Despite what he would tell me about being tied to the house and his work, about being comfortable where he was, and about being too old to start anew, I was well aware that he was holding on to it all for me. He didn’t want my life disrupted. He didn’t want me to have to find new friends and get used to new teachers and new surroundings. “People my age and younger are moved about this country like checkers on a board,” he would say.
Being young is supposed to mean you’re strong enough to be shaken up, even periodically, yet students like that don’t do as well, and yes, they probably have many emotional and psychological issues, but they live. I would have lived through it, too.
And what about another woman, another wife?
Was it really impossible for him to take on another companion, or was he avoiding it just to please me? Yes, I hated the thought of another woman looking into my mother’s mirror, working in her kitchen, putting her clothes in my mother’s closet, and greeting my father with a kiss at the end of his workday. It was like losing my mother all over again, and yes, that was painful even to consider, but it was also selfish of me not to want it to happen.
My father, like any other man, had needs. I couldn’t share everything with him. How many times had he turned down an invitation because he didn’t think I would be comfortable accompanying him? How many times had he looked at another married couple laughing, holding hands, having dinner in a restaurant, or simply talking softly somewhere and felt the great emptiness and pain in his heart? Maybe he would never love anyone as much as he had loved my mother, but he would have someone on his arm, someone else to come home to. He was still a young man. It had to be difficult having no one to embrace in bed, no shoulder to kiss, no warmth to soothe him when he felt terribly alone. There was a wide hole in his heart, in his life, and I couldn’t fill it completely. We were still a family, yes, but he was a man alone at times and places when he shouldn’t be.
Who was making the sacrifices here?
Not me.
And certainly not Corrine Foxworth!
He knocked on my door.
“Come in, Dad.”
“Just want to give you a heads-up on something,” he began. “Herm Cromwell just told me that the Charlottesville Catch-all, that weekly paper, is doing a lead article on the Foxworth story because of the real estate sale. They’re going to rake up the legendary horror for sure. Herm knows the editor, and there’s going to be a mention of the fact that we’re, through your mother, the only living Charlottesville relatives of the Foxworths now. You’re not to talk to anyone from that newspaper about it,” he added, as sternly as he ever said anything to me.
“I don’t know very much about it, anyway.”
He stared at me in that way he could with those brown eyes turning almost a dark orange when he focused them so intensely. “You’re reading that diary,” he said.
“What diary?” I smiled, and he nodded.
“Better keep it that way, Kristin. I know how descendants of people who committed horrendous acts are stained with bad blood no matter what they do or who they become. It’s like walking about with ghosts clinging to your shoulders, understand?”
What he said made me cringe. Sometimes I did feel like I was carrying ghosts.
“I’ve already tasted that stale bread, Dad,” I said. It was one of his expressions.
He nodded. I could see just the suggestion of tears in his eyes. He understood. “Okay. I’m going to demolish that place the way your mother scrubbed the kitchen floor,” he vowed, and left, closing the door softly.
I put the history book down and thought. Maybe he was right. Maybe I should toss the diary into the garbage and forget Foxworth and the poor Dollanganger children. What good would come of my reading it, anyway? I couldn’t save them from whatever fate they had. It was too late. Dad wasn’t wrong about not wanting to seek out any more horror than we get daily on the news. Why go looking for it?
I turned off my light and curled up against my pillow. Of course, it was only my imagination, but I had forgotten that I had put the diary under my pillow, and it was like I could hear Christopher calling to me, begging me to read on. Someone had to listen. Someone had to know the truth. Otherwise, they would suffer in the darkness. I was the only hope to bring in the light.
In the morning, I realized just how determined my father was to get this job done, and as quickly as he could. He was up and dressed a good half hour before I rose and came down to have breakfast. I saw he was about to leave me a note and get started. It was barely light outside. He was in his jacket and hat.
“Talk about the crack of dawn,” I said.
“Oh. I got a new crew coming on this morning, backhoes and plows. They want some of the grounds cleared along with the rubble. The new owner’s already talking about a pool and a pool house, fixing up tennis courts.”
“Do you know who it is?”
“Nope. Never asked. Whoever it is, good luck to him,” he said. “I put out your favorite cereal and have the bread ready to be toasted. So you’re really coming over after school?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Okay. We’ll talk about dinner then. This looks like a Charley’s Diner night for us.”
“Okay, Dad.”
“Be careful,” he warned. He never said good-bye. It was always “Be careful.”
A quick kiss on his cheek sent him on his way. From the way his shoulders were hoisted and his arms were flexed, he looked like he was off to do battle. Maybe in his mind he was. I ate my breakfast and then went up to make my bed, taking the diary out from under my pillow. I glanced at the clock. I was a little ahead of schedule.