Echoes in the Walls

by V. C. Andrews

  I did sense how hard he was trying to be different from the man he was before the Revelations. I believed he wanted to be closer to me, although not at the point where I would say loving. He certainly wasn’t loving with Samantha. I suspected her resemblances to her mother prevented him from being so. He seemed to be constantly reprimanding her whenever he was with her in Wyndemere. Maybe he saw that he wouldn’t be able to change her. His smiles about anything were tempered considerably since Ryder’s near drowning and the aftermath, but I thought I could count on the fingers of one hand how many times I witnessed him smiling at Samantha or at something she had said, even before the accident.

  However, it wasn’t all that different for me, at least not yet. When he heard about my plans to go to a movie and meet a friend, he didn’t volunteer to drive me. To be fair, he had to deal with Samantha, but still, couldn’t he have arranged it so he took care of both of us? People as rich and as busy as my father did depend on help, drivers, and secretaries. My mother filled so much of that role for him, but she always had. The Revelations hadn’t changed any of that very much. I wondered if things really ever would change.

  When we arrived at the mansion, I kissed and thanked Mr. Stark. My mother was in the living room reading a new novel, which I knew she was doing mostly to pass the time while she waited for me. My father was nowhere around, and neither was Samantha or Ryder.

  “Mr. Stark was there waiting for me the moment I stepped out of the mall,” I said immediately.

  She lowered her book and shook her head. “That man doesn’t know the meaning of ‘No, thank you.’ When he sets his mind on something, he is the most bullheaded man you’ll ever meet. But his heart is in the right place. Remember, he’s been watching over you since your first cry.”

  “I know.”

  “And your evening?”

  “The movie was exciting.” I hesitated, and then I thought to say it. “Ivy invited a boy to join us, Dillon Evans. She’s practically the only friend he has at school. He’s a senior, but he doesn’t hang out with anyone in his class.”

  “Oh. Only one friend? Something wrong with him?”

  “He thinks too much,” I said.

  She smiled. “Such men are dangerous.”

  I laughed, too. She was referring to Shakespeare’s line in Julius Caesar, a play I had read last year. She had seen it performed in a theater in Guildford when she was fifteen.

  “I do feel there is something dangerous about him. But not in a bad way,” I quickly added. “I think he’s a Sagittarius. You know, unemotional, someone who says what he means and doesn’t hold back.”

  “I see. So do you like him or not?”

  I hesitated, and she raised her eyebrows, a gesture that pushed me to think about my feelings. It was always easy for me to reveal them, to talk about them, with my mother.

  “I’m not sure. He’s going out for the play, too.”

  “Okay.” She smiled. “You’re auditioning for a part, then?”

  “The female lead.”

  “Why not?” She closed the book she was reading and reached for my hands. “It’s good to see you enthusiastic about something outside of this house, Fern.” She pressed her fingers to my palms and then let go. The stamp of approval, I thought, but I’d always want hers. Nevertheless, deciding to do something that could take me from Wyndemere after school for months shook my conscience.

  “How is Ryder? Mr. Stark told me he was unable to go out with his father and sister.”

  She nodded. “The medicine has to be adjusted, but he’s fine. I made sure he ate well.”

  “And my father?”

  “Getting some desperately needed sleep, I imagine. I think he would have rather performed a bypass than take Samantha to Jolly Joe’s.”

  “I bet. Going up to bed,” I said.

  “I want to read a while. Tomorrow’s the end of your holiday, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I have some reading I was supposed to do and a paper I was supposed to write, so I’ll have my face in books most of the day.”

  She nodded. I kissed her good night and hurried up the stairs.

  When I reached the top, I glanced toward Ryder’s room. I debated looking in on him. How would that be interpreted if my father saw me do it? Why did it need to be interpreted as anything more than healthy concern? It irked me that everything I did with Ryder from now on, anything I said to him, even how I looked at him, was always going to be scrutinized. I had felt it in my heart since the day he returned from the clinic. The truth was that my father really didn’t trust me. Perhaps he sensed the underlying stream of anger that still flowed inside me. Maybe he expected me to defy the forbidden as an act of rage as much as an act of love. Wouldn’t anyone, any other girl, feel this injustice, this quiet betrayal and deception that had been going on inside Wyndemere for all her life?

  I think it was a different sort of suspicion for my mother. She knew better than my father could how much I longed to be loved. She knew how vulnerable I was, perhaps how desperate. The passion Ryder and I once enjoyed was not easy to reject or even put aside. It would hover in every look, every soft smile, and yes, every touch, no matter how insignificant that might be. He could brush against me, and my heart would still flutter.

  When would that end? Maybe it wouldn’t. Was that a curse? This mansion could be as much of a home to curses as it was to secrets. In fact, curses and secrets were my true inheritance, my true parents, I thought.

  I was about to turn toward my bedroom when I saw Ryder standing there in his doorway. He was wearing only his pajama bottoms. I glanced quickly down the stairs. How long before my mother would come up? I looked down the hallway toward my father’s bedroom. It was quiet.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. He stood there looking out at me.

  “Ryder?” I stepped toward him.

  He stepped back and closed the door.

  It gave me a chill.

  It was as if he was angry I had gone out.

  Of course, that was foolish, my own wild imagination at work again. I stood there for a few moments, and then I heard my mother starting to come up and I turned quickly and hurried to my bedroom. When I had closed my door behind me, I stood there thinking and coming to the realization I had been avoiding.

  I had to find a way to get over this, this passion that lingered. If I didn’t, I would only hurt myself and Ryder even more.

  7

  I COULDN’T HAVE been more surprised when my phone rang late Sunday morning and the voice on the other end said, “I wrote a new poem last night, one that I’d like you to read.”

  I was stunned. Ivy had told me that Dillon didn’t let many people read his poems. She, in fact, hadn’t read one.

  When I didn’t answer instantly, he added, “In case you’re wondering, I’m not stalking you. Ivy gave me your phone number. Are you going to be mad at her now?”

  “Of course not. Is this poem about the movie?”

  “No. That’s a review, not a touch of poetry in it. It’s done and emailed to the editor of the school paper. Before you ask, I don’t like emailing my poems. I think it’s important to be there when someone reads them.”

  “Who have you shown them to?”

  “Why?”

  “Teachers?”

  “Teachers don’t count,” he said, “but I’ve never shown any to any teacher I thought would just say nice things and pat me on the head.”

  “So no one, then?”

  “Very few. The point is, I can tell when someone is being honest or not.”

  “Doesn’t that put more pressure on the reader?”

  “Sure,” he said without hesitation.

  I had to laugh at how honest he was. “Okay. I guess tomorrow when—”

  “How about I pick you up in an hour and we go to lunch?” he asked quickly. “I know this cool restaurant called Nature’s Ways.”

  “In an hour? Today?”

  “In an hour would have to be today
unless I called you at midnight. Too soon? You need more than an hour? What, did you just get up or something?”

  “No, I . . .”

  Every time during the past few months whenever I looked at a boy in school with an inkling of romantic interest, I immediately thought of Ryder. Just taking a second glance at another boy flooded me with waves of guilt. There he was at home, incapacitated, and here I was thinking of how to get back into the swing of things and with a different boy. Of course, everything I had learned about myself and everything my mother had wanted for me now urged me not to feel this way, that, in fact, feeling this way was morally wrong for both Ryder and myself. The guilt and especially the deeper romantic feelings had to end.

  Nevertheless, I sat back, thinking about Ryder before I could respond to Dillon’s invitation to lunch. I hadn’t seen Ryder all morning. He wasn’t down for breakfast, and when I had come upstairs, his door was closed. My mother had told me everything was fine. My father had gone off to the hospital, and Samantha was planning to go to a friend’s house for lunch and probably the remainder of the day, the last day of the vacation, which she treated as if it was the last day of freedom, gasping about how short the holiday had been.

  For the first week or so of a new school year, there was always the excitement of new classes, new teachers, and often new students. Opportunities for socializing arose. There were sporting events, school events, and parties friends would have, as well as plans to do things together on weekends. This year, until now, really, none of that had seized my attention enough for me to do anything. I was absorbed in two things: my schoolwork, yes, but also Ryder and his recuperation. The possibilities of dating seemed nonexistent for me, which was the real reason I had rejected the few invitations I had received, but now, suddenly, I was attracted by the idea. I felt like I was rising out of some darkness. Maybe that was because Dillon Evans was definitely different; it all seemed different.

  “No, an hour’s fine,” I said. “Do you know how to get to my house?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s practically a historic landmark. And not just because you live there, although I’m sure that adds to it.”

  “Very funny.”

  “See you soon. Oh, and you don’t have to wear anything fancy. It’s sort of a bohemian hangout, stuck in the sixties. They play a lot of Bob Dylan. You know who he is?”

  “I know who he is. I don’t live in a bubble.”

  “Don’t knock living in bubbles. You can float above everything. Ciao,” he said.

  Ciao? I thought, and smiled. Cathy Stark was always saying “Ciao for now” ever since she had returned from a vacation in Rome.

  As soon as I hung up, I was filled with a sense of dread. Had I made a terrible mistake? This would be the first time I’d be alone with a boy since I was alone with Ryder. What if I had nothing to say? What if I looked too nervous? Maybe I wasn’t ready for this.

  I called Ivy to tell her. She picked up so quickly I imagined she had been waiting by her phone, anticipating my call. Dillon must have just asked her for my number.

  “I had a suspicion that was going to happen,” she said when I described his call and invitation.

  “Well, you would. You gave him my number.”

  She laughed. “I didn’t want to scare you off, but I didn’t tell you everything last night,” she said after a pause.

  “Meaning?”

  “He asked me about you before I mentioned auditioning for Dracula,” she said.

  “When did he ask?”

  “A while ago.”

  “What did he ask?”

  “What were you really like. Were you seeing anyone, maybe from another school? Was your brother’s accident the only thing that depressed you and made you put on your funeral face?”

  “He said I had a funeral face?”

  “You haven’t exactly been the life of the party these days,” Ivy said. “Not that I blame you. You’ve been through so much.”

  Had I confided too much in her? She was practically the only one I had told anything about my family.

  “I never realized he was watching me so closely. He never said a word to me before last night, and suddenly he calls to take me to lunch and to read his poem. It’s a little freaky.”

  “Maybe that’s what you need.”

  “What?”

  “A little freaky,” she said, and laughed. “You’d better call me later and give me a full report about your date. I’m responsible for this. I invited him to join us last night.”

  “And you gave him my phone number. I’ll either blame you or—”

  “Thank me? I’m actually a little jealous. He’s never asked me to read one of his poems. You connected with something in him. I suppose the question is, will you connect with something in him?”

  “Don’t turn it into a soap opera,” I warned.

  She laughed.

  “I’ll call you,” I promised, and hung up, running to find the right thing to wear.

  After hearing what Ivy had said, my nervousness changed to excitement. It really shouldn’t have surprised me. This was my first real date since the prom disaster. Ryder and I never had a chance to go out on a date, and now we certainly wouldn’t. We had planned on doing it as soon as things calmed.

  “The first chance I get, I’m taking you to dinner in a fancy restaurant,” he had said. “We’ll get very dressed up. Everyone will be looking at us, wondering who that beautiful couple is.”

  “The plans of mice and men,” I thought. Who knew that the roof would come crashing down on our short romance and condemn it forever and ever?

  And yet when I paused to look at myself, I thought I saw some self-deception. Deep in my heart, I still harbored the belief that I could not feel as close to any boy as I still did to Ryder. Going out to lunch with Dillon was safe. How could I get involved with someone so different? This was just an amusement, I told my image in the mirror. Nothing would come of it.

  After I fixed my hair, did my makeup, and dressed in simple jeans and a light blue sweater, I hurried down to tell my mother my plans. Mrs. Marlene had just arrived, returning from her holiday vacation, looking happy and rested. She and my mother were catching up in the kitchen.

  “Well, just look how this sneaky one goes and grows more mature as soon as I leave the house,” Mrs. Marlene said.

  We hugged.

  “Was Santa good to you?”

  “Very,” I said.

  My mother saw that I was carrying my coat. “Where are you going?”

  “I’ve been asked to lunch,” I said.

  “By Prince Harry? You look dolled up enough.” She turned to Mrs. Marlene. “My father wouldn’t let me wear lipstick until I was seventeen and never in the house. I had to stand outside and look in a window to put it on. He insisted it made me look cheap. So?” she asked me. “What’s this about?”

  “No, he’s not your Prince Harry. Prince Dillon Evans,” I replied.

  “Oh, the boy you mentioned from the movies.”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled. “I thought you had a ton of leftover work to do.” She turned to Mrs. Marlene. “They’re all the same, leaving everything until the last minute.”

  “I’m sure she’ll do what she has to do. Who’s this Dillon Evans?” Mrs. Marlene asked, crossing her arms over her bosom and putting on her scrutinizing face. I really had two mothers in Wyndemere as I was growing up.

  “As my mother said, just a boy I met at the movies last night.” Essentially, I thought, that was true. I couldn’t say I had met him previous to that. “He goes to our school. He’s a senior,” I said. “He had a big part in the last school play, and he writes poetry.”

  “Does he, now?” Mrs. Marlene said.

  I looked at my mother. She was caught between a smile and a worry.

  “Okay?”

  “You know, now that I think about it, I didn’t go on my first date until I was seventeen, and that was for fish and chips,” my mother said as a way of saying yes. �
��He was a shy boy, Michael Cook, but he took off his mitten to hold hands with me to and from the pub. I thought that was a nice gesture.”

  “I won’t talk about my first date,” Mrs. Marlene said. “I almost swore off men.”

  They both laughed. Sometimes life, not birth, turned two women into sisters.

  “Where is this prince taking you for lunch?” my mother asked.

  “A place called Nature’s Ways.”

  “I swear, the names they come up with for restaurants these days,” Mrs. Marlene said. “The most popular restaurant in my hometown was Joe’s.”

  “Nothing compares to the names of pubs in England,” my mother said, fondly recalling. “The Bull’s Head, Crocker’s Folly, the Blind Beggar, just to name a few.”

  Mrs. Marlene smiled, but my mother suddenly looked sad, homesick. It was interesting how rarely I saw that expression on her face. I thought the older I got, the more it began to show, the more she thought about herself and what she had left behind.

  We heard the doorbell. I looked at the clock above the refrigerator. He was right on time.

  “Shouldn’t I meet this Dillon Evans? He could be Jack the Ripper,” my mother said. “Even though he writes poetry.”

  “I guess,” I said, but I knew I would hold my breath the whole time. Who knew what Dillon would say or how he would look? She might shut the door in his face.

  When I opened the door, Dillon was standing there in a dark blue wool peacoat, a pair of jeans torn at the knee, pretty scuffed-up black shoe boots, and a New York Yankees cap with the letters almost completely faded. He wasn’t kidding when he told me we weren’t going to a fancy place.

  He was looking down as if he was very shy.

  “Hi,” I said. He looked up and saw my mother beside me.

  “Hey.”

  “This is Dillon Evans,” I said. “Dillon, this is my mother, Emma Corey.”

  “Hi,” he said. He kept his hands in his pockets, something I knew my mother noticed.

  “Hello,” my mother said. “Do you live far from here?” she asked. Maybe she wanted him to go home and change into more acceptable clothes.

  He looked at me for some hint and then shrugged. “Far? About thirty minutes.”