“No. I didn’t say that.”
“I think it will mean more with you. I hope you think or will think the same. I suppose all I’m trying to say is, when you’re ready, I’m ready.”
I smiled.
“What?”
“I think you’ve been ready from the first day.”
He held up his hands. “Guilty,” he said, and stood up. “I’d better get out of here before I confess too much more.” He scooped up his books and turned toward the door.
“What brought on this confession, Kane?”
He stood looking at the floor.
“It was Christopher, wasn’t it?” I asked him before he could leave. “The things he wrote about sex, his feelings? That’s what got you to tell me this, isn’t it?”
I didn’t think he would answer. He looked like he just wanted to leave, but after a moment, with his head still down, he said, “Yes.”
“Why? What exactly was it that pushed your buttons? Don’t try to make a joke of it,” I added quickly. “What will make anything between us significant is honesty.”
He looked at me and said, “My sister is only a few years older than I am. She’s very pretty.”
“I know. I’ve seen her. So?” My mind began spinning with the possibilities. What else was he going to tell me? Did I want to hear it?
“Enough said for now, maybe,” he replied. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
If I had ever felt I was hanging off a cliff, it was right then. He was already halfway to the stairs. I got up to follow him down and to the doorway. He paused and turned to me. Suddenly, he looked more like he did in the attic, more like Christopher than Kane. I even imagined that wig. The light in his eyes seemed to flicker. He had never looked as serious and less Kane Hill–like than he did at this moment. It made my heart flutter.
“I feel like we have something very special because of the diary, don’t you? Like we’re privileged by being granted entry to someone else’s most private, painful, and yet at times strangely wonderful thoughts. Do you feel it, too, this . . . this possession? I mean, it’s really as if Christopher Dollanganger is talking to you and me. Right?”
I could see he thought he might be going mad and wanted confirmation. But it was true. I did feel the same things. “Yes.”
“Let’s not do anything that might make us lose it.”
“Okay.”
He smiled, gave me a quick kiss on the lips, and started for his car. I stood there watching him get in and then back the car out. He waved and drove off. Little butterflies of panic were fluttering in my head. I couldn’t help but think that he was more than right, that we had crossed some forbidden line. The diary had led us into a world where emotions whirled, fears crawled about like electric spiders, and private secrets locked in our hearts began popping around us like bubbles.
Suddenly, I felt lonelier than I h
ad felt in a very long time. I remembered myself as a little girl for no apparent reason turning away from my toy world and rushing to my mother, who seemed to instinctively know she had to embrace me and kiss me and smile softly, lovingly.
It was only natural for very young children to be overtaken by inexplicable fears, perhaps the leading one being the fear of being deserted, to suddenly turn around and be afraid that you were all alone. I thought of the Dollanganger twins literally shoved into that strange, cold world and left to cling to each other, to a sister barely old enough to comfort herself and to an older brother who was struggling to be a man with a man’s responsibilities long before that should happen.
My mother couldn’t stop herself from comforting me. It was essential to being a mother. What inside Corrine was stronger than that need? When she went to sleep at night, did she toss and turn, thinking of her children locked away yet so close? Did she imagine their moans? Hear them calling for her? Did she struggle with the urge to go to them and rip them out of that dark world, where nightmares danced around them?
Among other things, like me, Kane felt some of this, understood their pain. I was sure, but I was also sure there was some other feeling, some other memory that had just been exposed in today’s reading. Whatever had kept it from resurfacing had been ripped away. Did I want to know, to pursue it until I found out? Maybe it was better if we remained somewhat strangers to each other.
I had started to return to my room when the phone rang.
“Hey,” my father said.
He had heard something in my voice when I said hello. I wasn’t surprised. Because we were so dependent on each other since my mother’s death, we were both sensitive to the smallest changes, the slightest signals in our voices or in our faces. We both knew when something troubled or annoyed one of us. Loving someone meant being able to understand him or her better than anyone else.
He paused and then asked, “Everything all right?”
“Yes, fine,” I said. In the small pause, I knew that he knew that wasn’t so, but he chose not to pursue it.