Then again . . . maybe they didn’t. Maybe everyone had deep secrets that appeared as soon as they closed their doors. Maybe they spent most of the time pretending those secrets and troubles didn’t exist.
At dinner, I got Dad to talk more about his work, what he believed could be built on the Foxworth property this time, and some of his company’s other jobs. I could tell that he knew I was doing everything I could to keep him from asking me any more about the diary. I could see it in his eyes and his soft smile, but for now, at least, he stepped back.
I would wonder later if I wished he hadn’t.
After dinner, I watched a little television with him and then went upstairs to do some other reading in my history text. I still liked being ahead of the class. He looked in on me and saw that was what I was doing and then said good night.
I thought I would go to sleep myself, but then I remembered I had put the diary under my pillow. I took it out slowly, glanced at the clock, and told myself I’d read maybe a little more, just until I got tired.
Boy, was that a mistake.
The train ride was bizarre. We got off in the middle of the night in seemingly nowhere. There wasn’t a house in sight, and I had overheard the conductor say we were a good hour’s ride from Charlottesville. We certainly couldn’t walk there. The twins were exhausted as it was. I should have realized that there was something very strange going on when the conductor called my mother “Mrs. Patterson,” but after we disembarked, there was another big clue. Momma had left her luggage on the train, claiming the conductor was going to put it in a locker for her to get later. When I asked her about that, she said she wanted to be able to greet her father in the morning first, without us. She said she had it all worked out with her mother.
“Tonight you’ll all be in a bedroom, and then we’ll see,” she said.
We walked on, finally seeing some houses and then the dark, enormous mansion silhouetted against the purplish mountains and sky. Momma said that when we saw it in the daytime, we would realize what a grand palace it truly was. As strange as it all seemed, that filled me with some hope. I saw how frightened and disgusted Cathy was, so I kept talking, asking Momma about fun things we could do here like ice skating. She told us about a lake not far away from the house, actually on her parents’ property. In the summer months, we could swim in it. I flashed a smile at Cathy and she seemed to calm down some, now just as interested as I was in what was in the house and what our grandparents were like.
When we approached a rear entrance, a tall elderly lady opened the door as if she had been standing there waiting for us all night. She wasn’t wearing anything expensive. I thought we were being greeted by one of the servants. Without speaking, she ushered us into the house and up a steep staircase. We had no time to look at anything. We were hurried down a long hallway, past many rooms, until she finally thrust open a door to a large bedroom with heavy drapes shut tight on the windows.
“Quickly,” she ordered when we hesitated. “Get them ready for bed. And do everything quietly.”
Momma nodded and began to undress Carrie. Cathy helped with Cory. Both twins were so tired and dazed they barely made a sound. I put one of our suitcases on the bed and started to open it to get out their pajamas.
“Not on the bed, you fool,” the old lady said. “On the floor.”
I put the suitcase on the floor and looked at Momma in disbelief. She was trying to smile, but her lips looked frozen tight.
“Well, you were right about your children being beautiful, but are they intelligent, or were they born stupid and ill?”
“They’re perfect, Mother.”
Cathy looked at me with probably the same expression of shock that was on my face. This ugly, grotesque, awkward, and stern-looking woman was our grandmother? Momma set Carrie on one bed, and Cathy placed Cory beside her. Then we turned and looked at our grandmother and our mother. I had trouble seeing any resemblance and hoped that she was indeed not really a blood relative; maybe she was a stepmother.
“You can’t have boys and girls sleeping together,” our grandmother said.
“They’re only innocent children. Why do you think such evil thoughts, Mother?”
The old lady’s cold smile put a chill down my spine and definitely froze Cathy.
“Why do I think evil thoughts? Innocent children? That’s what your father and I used to think about you and your half-uncle. Surely, they’ve inherited that impurity.”
Momma suggested that she give us separate bedrooms, and that was when things became even more puzzling. The old lady went on and on about how important it was that no one, not even the servants, knew we were here. I kept looking at Momma for some more explanation, but whatever defiance and spirit she had had when we first arrived seemed to have evaporated. I thought I might protest, but before I could open my mouth, our grandmother stepped toward Cathy and me, towering above us.
“You’re older. You’ll keep the other two quiet, or else,” she said. “When your mother and I leave, I’m locking the door.”
“Locking the door?” I asked.
Her eyes widened with fury at my merely questioning something she had said. “You must not move around this house. You will stay here until your grandfather dies. Until then, you don’t exist.”
“Don’t exist?”
“Stop repeating everything I say like some idiot!” She looked like she wanted to slap me.
Momma shook her head at me, so I bit down on my lower lip. The old lady went on and on about why we had to be kept locked up in the north wing but said that on the last Friday of the month, we were to go up another stairway and hide in the attic. She made it sound like nothing, but Cathy looked at me and mouthed, “The last Friday of the month?” I knew why she was shocked. That was weeks away.
Our grandmother explained that she would be the one to bring us food. Finally, Momma started to get us into bed, whispering constantly, her eyes teary, that this was only temporary, a few days, maybe a week, but we had to be obedient and not get our grandmother upset.
“It’s our only hope, Christopher,” she whispered in my ear.