CANCER RESEARCH CENTER, it was to be called. In Greenglenna, South Carolina, Bart was also the founder of a grant for struggling young lawyers, and this was called THE BARTHOLOMEW WINSLOW LEGAL GRANT.

I knew Bart was trying to return good for the evil he'd done by denying the man who'd tried his best to be his father. A hundred times I reassured him that Chris would be pleased, very pleased.

Toni had married Jory. The twins adored her. Cindy had a film contract and was a fast-rising star. It seemed strange, after living a lifetime of giving, first to my mother's twins, then to my husbands, and my children and grandchildren, not to be needed, not to have a place of my own. Now I was the odd one out.

"Mom!" Jory told me one day, "Toni is pregnant! You don't know what that does for me. If we have a boy, he will be called Christopher. If we have a girl, she will be Catherine. Now don't you say we can't do that, for we will anyway."

I prayed they'd have a boy like my Christopher, or my Jory, and one day in the future, I prayed Bart would find the right woman to make him happy. And only then did I realize that Toni had been right, he was looking for a woman like me, without my weaknesses, wanting her to have only my strengths, and perhaps with me as a living model--he'd never find her.

"And Mom," Jory had gone on during that same conversation, "I won my first prize, in the watercolor division . . . so I'm on my way to another successful career."

"Just as your father predicted," I answered.

All of this was in my mind, making me vaguely happy for Jory and Toni, happy for Bart and Cindy, as I turned toward the dual winding staircase that would take me up, up.

I had heard the wind from the mountains calling me last night, telling me it was my time to go, and I woke up, knowing what to do.

Once I was in that cold dim room, without furniture or carpet or rugs, only a dollhouse that wasn't as wonderful as the original, I opened the tall and narrow closet door and began my ascent up the steep and narrow stairs.

On my way to the attic.

On my way to where I'd find my Christopher, again ..

Epilogue

. It was Trevor who found my mother up there, sitting in the windowsill of what could have been the window of the schoolroom that she'd mentioned so often in the stories of her imprisoned life in Foxworth Hall. Her beautiful long hair was loose and flowing over her shoulders. Her eyes were open and staring glassily up at the sky.

He called to tell me the details, heavy sorrow in his voice, as I beckoned Toni closer so she could listen, too. Too bad that Bart was away on a tour around the world, for he would have flown home in a minute if he'd even guessed she needed him

Trevor went on. "She hadn't been feeling well for days, I could tell. She was so reflective, as if she were trying to make sense out of her life. There was that terrible sadness in her eyes, that pathetic yearning that made my heart ache to see her. I went searching to find her, and eventually I used the second set of narrow, steep stairs to the attic. I looked around. It surprised me when I saw that she must have, for some time, been decorating the attic with paper flowers . . ."

He paused as I choked up with tears, with regrets that I hadn't done more to make her feel needed and necessary. Trevor went on, a strange note in his heavy voice. "I must tell you something strange. Your mother, sitting there in the windowsill, looked so young, so slender and frail--and her face even in death held an expression of great joy, and happiness."

Trevor gave me other details. As if she knew she was soon to die, my mother had glued paper flowers on the attic walls, including, too, a strangelooking orange snail and a purple worm. She had written a note that was found in her hand, clutched tight in her death grip.

There's a garden in the sky, waiting there for me. It's a garden that Chris and I imagined years ago, while we lay on a hard black slate roof and stared up at the sun and the stars.

He's up there, whispering in the winds to tell me that's where the purple grass grows. They're all up there waiting for me.

So, forgive me for being tired, too tired to stay. I have lived long enough, and can say my life was full of happiness as well as sadness. Though some might not see it that way.

I love all of you, each equally. I love Darren and Deirdre and wish them good luck throughout their lives, as I wish the same for your child-to-be, Jory.

The Dollanganger Saga is over. You'll find my last manuscript in my private vault. Do with it what you will.

It was meant to be this way. I have no place to go but there. No one needs me more than Chris does.

But please don't ever say I failed in reaching my most important goal. I may not have been the prima ballerina I set out to be. Nor was I the perfect wife or mother--but I did manage to convince one person, at last, that he did have the right father.

And it wasn't too late, Bart.

It's never too late.

Tags: V.C. Andrews Dollanganger Horror
Source: readsnovelonline.net