Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger 2)

This was my moment of triumph! Moving as only a ballerina can, I meant to play my role to the utmost of my dramatic ability. As the guests stared upward, clearly caught in thrall by time moved backward, I gloated to see my mother blanch. Then I rejoiced to see Bart's eyes widen more as they jumped from me, to her, then back to me. Slowly, in a dead silence, for the music had stopped, I descended the left side of the dual winding staircases, thinking I was Caraboose, the wicked fairy who put upon Aurora the curse of death. Then I made myself the Lilac Fairy to steal away Aurora's prince while she slept her sleep of one hundred years. (It was clever of me not to think of myself as my mother's daughter, and how soon I would destroy her. Very clever to make of this a stage production, when I was dealing with reality, and not fantasy and the blood that could be spilled.)

Gracefully I trailed my sparkling fingers along the rosewood railing, feeling my green chiffon wings fluttering and floating as step by step, and second by second, I neared the place where my mother and Bart were standing very close together. She was trembling all over, but managing to hold onto her poise. I thought I glimpsed a flicker of panic in the blue of her Dresden eyes. I kindly bestowed on her my most gracious smile while standing on the second step from the bottom. In this way I gave myself the height I needed to be taller than anyone else. All had to look up to me wearing four-inch silver Freels on platform soles like Carrie's, so as to be on an even height with my mother when we met eye to eye. The better to see her dismay. Her discomfort. Her utter collapse!

"Merry Christmas!" I called to one and all in a loud clear voice. It resounded like a heralding trumpet to attract others from different rooms, and they came in by the dozens, as if drawn more by the total silence but for my voice. "Mr. Winslow," I called invitingly, "come dance with me, just as you danced with my mother fifteen years ago, when I was twelve and hiding above, and she wore a gown just like the one I have on now." Bart was visibly jolted. Stunned shock made his dark eyes blacken, but he refused to move from my mother's side!

He forced me to do what I did next. As everyone stood there and waited, held in breathless suspense, expecting more explosive revelations, I gave them what they wanted.

"I'd like to introduce myself." My voice was high- pitched so it would carry well. "I am Catherine Leigh Foxworth, the firstborn daughter of Mrs. Bartholomew Winslow, whom most of you must remember was first married to my father, Christopher Foxworth. Remember too that he was my mother's half-uncle, the younger brother of Malcolm Neal Foxworth who disinherited his only daughter, his sole remaining heir, because she had the unholy temerity to wed his half-brother! What is more, I also have an older brother, named Christopher too--he's a doctor now. Once I had a younger brother and sister, twins seven years younger than I--but Cory and Carrie are dead now--for they were--" I stopped short for some reason, then went on. "That Christmas party fifteen years ago, Chris and I were hiding in the chest on the balcony, while the twins slept in the end room of the northern wing. Our playground was the attic, and never, never did we go downstairs. We were attic mice, unwanted and unloved once money came into the picture." And I would have screamed it all out, every last detail, but Bart came striding over to me.

"Bravo, Cathy!" he cried. "You play your part to perfection! Congratulations." He put his arm about my shoulders, charmingly smiled at me, then turned to the guests who appeared not to know what to think, or whom to believe, much less how to react. "Ladies, gentlemen," he said, "let me introduce to you Catherine Dahl, whom many of you must have seen on stage when she danced with her husband, Julian Marquet. And as you have just witnessed, she is also an actress of merit. Cathy here is a distant relative of my wife, and if you can see any resemblance, that explains it. In fact, Mrs. Julian Marquet is one of our neighbors now, you may know that. Since her resemblance to my wife is so remarkable, we cooked up this little farce between us, and did what we could to enliven and make different this party with our little joke."

He ruthlessly pinched my upper arm, before he caught my hand, put his arm about my waist and asked me to dance. "Come now, Cathy, certainly you want to show off your dancing ability after that fine dramatic performance." As the music began to play, he forcefully made me dance! I turned my head to see my mother sagging against a friend, her face so pale her makeup stood out like livid blotches. Even so, she couldn't take her eyes from me in the arms of her husband.

"You brazen little bitch!" Bart hissed at me. "How dare you come in here and pull such a stunt? I thought I loved you. I despise catty women with long claws. I won't have you ruining my wife! You little idiot, whatever made you tell so many lies?"

"You are the idiot, Bart," I said calmly, though I was panicked inside--what if he refused to believe? "Look at me. How would I know she wore a gown like this, if I hadn't seen her with it on? How would I know you went with her to see her bedroom with the swan bed, if my brother, Chris, hadn't hidden and heard and seen everything the two of you did up on the secondfloor rotunda."

He met my eyes, and he looked so strange, so distant and strange.

"Yes, Bart darling, I am your wife's daughter, and I know if your law firm finds out your wife had four children born from the union of her first marriage, then you and she lose everything. All that money. All

your investments. Everything you have bought will be taken back. Oh, the pity of that makes me want to cry."

We danced on, his cheek inches from mine. A smile was fixed to his lips. "That gown you're wearing, how the hell did you find out she had one exactly like that the first time I came to this house to a party?"

I laughed with fake merriment. "Dear Bart, you are so stupid. How do you think I know? I saw her in this gown. She came to our room and showed us how pretty she looked, and I was so envious of all her curves and the way Chris looked at her with so much admiration. She wore her hair as I am wearing mine now. These jewels were taken from her safe in the dressing room table drawer."

"You're lying," he said, but doubt was in his voice now.

"I know the combination," I went on softly, "she used her birthday numbers. She told me that when I was twelve. She is my mother. She did keep us locked in that room, waiting for her father to die, so she could inherit. And you know why she had to keep us a big, dark secret. You wrote the will, didn't you? Think back to a certain night when you fell asleep in her grand suite of rooms, and you dreamed a young girl wearing a short blue nightie stole in and kissed you. You weren't dreaming, Bart. That kiss was from me. I was fifteen then, and had snuck into your room to steal money-- remember how you used to miss cash? You and she thought the servants were stealing, but it was Chris, and one time it was me . . . who didn't find anything because you were there to scare me away."

"N000," he said with a sigh. "No! She wouldn't do that to her own children!"

"Wouldn't she? She did. That big chest up there near the balcony balustrade has a backing of wire mesh screening. Chris and I could see just fine. We saw the caterers fixing crepes and waiters in red and black and a fountain spraying champagne, and there were two huge silver punch bowls. Chris and I could smell everything so delicious and we drooled to have a taste of what was down there. Our meals were so boring, and always cold or lukewarm. The twins hardly ate anything. Were you there the Thanksgiving Day dinner when she got up and down so much? Do you want to know why? She was preparing a tray of food to take up to us whenever the butler John was out of his pantry."

He shook his head, his eyes dazed.

"Yes, Bart, the woman you married had four children she hid away for three years and almost five months. Our playground was in the attic. Have you ever played in an attic in the summertime? In the winter? Do you think it was pleasant? Can you imagine how we felt, waiting year after year for an old man to die so our lives could begin? Do you know the trauma we suffered knowing she cared more for the money than she did for us, her own children? And the twins, they didn't grow. They stayed so small, grew so large-eyed and haunted looking, and she'd come and never look at them! She pretended not to notice their ill health!"

"Cathy, please! If you are lying, stop! Don't make me hate her!"

"Why not hate her? She deserves it," I went on as my mother went to lean against a wall, and looked sick enough to throw up. "Once I lay on the swan bed, with the little swan bed across the foot. You had a book in your nightstand drawer about sex, disguised under a dustjacket that read How to Create and Design Your Own Needlepoint or something like that."

"How to Create Your Own Needlepoint

Designs," he corrected, looking sick and as pale as my mother, though he kept on smiling, hatefully smiling. "You are making all of this up," he said in an odd tone that showed no sincerity. "You hate her because you want me, and connive to deceive me and destroy her."

I smiled and lightly brushed his cheek with my lips. "Then let me convince you more. Our

grandmother always wore gray taffeta with handcrocheted collars, and never without a diamond brooch with seventeen stones pinned at her throat. Very early each morning, before six-thirty, she brought us food and milk in a picnic hamper. At first she fed us rather well, but gradually, as her resentment grew, our meals grew worse and worse until we were fed mostly sandwiches of peanut butter and jelly and occasionally fried chicken and potato salad. She gave us a long list of rules to live by, including one that forbade us from opening the draperies to let in light. Year after year we lived in a dim room without sunlight. If only you knew how dreary life is, shut away, without light, feeling neglected, unwanted, unloved. Then there was another rule very hard to abide by. We were not supposed to even look at each other--especially one of the opposite sex."

"Oh, God!" he exclaimed, then sighed heavily. "That sounds like her. You say it was more than three years you were locked up there?"

"Three years and almost five months, and if that seems a long time to you, how do you think it was for small children of five, and one of twelve, and the other of fourteen? Back then, five minutes passed like five hours, and days were like months, and months were like years."

Doubt fought clearly with his legal mind that saw all the ramifications, if my tale were true. "Cathy, be honest, totally honest. You had two brothers and one sister--and all that time, when I was here too, you were living locked up?"

"In the beginning, we believed in her, every word she said, for we loved her, trusted her--she was our only hope, and our salvation. And we wanted her to inherit all that money from her father. We agreed to stay up there until the grandfather died, although when our mother explained how we were to live in Foxworth Hall she failed to mention we were to be hidden away. At first we thought it would only be for a day or so, but it went on and on. We filled our time by playing games--and we prayed a lot, slept a lot. We grew thin, half-sick, malnourished, and suffered through two weeks of starvation while you and our mother traveled throughout Europe on your