Christopher's Diary: Secrets of Foxworth

Strangely, though, that relief made me feel guilty. I didn’t want to see him as in any way strange. The feelings and revelations about himself that I had read surely were normal. One day, he realized that his sister was becoming a woman. Unfortunately, it was happening under weird circumstances, but I imagined any boy would have had similar reactions when he found himself in the same sort of situation, seeing his younger sister’s body developing.

I glanced at Kane. He had an older sister who was in college. If anything, the roles might have been reversed. I certainly wasn’t about to ask him when his sister first realized he was a man. When did he realize it? I wondered. Do boys react to that differently? Maybe I was too cloistered, too naive and oblivious to things, looks, feelings I should know meant more than I thought. The diary, I thought, Christopher’s diary, might be more of an education about myself than anything else.

The rest of the day went smoothly. I forced myself to be more alert and pushed everything else out of my mind. I aced a math quiz, and I knew from her reaction to her grade that Theresa Flowman had not done that well. I participated in some idle chatter with my girlfriends. I was surprised that Kane hadn’t told anyone about us going to Foxworth after school. I was anticipating Lana or Suzette asking me about it. They knew I was leaving with him since he had brought me, but they both apparently assumed I was either taking him to my house or going to his. We had planned it all. I got the usual silly warnings, like “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, which means you can do it all.”

For more than one reason, I was happy to be spending more time alone with Kane. We had known each other for years, but it wasn’t until this year that he looked at me and showed some romantic interest. Once again, I thought about Christopher’s suddenly looking at Cathy and seeing more than simply a young girl. It made me wonder about myself. Could it be that I had blossomed in so subtle a way that I didn’t even realize it myself? My father treated me, and always would, as his little girl, despite the new responsibilities I fulfilled and my being old enough to drive and go on dates. Perhaps a father, or even a mother, for that matter, resisted accepting that a daughter was no longer a child. In a mother’s case, that umbilical cord was thinning out, and in the father’s case, there was the realization that soon his little girl would be looking to another man to love and protect her.

“So you’re really into this valedictorian thing?” Kane asked after we drove away from the school.

“I don’t live for it, no, but it won’t hurt.”

“You’ll have to make a speech at graduation.”

“My father says I do that daily.”

He tossed his head to the side the way he usually did when something pleased him, along with that small, soft smile that could burrow its way into the hardest of hearts. Even though I believed he knew what a charmer he was, I didn’t sense him conniving to use those dazzling eyes and nearly perfect facial features to work his way in with any girl or get some favor from a teacher. His popularity came so easily that he didn’t obsess about it.

“So tell me,” he said as we turned toward Foxworth, “what do you really know about this place and what happened there originally? Your mother was related. You should know as much as, if not more than, anyone else about the history.”

“She never talked about them, with me at least, and my father hates talking about them. He’s not just clearing land and getting it all ready for rebuilding. He’s attacking it as if he was General George Patton going after Hitler.”

Kane laughed aloud. “That’s what my father said your father would do. I guess he’s made his feelings about it pretty clear to anyone who gets him talking about it.”

“My father isn’t afraid of expressing his opinion about anything,” I told him. “Not just Foxworth.”

“So I should watch myself around him,” he countered. “Right?”

“Well, I’m not afraid of expressing my opinion, either.”

He shook his head. “Where have you been all my life, Kristin Masterwood?”

“Either in the room across the hall, the room behind, or the room ahead.”

We drove on. His smile was becoming deeper, his eyes drinking me in like some bon vivant tasting cherished wine.

I felt myself blush.

Where would this journey take me?

Maybe I should be keeping my own diary, I thought, and then I felt my body grow tense, much tenser than before when my father and I had approached the ruins of Foxworth Hall. Christopher’s diary had put me inside it in a way I never imagined. For a few moments, as we drew closer, I didn’t see the ruins of a great fire. I saw the mansion standing high, the windows dimly lit, and high above, two little children, Carrie and Cory, being held up by their brother and sister to look out at a world that had suddenly become forbidden to them. It was like going to the site of a massacre or a prison and still being able to hear the cries and screams.

During all the time they had been kept here, had anyone driven up and caught sight of them in a window? If they had, did they keep it to themselves? From what everyone had known of the Foxworths, they didn’t just invite anyone to their mansion, and they certainly didn’t spend time in the city talking with people unless it was strictly business. I doubted Olivia Foxworth had any friends her own age by the time the children were locked up in the small bedroom and attic.

We pulled up next to my father’s truck and got out. He had all the machinery going full steam. The area around the rubble had been cleared, and a good portion of the charred boards, pipes, shattered fixtures, and other contents were piled into three large trucks to be hauled away. Two large brush cutters were clearing the property to the south, and two men were surveying the property on the east end.

“I’ll say your father is out to get this done fast,” Kane commented. “He’s wiping out all traces of the whole clan.”

Dad paused and looked up from a clipboard when Todd Winston nodded in our direction. I waved, and he indicated how we should approach safely.

“Hello, Mr. Masterwood,” Kane said quickly. “This is some job.”

“A lot to do. It was a big place, and there was a great deal of destruction,” my father said. He looked at me as if he wanted to study my reaction to it all, waiting for my comment.

“I thought I’d show Kane the lake,” I said, ignoring everything else.

“Good. You two watch yourselves. There are boards with nails sticking out all over the place.”

“Looks like it was more like an explosion than another fire,” Kane said.