Whitefern (Audrina 2)

Sylvia stood beside me, clinging to Adelle. Onlookers thought it was one of the saddest and yet sweetest scenes they had ever witnessed. Afterward, as I had promised Sylvia many times, I took her over to Papa’s grave. She read the tombstone and looked at the grave and shook her head.

“Papa’s not down there, Audrina,” she insisted.

“Maybe he isn’t,” I said, keeping my eyes on the headstone.

I had struggled through most of the day. I had barely slept during the previous nights. I hadn’t touched any of Arden’s things yet. I intended to donate as many of them as I could to charity. In fact, nothing at all looked different in our home. Whitefern was invulnerable. The shadows in every corner were still there; the whispers I heard on the stairs continued. Some of the old clocks had stopped ticking, but I didn’t remove them. The grandfather clocks in the halls still chimed, but I ignored them. Arden had hated them, along with the cuckoos in the wooden Swiss clocks. Now that I thought about it, he had hated anything and everything that related to my family. He had wanted to remake it all in his name.

We didn’t have any sort of formal gathering after the funeral, the way we had for Papa’s. Some people stopped by during the following days, people like Mrs. Haider and a few of the employees I knew. Mrs. Crown did not visit. For now, I agreed with Mr. Johnson to permit Arden’s top assistant, Nick Masters, to run the firm. It took me a while to delve into real-world matters.

Arden’s absence didn’t appear to bother Sylvia very much. She was far too occupied with Adelle and, along with me, caring for the house. Occasionally, she would pause and look like she was about to ask after him, but then she would shake her head slightly and nod as though she really was hearing Papa.

Time closed wounds, but it couldn’t prevent scars. There were so many at Whitefern. I could say we had a garden of them. Fall was rushing in. When we took walks, now with the new carriage we had bought for Adelle, I could sense winter’s eagerness. Leaves were falling faster; birds were starting to head farther south. A darker shade of blue seeped into the afternoon skies, and nights were beginning to drop with heavier darkness around us.

One evening after dinner, while Sylvia was looking after Adelle and playing some records on Momma’s old phonograph, which Arden had once tried to sell as an antique, I went out and walked far enough away from the front of the house that when I looked back, I could see the entire house silhouetted against the stars.

I had been toying with the idea of selling Whitefern. We would sell the brokerage, and Sylvia, Adelle, and I would move away, to a place where no one knew us, the Whiteferns, the Adares, or the Lowes. It was a way to be reborn, I thought.

Could I do this? Could I finally leave the past, or would the voices follow us no matter where we went? It was an enormous challenge for me, even to consider it. Once, years ago, when I had tried to leave with Sylvia, she had revolted against it, and I’d had to stay. Would she revolt again? If anything, she was probably even more attached to Whitefern. It was here that she was comforted by Papa’s voice.

It was impossible, I thought. Whitefern had a grip on us that even death could not break. Slowly, I walked back to the house, feeling like I was being chastised for the very thought of leaving it.

Sylvia was in the living room, cradling Adelle in her arms and dancing to one of Momma’s favorite tunes. She paused when she saw me. Adelle looked comfortable and happy in her arms.

I walked to them slowly, smiling, and put my arms around Sylvia. Adelle was between us, looking up at both of us.

And we three began to dance again.

Now turn the page for a sneak peek of

Book One in a startling new series

By V.C. Andrews®

Available Fall 2016 from Pocket Books

Prologue

Haylee always blamed our mother for everything that happened to us and everything terrible that we had done to each other—or I should say, everything terrible that she had done to me. Many times as we were growing up, she would tell me to my face that whatever hurtful thing she had done wasn’t her fault. It was because our mother wouldn’t let her be her own person. I suppose I should have been a little grateful. At least she was recognizing that whatever it was she had done was wrong.

Don’t misunderstand me. It wasn’t that she was suffering the needle-prick pains of conscience. In fact, I now believe my twin sister might never have felt anything despite the agonizing look she could put on and take off like a mask. We were not a religious ­family. Mother never warned either of us that God was watching. She was watching, and she thought that was enough.

I knew in my heart that Haylee was just trying to escape her own responsibility by blaming Mother for things she did herself. No one could shed her guilt like a snake sheds its skin as well as my identical twin. And afterward, she could look as innocent as a rabbit that had just devoured most of a vegetable garden. But that sweetness could turn into a flash of lightning rage when only I was looking at her, even when we were still infants.

One time when we were eleven and our mother wasn’t home and couldn’t hear her, Haylee stood in front of me with her arms tight against her sides, her fingers cur

led like claws. She stamped her foot and screamed, “I am not you! I’ll never be you! And you will never be me! Whatever you like, I will hate. If I have to, I’ll scar my face just to be different. Or,” she added, thinking more about it, “I’ll attack you when you’re sleeping and I’ll scar yours.”

The cruelty in her eyes stunned me so much I was speechless. She truly sounded as if she hated me enough to do just what she had said. Her threat kept me up at night, watching my bedroom doorway, and it set the foundation for nightmares in which she would slink into my room with a razor between her fingers. To this day, I am certain she did come in once or twice and stand by my bed, hovering over me and battling with the urge to act out her vicious promise.

To drive home her point this particular time, she seized the photo of us at our tenth birthday party, the party held in our backyard, where Mother had Daddy arrange for a party tent and had dressed us in identical pink chiffon dresses with pink saddle shoes. Haylee tore the picture into a dozen pieces, which she flushed down the toilet, screaming, “Good riddance! If I never hear the word twin again, that will be too soon!” She stood there fuming. I could almost see the steam coming out of her ears. My heart was pounding, because in our house, saying something like that was like a nun declaring she never wanted to hear the word Jesus.

If I had any doubt that Haylee could get into a great rage without thinking of the consequences, tearing up our picture should have convinced me, for how would we explain it not being there in our room, prominently displayed on our dresser? She knew I could never tell Mother what she had done. And she could never blame it on me. It was an unwritten rule or, rather, a rule Mother had carved into our very souls: we must never blame each other for anything, for that was like blaming ourselves.

Even if I did tell, it wouldn’t help. Haylee was better than I was when it came to winning sympathy and compassion for herself and justification for any evil or mean act she would commit. I could easily picture her on the witness stand in a courtroom, wringing her hands, tears streaming down her face as she wailed about how much she hadn’t wanted to do what she had done to me. She would look so distraught that she might even have me feeling sorry for her.

After she had calmed herself, she would quietly explain to the jury why our mother should be the one accused, certainly not her. She wasn’t all wrong. Now that I’m older, I have no doubt that Haylee would be able to find a psychiatrist eager and willing to testify on her behalf. Even back then, I wasn’t going to disagree with her about what our mother had done to us. I wanted to be my own person, too, but I didn’t want to have to hate Haylee the way she felt she had to hate me.

Yes, I would blame our mother, too, for what eventually happened to me, just as Daddy would. And I have no doubt that anyone reading this would surely agree, but despite it all, I still loved our mother very much. I knew how hurt she would be over what Haylee had done and the things she had said. Her heart would suffer spidery cracks like the face of the porcelain doll her father had given her when she was five. I would hold her hand and I would put my arm around her. I would lean my head against her shoulder, and I would cry with her, almost tear for tear, as she moaned, “What have I done to my precious twins? What have I done?”