Secrets of Foxworth (11 page)

“I hope there's not another man involved,” he whispered after the last class of the day ended and we all started out of the room.

I just smiled back at him. You see, there really was another man with whom I was involved—Christopher Dollanganger—but I wasn't about to mention it or even hint at it. I just couldn't outright deny Kane's half-facetious accusation, and because of that, his curiosity brightened. I even thought he might follow me home to be sure that was where I was going. I wondered how he would react if he knew the truth, relieved that it was only someone in a diary or spooked that I would be so drawn to it?

I couldn't blame him for either reaction.

I could tell that my father had been home, which was unusual on a workday. My first thought was that he might have decided to get the diary away from me. He might have been thinking about it all day. Panicked, I hurried up to my room. It was there where I had left it, but it looked like it had been picked up and placed differently. Had he thought of doing that but changed his mind out of fear of how I would react? Of course, there were parents who forbade their children to read something or view something. They believed that they were doing it to protect their children, but it had been some time now since my father had treated me like a young, impressionable girl.

Oh, he issued standard warnings about driving carefully, not staying out too late, avoiding bad influences, but he did it almost mechanically, as if it was something he had to do but didn't believe was as necessary with me as it would be for other girls my age. He had confidence in me that came from our mutual pain, the loss of my mother. We trusted each other in ways I could see my friends' parents didn't trust them. Because of how his father's death had only sped up his already quickened maturity, it occurred to me that Christopher's mother might have had the same sort of attitude toward him that my father had toward me.

Was I deliberately looking for these resemblances between us, or were they simply there and too obvious to deny?

I held the diary reverently in my hands. It was as if it could give me psychic powers. Now I felt sure
of what had occurred. Sometime today, at some moment, maybe because of something someone said or something Dad remembered, he had come home to dispose of this book. When it came to doing it, he retreated, but that didn't mean he wouldn't come for it again. I made up my mind to hide it well from now on. I didn't like keeping secrets from my father, not now, not ever, but this had become too important to me. I would see it through to the end. It was a promise I had made to Christopher and a promise I would keep.

I sat on my bed and opened the diary.

What happened to us next, I knew was coming. Oh, it was obvious that Cathy would go into a deep depression. She didn't care about anything, not her schoolwork, how she dressed and looked, or even how the twins were getting along. Whenever she was home, she was in a sulk, sleeping more than ever, and practically bursting out in hysterical tears every time Daddy's name was brought up or she saw something of his.

Momma depended mostly on me to get her to snap out of it. She tried to comfort her occasionally, telling her the expected things like we should be grateful for the years we had Daddy. Nothing comforted Cathy. I wasn't all that much help, either. I was hurting just as deeply as she was, and I was full of the same rage that this had happened. In all my dreams, my father was out there in the audience looking up proudly while I
accepted my diplomas from high school and from college. Now those dreams had evaporated or burst like bubbles.

But something else was going on, something I anticipated simply by looking at the growing pile of bills on Momma's desk. She had no job. Our neighbors had been helping, bringing us food from time to time, but something deeper and darker was surrounding our devastated family. I was afraid even to dream of college and medical school. The twins were crying and complaining more, and Cathy's rage against the injustice of our father's unexpected death and the God who had taken him from us boiled over nightly. Momma looked like she was sinking in the quicksand of one tragic thing after another.

In the beginning, whenever I tried to have a serious conversation about our situation, she would start to tear up and wave me off. I felt like I was making everything more painful by asking realistic questions. There was nothing to do but wait until she was ready.

The time came when she finally was.

One night, while the twins were occupied with themselves, she pulled Cathy and me aside and told us how dire things were.

Incredibly, Daddy had not kept up a life insurance policy. There would be no money coming from that sort of thing. All of the possessions we had that were bought on time
would be reclaimed. We couldn't keep up the payments. With every sentence she uttered, it felt as if the roof was falling lower and lower and would soon bury us.

I wondered why she was so busy every night writing letters. Surely, she was asking someone in the family somewhere for help, or maybe she was applying for a job. Even I was shocked by her next revelation.

“I have been writing to my mother,” she said, “asking her to help us.”

Neither Cathy nor I could speak for a moment. All my life, I had wondered about our grandparents, our family. Neither Daddy nor Momma wanted to talk about them. They never mentioned them and always avoided answering questions, so I stopped asking.

“She has agreed to our living in their house in Charlottesville, Virginia,” Momma said. Her face was suddenly bright with the happiness and hope we hadn't seen since Daddy's death. “We're not just going to live with two elderly people who need us to care for them or anything. My parents are rich, very rich, as rich as some kings and queens.”

She went on to describe the house, and then she almost casually dropped the news that froze me in my shoes, news that Cathy couldn't quite comprehend.

We were going to leave that night on a train.

The reality of what she was saying took hold
as she continued to describe how she had grown up in a big house with servants and how our lives would be wonderful again. Now Cathy began to cry and complain about leaving her friends.

“What friends? You've been ignoring them for weeks anyway,” I told her. She looked at me as if I was betraying her for not complaining about this as hard as she was, but the cold truth was staring us in the face. We had no income; we were in debt. We could even be evicted!

Cathy grew coldly quiet again, until Momma described how little we could take with us. She wanted us to take no more than two suitcases for all four of us. Cathy began to wail about all the toys and dolls she would be leaving behind. Momma promised she would have far more when we were living with her parents.

But we hadn't reached the worst fact of all yet. I could see it in Momma's face. She had one more thing to tell us. She tried to make it seem less frightening and astounding than it was by beginning with “There is, however, one small thing.”

Small thing? It was like telling passengers on the Titanic that there were no more life jackets.

Momma had been written out of her father's will. The reality was that whether we were here or there, we were just as poor.

“Did Daddy know this, Momma?” I asked her. I was thinking about all the times he had sat
with me and described the great things we were going to do and have, the trips, the expensive clothes, the college educations, all of it. Was he anticipating inheritance?

“Yes,” she said. “He knew I was disinherited, but he kidded me about it and said I had ‘fallen from grace.' How foolish I was. I laughed, too, back then. I never dreamed we'd be . . . in this situation.”

How foolish
she
was? What about Daddy? What were all those plans? Just the ramblings of a dreamer? While he was dreaming, our bills were accumulating. Why didn't he think about all possibilities, the most obvious being that something could happen to him and we would be in desperate trouble?

It was as if my rose-colored glasses were being shattered. Did both my parents live in fantasies? Daddy had permitted Momma to buy all these things. Even if they were on payment plans, they still had to be paid for, and there was all that accumulating interest. Where was the father I had seen, the one who was moving up the ladder and would be a highly paid executive? And now this, trapped into going to live with grandparents who didn't care enough about their own daughter to keep up with what was happening in her life. They never called, they never wrote, and they certainly had never visited us or invited us to visit them in all these years. She wasn't just disinherited; she was disowned. She no longer existed in their eyes.
I didn't know why. At the moment, that didn't matter. We were leaving, and we would have to live with them.

“So why are we going there, Momma?” I asked. “They don't sound like they really want us, especially if your own father cut you out of his will.”

“I am confident,” she said, pulling her shoulders up with pride, “that I can win back his love and have him put me back in his will. I once told you, I think, that I lost my two brothers, who died in accidents, so I'm the only one left. He's too proud to let his money not follow his blood. You'll see. We'll be fine. We'll be more than fine. We'll be very rich, too, someday soon. He's not a well man. He's been in and out of hospitals and now has a full-time nurse.”

“So that's why we're leaving so quickly, tonight,” I said. “You're afraid he'll die before . . .”

“Before I win back his love? Yes, Christopher. You're so bright. You understand. Thank goodness I have you,” she said, and kissed me on the forehead.

I looked at Cathy. She seemed even angrier now. I knew it was because I was understanding and seeing things from Momma's point of view and not hers. I knew that in her mind, it was some sort of betrayal.

“There is one final little detail,” Momma continued. “Your real name is Foxworth, not Dollanganger. Dollanganger was a name your father chose for us. It comes from some ancestor.”

“What?” Cathy practically pounced. “Why would he want to change an easy-to-spell name?”

“It's all very complicated,” she said, falling back into her chair. “I haven't time to explain every little detail. We have so much to do quickly. Let's just get on with it. We can think about other things later.”

“You've gone over everything carefully, right, Momma? We have no choice anymore, correct?” I asked. “You've spoken to Daddy's attorney?”

I looked at Cathy when I asked the questions so she would listen carefully and see why I was willing to go along with what our mother wanted.

“Everything, Christopher, twice and again just in case. Trying to find another way has nearly exhausted me. Trust me,” she said. She started to cry, telling us how she had tried to think of every possible solution, how disgusted she was with herself for not being able to simply take up the reins and take care of us herself. Through her tears, she again described how much we could have if she succeeded in getting back into her father's good graces.

“My mother assures me he will probably only last a few more months,” she said, to drive home how important it was for us to get started immediately. Cathy began to complain again about all she was leaving behind.

I seized her hand. “Enough!” I said. “Let's get to packing.”

I looked at Momma. She was smiling at me through her tears. I was truly her little man. I was no
longer just a son and a brother. I was the father we had lost.

I set the diary down for a moment.

Their real name was Foxworth, and Dollanganger was an assumed name? This would explain some of the confusion with the way the stories about them were told over the years. But how could Corrine be Malcolm and Olivia's daughter and her husband be a Foxworth, too? How closely were they related? The point was, they were related. That part of the rumor was accurate, then.

Were they close enough to be considered incestuous? Was that why my father said Malcolm Foxworth was unforgiving? Vicious and hateful? It certainly might explain why Corrine was written out of her father's will and disowned by both her parents.

These poor children, I thought. They were caught in the middle of it all, and so was this new widow with no means of supporting them. What else could she do but throw herself on the mercy of her parents? How did people who had the most reason to love each other grow to despise each other so much? Surely, Malcolm Foxworth and Olivia Foxworth weren't that cruel. Surely, once they saw their grandchildren, they would soften. Uncle Tommy's source of information had to be wrong. How could their grandfather enjoy them suffering so much, locked up in an attic?

I heard Dad come home and instantly, almost instinctively, slipped the diary under my pillow. He was moving through the house. Once again, I had lost
track of time and not done anything to prepare for our dinner. I hurried out of the room, but he was standing at the base of the stairway looking up.

“Working on your homework?” he asked.

I think I'd rather have a tooth pulled than lie to my father. I saw the concern in his face and told myself that if I didn't lie, he would be more upset. “Yes. Sorry. Intense math. Pasta night, right?” I started down the stairs. I tried to avoid his eyes, which I knew was a mistake.

He didn't say anything, but he was hurt. “How was school today?” he asked instead. He always made some reference to it, but lately, he was too occupied with so many other things to ask standard questions.

“Great. Oh. I have a party Friday night. Kane's house.”

“Okay,” he said. “We might have some celebrating to do this week, too.”

“What?”

“The live one is now a real one, and yours truly will probably get the cleanup contract to start.”

“Foxworth is sold?”

“Looks that way,” he said. “I hope the first thing the new owner does is name it something else and then build something so beautiful no one ever thinks of those horrid stories anymore,” he added pointedly.