Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger 2)

He turned his bewildered, unshaven, griefstricken face to mine. "What did I say?" he asked, his eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep. I repeated my question with an even harder edge to my voice. He shook his head as if to clear it, looking hurt and sleepy as he ran long fingers through the tumble of his uncombed brown curls. "Cathy, God knows I've done everything I can to convince her I love her! But she won't listen to me. She turns her face aside and says nothing. I asked her to marry me and she said yes. She threw her arms about my neck and said yes over and over again. Then she said, 'Oh, Alex, I'm not nearly good enough for you.' And I laughed and said she was perfect, just exactly what I wanted. Where did I go wrong, Cathy? What did I do to make her turn against me so now she won't even look my way?"

Alex had the kind of sweet, pious face you expect to see carved only on marble saints. Yet, as he stood there, so humbled, so racked by grief and torn by love turned against him, I reached out and soothed him as best I could, for he did love Carrie. In his own way he loved her. "Alex, I'm sorry if I sounded harsh; forgive me for that. But did Carrie confess anything to you?"

Again his eyes clouded. "I called and asked to see her a week ago and her voice sounded strange, as if something terrible had happened and she couldn't speak about it. I drove as fast as I could to be with her, but she wouldn't let me in. Cathy, I love her! She's told me she's too small and her head is too large, but in my eyes her proportions are just right. To me she was a dainty doll who didn't know she was beautiful. And if God lets her die I will never in this life find my credence again!" That's when he buried his face in his hands and began to cry.

It was the fourth night after Chris arrived. I dozed beside Carrie. The others were trying to catch a catnap before they too were ill and Alex was napping in the hall on a cot when I heard Carrie call my name. I ran to her bed and knelt beside it, then reached for her small hand under the covers. It was only a bony hand now, with skin so translucent her veins and arteries could be seen.

"Darling, I've been waiting for you to wake up," I whispered in a hoarse voice. "Alex is in the hall and Chris and Paul are napping in the doctor's quarters-- shall I call them in?"

"No," she whispered. "I want to talk only to you. I'm gonna die, Cathy." She said it so calmly, as if it didn't matter, as if she accepted it and was glad.

"No!" I objected strongly. "You are not going to die! I'm not going to let you die! I love you as my own child. Many people love and need you, Carrie! Alex loves you so much and he wants to marry you, and he won't be a minister now, Carrie; I've told him it makes you uncomfortable. He doesn't really care what his career is, as long as you stay alive and love him He doesn't care if you are small or if you have children. Let me call him in so he can tell you all . . ."

"N000," she whispered thinly "I've got something secret to tell you. Her voice was so faint it seemed to come from over hundreds of soft, rounded, little hills far, far away. "I saw a lady on the street." Her voice was so low I had to lean to hear. "She looked so much like Momma I had to run up. I caught hold of her hand. She snatched hers away and turned cold hard eyes on me. 'I don't know you' she said. Cathy, that was our mother! She looks like she used to almost, only a little older. She even had on the pearl necklace with the diamond butterfly clasp that I remember. And, Cathy, when your own mother doesn't want you--don't that mean nobody can want you? She looked at me and she knew who I was; I saw it in her eyes, and still she didn't want me because she knows I'm bad. That's why she said what she did--that she didn't have any children. She doesn't want you or Chris either, Cathy, and all mothers love and want their children unless they're evil, unholy children . . like us."

"Oh, Carrie! Don't let her do this to you! It's the love of money that made her deny you . . . not that you are bad or wicked or unholy. You haven't done anything evil! It's money that matters to her, Carrie, not us. But we don't need her. Not when you have Alex and Chris, Paul and me. . . and Jory too, and Henny. . . . Don't break our hearts, Carrie, hang on long enough to let the doctors help you. Don't give up. Jory wants his aunt back; every day he asks where you are. What am I going to tell him--that you didn't care enough to live?"

"Jory don't need me," she said in the manner she'd spoken when she was a child. "Jory's got lots of people besides me to love and care for him but Cory, he's waiting for me, Cathy. I can see him right now. Look over there behind your shoulder; he's standing next to Daddy and they want me more than anyone here."

"Carrie, don't!"

"It's nice where I'm going, Cathy, flowers everywhere, and beautiful birds, and I can feel myself growing taller. . . Look, I'm almost as tall as Momma, like I always wanted to be. And when I get there nobody's ever gonna say again I got eyes big and scary as an owl's. Nobody will ever call me 'dwarf again, and tell me to use a stretching machine .. . 'cause I'm just as tall as I want to be."

Her weak and trembling voice faded away. Her eyes rolled heavenward and stayed open without blinking. Her lips stayed parted, as if she had something else to tell me. Dear God, she was dead!

Momma had started all of this. Momma who got out of everything scot-free! Scar-free! And rich, rich, rich! All she had to do was shed a few tears of selfpity after she went home. That's when I screamed! I know I screamed. I wailed and wanted to rip the hair from my head and tear the skin from my face--for I looked too much like that woman who had to pay, pay, pay .. . and then pay some more!

On a hot August day we buried Carrie in the Sheffield family plot, a few miles outside the city limits of Clairmont. No rain this time. No snow on the ground. Now death had claimed every season but winter and left only that cold, blustery weather for me to rejoice in. We covered Carrie over with the crimson flowers she so loved, and purple ones too. The sun above was a rich saffron color, almost orange before it turned to vermilion as it sank to the horizon and turned the heavens rosy-red.

My thoughts were like the dry leaves blowing in the strong wind of hate as I sat on and on and on, though the marble bench beneath me was hard and uncomfortable. I made those dry leaves, after I gathered them together and twisted them, into a cruel witch's stick, a thing to stir up a neglected brew of revenge!

Out of the four Dresden dolls only two were left. And one would do nothing. He had taken an oath to do what he could to preserve life and keep alive even those who didn't deserve to live.

I was loath to leave Carrie alone in the night, the first one she'd

spend in the ground. I had to spend this one night with her and comfort her in some unknown way. I threw a glance at where Julia and Scotty lay asleep too, near Paul's parents, and an older brother who had died even before Amanda was born. I wondered what we, the Foxworths, were doing in the Sheffield family plot? What meaning was there to any of this?

If Alex hadn't come into Carrie's life when he did and given her love, would she have been better off? If Carrie hadn't spied Momma on the street and raced to catch up with her, happy enough to take hold of her hand and call her Momma, would that have made a difference? It must have made all the difference! It must have! Straight from her mother's denial she had gone to purchase rat poison because she didn't feel fit to live, not when even her mother could deny her. And the poison on her doughnuts hadn't been just a trace, but heavily laced--pure arsenic!

Someone spoke my name softly. Someone reached with tenderness to lift me up by my elbows. With his arm about my waist, supporting me, he led me from the cemetery where I would have stayed until dawn to see the sun come up. "No, darling," said Chris. "Carrie doesn't need you now. But others do. Cathy, you must forget the past and your plans for revenge. I see the look on your face and read your mind. I'll share with you my secret for finding peace. I've tried to give it to you before but you refuse to listen. Now this time listen and believe! Do as I do and force yourself to forget everything that gives you pain, and remember only what gives you joy. It is the whole secret to happy living, Cathy. Forgetting and forgiving."

Bitter, bleak eyes I turned upon him and scornfully I said, "You are indeed very good at forgiving, Christopher--but at forgetting, now that is another matter.

He flushed as red as the dying sun. "Cathy, please! Isn't forgiving the better half? I only remember the sweeter part.

"No! No!" But I clung to him as one who approaches hell holds tight to salvation.

Though I'm not sure, I thought I saw a woman dressed in black, with her head and face covered by a black veil, duck behind a tree as we approached the road and the parked car. Hiding so we wouldn't see her. But I caught a glimpse, enough to reveal the rope of lustrous pearls she wore. Pearls that were there for a thin white hand to lift and nervously, out of long habit, twist and untwist into a knot.

Only one woman I knew did that--and she was the perfect one to wear black, and should run to hide! Forever hide!

Color all her days black! Every last one!

I'd see to it that all her remaining days on earth were black. Blacker than the tar put on my hair. Blacker than anything in that locked room and in the darkest shadows in the attic that had been given to us when we were fearful and young and needing so much to be loved enough. Blacker than the deepest pit in hell.

I'd waited long enough to deliver what I must. Long enough. And even with Chris here to try and stop me--even he wouldn't be enough to prevent what I had to do!

PART FIVE The Time for Vengeance