woman.
“Good luck and goodbye, Sylvia. If ever you need me, I’ll come to take you home with me—wherever my home may be.”
Again I nodded to Papa, who sat on, glumly grim. I refused to look at Arden, who came down the stairs, dressed and ready to leave for his office. I thanked Sylvia again for being there when I needed her.
Some kind of strange wisdom was in her eyes as she nodded without trying to speak. Then she turned and nailed Papa to his chair with her penetrating stare. I shivered with the suspicion that Papa was not going to enjoy his youngest daughter who, with the flashing prism lights, controlled the destinies of those who tried to dominate too much.
With great reluctance, his face showing his misery, Arden carried my bags to the car and carefully stacked them in the trunk while I sat behind the wheel and prepared to go. “Goodbye, Arden. I’ll never forget all the fun we used to have when I believed you loved me. Even if I didn’t respond sexually the way you wanted all the time, I loved you in my own way.”
He winced from the pain of my casual parting before he said bitterly, “You’ll come back. You think you can say goodbye to me, to Whitefern, to Sylvia and to your father, but you’ll come back.”
My hands gripped the steering wheel more forcefully, thinking that this was Papa’s last, and most expensive gift to me. I looked around to see the three-day storm was over and the sky was washed clean and bright. All the world seemed to smell new, fresh, inviting. I breathed deeply and felt suddenly very happy. Free, at last, free.
Free of that stale wedding cake house with its cupola empty of the bride and groom. It was the dimness inside that house that made the colors too dominating. Some place far from here I could make it on my own and become a real kind of person who knew what she was.
What commanded me against my will to turn my head and have second thoughts about leaving? I didn’t want to stay!
Slowly, slowly, my head was forced to turn so that soon I was facing the house. My eyes lifted to that window on the second floor—that room I’d always presumed was her room, and through the cloudy glass I saw a pale small face staring out—a face that looked so much like my own I gasped. Framed in a mop of thick hair of an uncertain color that could change and blend with its surroundings, her wan face neared, retreated, neared, retreated. I could see that her lips were moving, saying something, perhaps singing the playroom song. My hand shook when I looked away and tried to turn the ignition key. What was wrong with my hand? I couldn’t make it obey!
NO! I screamed mentally while Arden stared at me as if I were crazy. Don’t, Sylvia! Let me go! I did the best I could for you, gave you years and years of my life, years and years! Give me the chance to live and find myself, please!
Louder sounded the wind chimes, clamoring, making my head ache so badly I wanted to scream, scream—but I had no voice.
Behind my eyes a premonition flashed. Something awful was going to happen to Papa. When it did, they’d put Sylvia away and never would she see the sunlight again.
I let go the ignition key and opened the car door, then stepped out and hurried to Arden whose eyes lit up as he held out his arms to embrace me. With a sob his face bowed into my hair as my arms held him just as tightly as he held me. We looked deeply into each other’s eyes, then together we tugged my suitcases from the trunk of the Mercedes.
My suitcases we left on the drive.
Like Papa’s love for me, I’d just done the most noble deed of my life. I was the First and Best Audrina who had always put love and loyalty first. There was no place for me to run. Shrugging, feeling sad, yet cleaner than I had since that rainy day in the woods, I felt a certain kind of accepting peace as Arden put his arm about my shoulders. Automatically my arm encircled his waist, and together we headed back to the porch where Papa and Sylvia had come out to watch. I saw happiness and relief in both pairs of eyes.
Arden and I would begin again in Whitefern, and if this time we failed, we’d begin a third time, a fourth …
Now turn the page for a sneak peek of
Whitefern
The sequel to My Sweet Audrina
By V.C. Andrews®
Available Summer 2016 from Pocket Books
Prologue
Papa died with my name on his lips. I would have thought his final words would be a call for my sister, Sylvia, or for Lucietta, our mother, who had died giving birth to Sylvia. For years afterward, I would think about the way he had said my name in those final moments. Was he calling to me asking for help, or was he asking for forgiveness? Was it merely pleasure at having his last thoughts be about me? Did he see my much younger face before him?
Arden, Sylvia, and I were there in his bedroom when he took his last breath. Sylvia and I were sitting beside the bed. Sylvia held his hand, and my husband, Arden, standing beside me, had his hand on my shoulder, his fingers drumming with impatience. He had been on his way out the door to go to work when Papa took a sudden turn for the worse. Of course, he’d thought it was another false alarm, but he quickly returned and saw that this time, it was very, very serious.
The ticking of the dark oak miniature grandfather’s clock on the dresser seemed to grow louder and louder, impressing us with every passing moment. It was more like Papa’s heartbeat. I would swear that it paused when Papa took his final breath. A cloud passed over the sun, and a shadow rushed in through the windows and fell like a dark sheet over his body and his face. I felt a shawl of ice slip over my shoulders as Arden lifted his hand away.
The week before, Papa had nearly passed out going up the stairs. His eyes had closed, and he’d swayed almost at the top step. Sylvia had been following him up, just as she often followed at his heels, eager to do his bidding, and that had kept him from falling backward. A fatal accident on those stairs would come as no surprise. They’d already had too much tragic history. Sylvia’s scream had brought me running. I’d seen her hands on his back. Before I could reach them, he had regained his composure, the color coming back into his pale face.
“I’m all right,” he had said, but without admitting that something wrong with him had caused him to lose his balance, he also declared that Sylvia had saved his life.
“We should call the doctor,” I had said.
“Nonsense, no need. Everyone loses his balance occasionally. Maybe a little too much blackberry brandy.”
&n
bsp; It was futile to contradict him or insist. Papa never changed his mind about anything once he had made it up. My aunt Ellsbeth would say, “He’s as stubborn as a tree stump when he digs his roots into an argument.”
Nevertheless, at his instance, we had celebrated Sylvia as a heroine at dinner that night. I was told to make her favorite cake, vanilla with chocolate icing. We had champagne and, later, music so Papa could do a little dance with her. While I’d watched them, I’d been reminded of how he would waltz with my mother sometimes after dinner when they were young, and our world would look like a world of eternal spring. Momma’s peals of laughter and joy would echo off the walls. The only one who scowled would be Aunt Ellsbeth.
Sylvia had been so happy when Papa called her “my little heroine.” She’d loved repeating, “I saved Papa,” every morning for days afterward; it was the first thing she’d say to me when I roused her to dress and come down for breakfast. Compliments and applause were rare birds in her nest. Perhaps she’d thought she could do it again the day he died, save him and keep him from falling into the inevitable grave. She’d clung so tightly to his hand.
Arden often called her “your father’s extra shadow,” but he wasn’t saying that because he thought what she was doing was cute or loving. No, he thought it was both annoying for Papa and embarrassing for us, mainly for him, whenever anyone he knew from business saw this grown woman still so attached to her father, sensitive to his every move, eager to do the simplest things for him, like fetching his slippers or lighting his pipe.
“He can’t even go to the bathroom without her waiting for him at the door like a puppy. Can’t you make her see how foolish she looks? Do something!” Arden had demanded. “You’re the one who spends the most time with her.”
“Papa doesn’t mind,” I said, in Sylvia’s defense, “so you shouldn’t, either.”