Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger

He glanced back, smiled again, and went into his room.

* * *

I meant what I had told Kane. I wanted my Sunday to be full of quality time with my father. To do that, I had to put Christopher’s diary and Foxworth Hall out of my mind. And to do that, I had to put Kane out of my mind, too. With my vague answers, I thwarted my father’s questions at breakfast about my dinner date, and he changed the subject quickly. One thing we were both good at was reading each other’s moods.

Sometimes I thought we could blindfold ourselves and move through our house all day without bumping into each other. We were very good at anticipating each other’s needs. I was confident that this was true to some degree for all my friends and their parents, but not to the extent that it was for my father and me. It wasn’t only because I was an only child. My mother was no longer with us. He had no one else to command his interest and attention, and neither did I. Once we were both home, our world revolved around only each other. How were our days? What had made us happy, and what had made us sad? Sometimes the most trivial things became headline news. We worked at making each other laugh and often talked until I retreated to do my homework. It was as if from the day my mother passed away, we were both afraid of silence.

We began this Sunday morning like all others, by doing our weekly cleaning of the house. My father always took the kitchen, because “it’s a battleground I’ve known,” he said, referring to his earlier days working in the diner. While he went at the floor, stove, grill, and refrigerator, I vacuumed the living room, polished furniture, and went over the windows. Both of us did laundry, but he was better at folding everything, because he did it so long in the navy and when he was a bachelor. The bottom line was that we had become an efficient two-man team and could do this house by midday. We would go off to lunch to reward ourselves.

Midway through my work, the phone began to ring. The first call was from Suzette. I had anticipated it, of course, and gave her my planned response about Kane’s behavior at the party. I knew she didn’t buy it, but I deflected any more questions and told her I had to get back to my housework because my father and I had plans for the day.

The last thing she said made me nervous. “You didn’t used to be this secretive, Kristin. Something’s changed you.”

Of course I protested and then promised to talk to her more the first chance I got.

Kane’s call came not five minutes afterward. My father popped his head into the living room and chanted, “Busy, busy.” I grimaced, and he laughed.

“Both my sister and Julio think you’re great,” Kane began. “I took your advice and apologized to him for my behavior. He’s not so bad, and my sister needs an ally in this house, anyway.”

“Good.”

“So your day is still full?”

“To the brim. I’ve got to get back to my vacuuming, or I’ll be too far behind to do what we have to do.”

“Tomorrow afternoon, then?”

“Yes. Oh, and I’ll meet you at school, Kane.”

“Why?”

“I just think it’s better if you don’t pick me up every morning.”

“Better?”

“Trust me,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, obviously upset. “Have a good time.”

“Thanks,” I said. Later, when I had a chance, I would explain to him that it would help me keep everything secret if I didn’t look like I was spending every free breathing moment with him. My father knew I was still reading Christopher’s diary. It would only be natural for him to suspect that Kane knew about it if he was with me whenever I was free to do it.

The phone rang again, but I didn’t answer it. It was Kyra, and I knew she would have the same questions and the same reactions to my answers as Suzette did. Most likely, Suzette had already called her to complain about me, and she had volunteered to see where she could get with me. We were always curious about each other, but this curiosity about Kane and me was becoming irritating. Probably unfairly so, but I couldn’t help it. Besides, the calls were slowing me up. When I finally put away the vacuum cleaner, I saw my father waiting at the foot of the stairs. I had the feeling he had been watching me for a while.

“What?” I asked.

“Maybe we should do the attic,” he said. “We haven’t for some time.”

There’s some truth to the advice that if you want to get away from a lie, you should tell a half-truth. It reduces the chances of your being doubted and gives your troubled conscience some relief, not that it was something I had to do too often. If it was ever necessary, however, it was right now.

“Oh, I’ve done that this week,” I said. “I even did the windows.”

He simply stared at me for a moment. My heart was starting to race. Was this it? Was this the moment I confessed? I had full intentions to do so after Kane and I had finished the diary. I often thought about how I would do it. I even considered first turning the diary over to him to do with it what he wished and then revealing what Kane and I had done. I dreaded the look on his face that I knew would come. One reaction I feared was his telling me that now he had no choice. He couldn’t get rid of it. If it got out into the community that we’d had such a document and had destroyed it, the horrid rumors would multiply tenfold. It wouldn’t matter how much I assured him that Kane would keep it a secret. Kane could come over and make the pledge in person. My father would say, “The genie is out of the bottle.”

I heard it often in dreams.

To my surprise, this time, he smiled.

“I should have figured you would do that,” he said. I knew that in his mind, I had done it solely because of my mother’s things in the antique wardrobe.