“Take it. You should go visit the grave and apologize to that poor boy’s soul for what you have just done to his grandfather,” she said.
I looked at the paper. I was afraid to take it, but she thrust it at me again and I took it.
“Now, please leave, or I’ll call the police. And never come back here,” she added.
“I’m not lying,” I said.
She raised her eyes toward the ceiling as to avoid looking at me.
With my legs moving as if they had a mind of their own and wanted me out of there, I left the office. I stood outside on the sidewalk, dazed. The traffic went by; pedestrians crossed in front of me and behind me. One man knocked into me gently. My cell phone rang again. It was my mother calling once more, and once more I didn’t answer.
I walked quickly to my car and sat behind the wheel, staring out for a while. This can’t be happening, I told myself. How can this be true? There has to be some great mistake, but how could a grandfather and a father make such a mistake about his daughter and grandson?
I looked at the directions to the cemetery. I didn’t want to go there, but now there was no way not to. I could never go home without seeing if what Mr. Norton had told me was indeed the cold truth.
Fifteen minutes later, I drove in and found my way to the section he had described. It wasn’t hard to find the grave sites. The tombstones were larger than any nearby. I walked up to the two, saw the one for Delores Norton and just to the left of hers a tombstone that read: “Brayden Mark Matthews, Beloved Son and Grandson.”
The date of his death matched a year ago yesterday, just as Mr. Norton had said.
But that wasn’t what convinced me that it was my Brayden’s grave.
It was the quote on the monument: “I hear a different drummer.”
It was part of a quote from Thoreau’s Walden.
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”
I read the words repeatedly, and then I felt my legs soften and the earth shift beneath my feet as it began to spin.
It was like a curtain coming down.
Darkness washed over me.
Other people visiting grave sites nearby found me sprawled on Brayden’s grave. I was taken to Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital’s emergency room, where the doctor checked my vitals and kept me resting. Hours went by. I fell in and out of sleep, dozing, more like someone still stunned. Finally, when I opened my eyes again one time, my parents were standing there, my mother holding my hand. They looked absolutely terrified. I started to cry.
“We don’t understand what’s happening, Amber,” my mother said softly. She wiped away my tears.
“The boy you claimed you were with has been dead for a year?” my father asked.
“I was with him,” I insisted.
My father shook his head and sat facing the wall. He looked more stunned than I felt.
“We want to take you home now, Amber,” Mom said.
“I feel so strange,” I said.
“The doctor says there’s nothing physically wrong with you. They gave you something to calm you down for now.”
“Nothing physically,” my father emphasized.
“When we’re home, we’ll be able to sort this out better,” she continued.
“I don’t see how we’re equipped to do that,” my father followed.
“Gregory.”
“For God’s sake, Noreen, she’s been talking about being with a boy who’s been dead for a year and she’s come all the way to Portland to find out where he is.” He turned to me. “Your mother doesn’t want to come out and say it, but we talked about it all the way here, Amber. You need professional help. We’ll find someone really good, and you’ll get over this.” He forced a smile. “Your imagination ran away with you. I always told you that you were like your friends, living in your own movie. It’s all right. You’ll be fine.”
I looked away. What was left for me to tell them? I couldn’t be upset with them for what they were saying or thinking. I knew they were concerned and afraid for me.
“Let me get her dressed so we can be on our way home,” my mother said.
Dad nodded and rose. “I’ll finish up whatever paperwork there is and meet you in the lobby,” he said.
The medicine I had been given was kicking in, and I felt as if I could drift away. They took me out in a wheelchair and fixed me up with a small pillow and a blanket in the rear seat. I slept all the way home, and when I got there, Mom helped me upstairs to bed and brought me something to eat.
“I’m sorry,” I told her while she sat watching me eat.
“Just finish. Get something into your stomach and rest, Amber. Tomorrow things will be better.”
When I was finished eating, she took the tray and gave me another one of the pills I had been given in the hospital. I didn’t want to take it.
“It will help you sleep,” she told me.
I took it, and she fixed my blanket and kissed me good night.
I closed my eyes and drifted in and out of sleep. Once, when I awoke, I thought there was someone standing in my room, but when I turned on the night light, there was no one. Through the window, the house next door was in darkness as usual. Silhouetted against the purplish-black night sky was that familiar crow on the roof. I stared at it for a while and then closed my eyes again and drifted in a sea of clouds into morning.
Epilogue
Mostly to please my parents, I agreed to see a therapist. Of course, they wanted to keep it a secret. My mother spoke with Dr. Immerman, who recommended someone who had offices in Greenwood. This therapist, Debra Martinson, specialized in the problems of younger people, especially teenage girls. She was about forty, probably, but had a very young face and a sweet, even bubbly personality. I think she was successful with teenage girls because she seemed to be one herself, but with far more wisdom. We got to know each other well during the first session. She almost didn’t even bring up the reason for my coming to see her. It was toward the end of the session when she asked me if I found myself fantasizing often.
“All of us do,” she added, “right up to the day we die.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“But you feel this was more right now. That’s natural, Amber. You’re invested in this far more than you’ve invested yourself in anything. We’ll give it time. If anything else occurs between now and the next time we meet, please write it down as closely to what happened as you can, okay? Otherwise, don’t change your life. I mean, do whatever you usually do.”
“What if my friends ask me about him?”
“Just say he’s gone. He is, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” I admitted reluctantly.
She smiled. “With time, it will all be less painful for you. Someday you’ll meet someone else who will capture your affections, and this will all drift away like some dream.”
I nodded, but I didn’t believe her. Time passed. We met again and again, each time talking less and less about Brayden and more about other things girls my age agonized about, especially the future that was coming, my leaving for college, my plans for a career, and my maturing relationship with my parents.
“Believe me,” she said, “it will be harder for them to let you go than for you to leave.”
We hugged after that session. She told me that she was going to advise my parents that regular sessions with her weren’t necessary anymore and that she should be on a call-as-needed basis. Even though I had been reluctant to see her and that reluctance had come from my fear that she would get me to believe that all that had happened was some fantasy of my own making, I was sorry to leave her. She was likable, understanding, and she never made me feel as though there was anything seriously wrong with me.
Whatever, it satisfied my parents.
I avoided Ellie and the other girls for as long as I could but finally decided to go out with them one night. Even though there was still lots of time left to the summer, everyone’s thoughts
were on the impending school year, the senior year for almost all of us. We talked about high school things such as the senior prom, but we also talked about the colleges most of us were going to attend. I was still planning on staying in Oregon. Others loudly voiced their desire to get “as far away from this place as possible.”
My experience with Shayne Allan was no longer a hot topic of conversation. Some of the other girls were having their own summer romances and wanted to talk more about themselves. I was grateful for that. Ellie was the only one who asked me about Brayden, and I did what Debra Martinson had advised me to do. I simply said he was gone and I didn’t know where his family had resettled.
“I guess it wasn’t even enough of an affair to remember,” Ellie said, and I laughed. “What?”
“My father would immediately say, ‘Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant.’”
“Who?”
“That’s what I would say, and he would howl. They were the stars in the movie.”
“What movie?”
“Forget about it,” I told her, and asked someone else a question to get off the topic.
By mid-August, I had gotten so that I could walk past the house next door without giving it a second look. I was back to the way I was about that house before the Matthewses had moved in, and once again it was just a deserted old house. And then, one day, a crew arrived to begin repainting it, repairing all that needed to be repaired and cleaning up the yard. Some landscaping was being done, too, and the sidewalk was replaced. Von Richards told us that it had been sold to a family with two young children, a boy of eight and a girl of ten. The husband was an attorney who was joining Dave Russell’s firm.
I knew that my parents were happy about it. The dreary, dark structure would literally disappear under the paintbrushes and sprays. It was like bringing the curtain down on some malicious, wicked dream. Any lingering thoughts and visions I had would be washed away.
“This time, we’re bringing a cake or something over to them the day they move in,” Dad said at dinner one night. My mother agreed. They both looked to me for my reaction, but I just smiled softly and nodded. Our talk returned to the store, the expansion Mom was now agreeing to do, and, of course, the excitement of my college plans, which would grow and loom larger as my senior year progressed.
I knew that nothing seemed to make them both more nervous than my wish to go for a walk at night after dinner alone, so I avoided doing that for nearly the whole summer. But one night in late August, I did just that. This year, the geese were leaving earlier, and the old-timers were predicting a colder, longer winter.
When I set out, I was intending to walk to the beginning of Main Street and then turn back, but I felt an overwhelming calling and turned off the street to take that shortcut between the Littlefield and Knotts houses. It was a good night for it, because the moon was nearly full, and there was little cloud cover. For me, it was more like a spotlight illuminating the path through the woods and down to the lagoon.
It was as quiet as ever. The nights were much cooler already, so there were no boats to be seen on the lake, and it was even difficult to hear the voices of people outside their lakeside homes. There was, in fact, a cathedral stillness. The birds I saw were as unmoving as frescoes on a church wall. The breeze barely made a ripple in the surface of the water.
I probably wouldn’t have done it if it were not so well lit a night, but I turned and trekked through the woods to the front of the old cabin. For a few moments, I stood there looking at it, feeling like someone who was revisiting a dream, someone who had fallen so deeply asleep that she couldn’t keep herself from slipping through the darkness. I saw the owl on the roof. It, too, looked more like a carving, some stone icon drawn on the wall of night.
Unafraid, I walked on and opened the cabin door. The moonlight seeped through every crack and opening, providing a hazy glow. I stared into the darkness until my eyes, now used to it, focused on what looked like an old notebook on the floor. I entered very slowly and at first just stood there looking down at it. Then I knelt and picked it up. It was a notebook. I moved into more moonlight and opened the cover. There was a title page: “The Eyes Behind the Eyes, A book of poems by Brayden Matthews.”
I looked around sharply, turning in every direction. Then I went outside and listened.
“Brayden,” I called.
There was only silence.
But I didn’t need to hear him call back. I knew he was there and had been.
I had his book of poems.
Years later, when the man I fell in love with and married would ask me about them, I would tell him that they were written by a young man who’d had a tragic death but was still able to give someone else the gifts of hope and love.
Of course, he wouldn’t fully understand.
But when my oldest daughter was ready, I would tell her my story and give the book of poems to her, and I was sure she would understand.
Embracing the book, I walked home that night feeling as if I would always be protected in the darkness.
Pocket Books
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Forbidden Sister
V.C. Andrews®
Available in paperback
November 2012
from Pocket Books
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Forbidden Sister . . .
Prologue
My mother wasn’t supposed to have me. She wasn’t supposed to get pregnant again.
Nearly nine years before I was born, she gave birth to my sister Roxy. Her pregnancy with Roxy was very difficult, and when my mother’s water broke and she was rushed to the hospital, Roxy resisted coming into the world. My mother says she fought being born. An emergency cesarean was conducted and my mother nearly died. She fell into a coma for almost three days, and after she regained consciousness, the first thing her doctor told her was never to get pregnant again.
When I first heard and understood this story, I immediately thought that I must have been an accident. Why else would they have had another child after so many years had passed? She and Papa surely had agreed with the doctor that it was dangerous for her to get pregnant again. Mama could see that thought and concern in my face whenever we talked about it, and she always assured me I wasn’t a mistake.
“Your father wanted you even more than I did,” she told me, but just thinking about it made me wonder about children who are planned and those who are not. Do parents treat children they didn’t plan any differently from the way they treat the planned ones? Do they love them any less?
I know there are single mothers who give away their children immediately because they can’t manage them or they don’t want to begin a loving relationship they know will not last. Some don’t even want to set eyes on them. When their children find out that they were given away, do they think about the fact that their mothers really didn’t want them to be born? How could they help but think about it? That certainly couldn’t be helpful to their self-confidence.
Despite my mother’s assurances, I couldn’t help wondering. If I weren’t planned, was my soul floating around somewhere minding its own business and then suddenly plucked out of a cloud of souls and ordered to get into my body as it was forming in Mama’s womb? Was birth an even bigger surprise for babies not planned? Maybe that was what really happened in Roxy’s case. Maybe she wasn’t planned and that was why she had resisted.
Wondering about myself always led me to wonder about Roxy. What sort of a shock was it for her when she first heard she was going to have a sister after having been an only child all those years? She must have known Mama wasn’t supposed to have me. Did she feel very special because of that? Did she see herself as their precious golden child, the only one Mama and Papa could have? And then when Mama told her about her new pregnancy, did she pout and sulk, thinking she would have to share our parents’ attention and love? Share her throne? Was she worried that she would have to help take care of me and that would cut into her fun time? Although I didn’t kn
ow how she felt about me for some time, from the little I remember about her, I had the impression I was at least an inconvenience for her. Maybe my being born was the real reason Roxy became so rebellious.
My mother told me that my father believed her complications giving birth to Roxy were God’s first warning about her. However, despite her difficult birth, there was nothing physically wrong with Roxy. She started out exceptionally beautiful and is to this day, but according to Mama, even when Roxy was an infant, she was headstrong and rebellious. She ate when she wanted to eat no matter what my mother prepared for her or how she tried to get her to eat, and she slept when she wanted to sleep. Rocking her or singing to her didn’t work. My mother told me my father would get into a rage about it. Finally, he insisted she take Roxy to the doctor. She did, but the doctor concluded that there was absolutely nothing wrong with Roxy. My father ordered her to find another doctor. The result was the same.
Roxy’s tantrums continued until my mother finally gave in and slept when Roxy wanted to sleep. She even ate when Roxy wanted to eat, leaving my father to eat alone often.
“If I didn’t eat with her, she wouldn’t eat or would take hours to do so,” my mother said. “Your father thought she was being spiteful even when she was an infant.”
According to how my mother described all this to me, Roxy’s tantrums spread to everything she did and everything that was done with her or for her. My father complained to my mother that he couldn’t pick Roxy up or kiss her unless she wanted him to do so at that moment. If he tried to do otherwise, she wailed and flailed about “like a fish out of water.” My mother didn’t disagree with that description. She said Roxy would even hold her breath and stiffen her body into stone until she got her way. Her face would turn pink and then crimson.
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