House of Secrets

by V. C. Andrews

  “Let’s just say I wouldn’t rush to throw her a lifeline if she was in danger of drowning.”

  She sat beside me and stroked my hair.

  “I think you understand now what I meant when I told you once that you grow up when you face challenges. Dr. Davenport was appealing to the potential adult in both of you. He wouldn’t be doing it if he didn’t care about you, both of you.”

  “Funny way to show it. Ryder was so upset,” I said. “He did everything right. He basically rescued me, if you want to know. I wasn’t going to get into details in front of Bea Davenport, but Paul was out of control. He had persuaded me to go to Shane Cisco’s sister’s bedroom to get away from the raucous party. Alison and Ryder were somewhere else in the house, too. It was then that I realized Paul had taken something besides just drinking some vodka or something. It wasn’t pleasant. He was forcing himself on me.”

  “What?” She grimaced.

  “I was screaming, and Ryder heard me. He burst in, and I ran out.”

  “I see,” she said. “Well, then, Dr. Davenport was right. Maybe Ryder shouldn’t have been so eager to persuade you to go to the prom with Paul Gabriel.”

  “He just wanted me to have a good time, have a special night,” I protested. “He wanted me to go along with him and Alison. I’m sure he feels terrible about it now, and his father forbidding him, forbidding both of us, to do anything fun because of what others did is just . . . unfair. He makes it all sound like a recuperation from an illness, too. Dr. Davenport should try to be a father more and not just a great doctor.”

  “That’s exactly what he’s trying to do. He’s looking out for both of you.”

  “He’s looking out for the Davenport name and reputation, especially because of what his wife wants him to do. That’s all she cares about. She doesn’t care about her own daughter enough, either. They belong together. No wonder he married her. I hate it here now. I hate it!” I cried. “Why didn’t you just leave when you could? Why didn’t you return to a singing career or at least return to trying? Then we wouldn’t be stuck in this giant . . . dark . . . old mansion full of lies and ghosts.”

  She stared at me. The tears were streaking down my cheeks, but I didn’t wipe one away. I took a deep breath.

  “You said it was time to talk. Well, it is. I want to know everything now. I’m old enough. I feel like I’m living inside a cloud.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You are old enough. But are you mature enough?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  She rose, turned away, and, after a long moment, looked at me again. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth concerning how I came to be at Wyndemere,” she said. “Things for me were a lot worse in New York than I had described. It was as if my father’s curses over my disobeying him and leaving England were coming true. When my first roommate left, I struggled. I was working as a waitress and living off tips mainly. I tried getting work singing in bars, but that was difficult when I tried to coordinate with auditioning for parts in Broadway shows and working at the restaurant. There were so many young girls like me in New York, all dreaming of beginning a career in show business. The competition was overwhelming. Two hundred and fifty girls would show up for a tiny part in a musical. They didn’t even use your name. You were given a number. That’s what I began to feel like, a number.

  “Some girls my age were dancers going to every Broadway audition; some were trying to be actresses. When you went into a fast-food restaurant or one a little more like the one I had been working in, and you asked the young men or women what they were doing, pursuing, they all had similar answers. They were just working in service to make ends meet, but they were really pursuing a career in entertainment.

  “Many were very, very talented. I was sure that in their hometowns, they were the bee’s knees, but when they got to New York, they were competing, as I was, with even more talented people. Some of it might be luck, but in the end, you understood that the best of the best in a high school in Iowa or Nebraska, anywhere, or even a college drama program, would be lucky to get a job as an understudy in the chorus when it comes to Broadway.”

  She sat on my desk chair. I was mesmerized. It was as if she was opening the cover of a book of secrets kept buried for years.

  “Eventually, I was at a very low point, much lower than I led you to believe. I had one roommate after another, some in worse financial condition than I was in. One got married and left me. I had fallen seriously behind on my rent without a roommate sharing. The extra jobs I would apply for wouldn’t pay for my living expenses anyway, and many of these jobs wouldn’t enable me to go to auditions. Why would I take one? I felt like . . . like I was being smothered by reality, and the worst thing I feared was having to return to England and beg my father’s forgiveness.

  “I had his pride, you see. Doing something like that would have been devastating.” She paused as though she was deciding whether to continue. I was afraid she would decide not to.

  “What happened?” I asked. I feared what her next confession would be. It was sounding more and more like one of the typical runaway-girl stories we read and heard about, a desperate girl who turned to prostitution to survive. And then one day discovered she was pregnant.

  “I was behind three months on my rent at this point and down to my last few hundred dollars. I skipped lunch every day to still have that much. I wouldn’t even have enough money to buy a ticket home if I gave up. I’d have to call to get my mother to persuade my father to send the money. Desperate people do desperate things,” she said.

  “What did you do?” I asked again. What could she have done that was a desperate thing? My skin felt like it had turned to ice. Did I really want to hear this? Wasn’t I better off not knowing? Ignorance was bliss sometimes, and this felt like one of those times. Why did I push so hard for the truth?

  “The landlord of my building, Leo Abbot, had a younger brother who had suffered a heart attack and had to have an emergency bypass. It was performed by Dr. Davenport. The family lived in Hillsborough, you see. At the time, I knew or cared to know nothing about Hillsborough.

  “One night, Leo Abbot came to my apartment. I anticipated it, expecting him to give me my walking papers. He was a widower in his midfifties, who had two married daughters and five grandchildren. In the beginning, he was very pleasant and often teased me about my English accent and some of our expressions. He asked me about my family, and I told him how my father was furious at me for trying to develop a career in America. He said he couldn’t imagine disowning one of his children the way my father had disowned me.

  “To be honest, I exploited that to get him to be more patient about the rent. He liked me well enough to feel sorry for me and permit me to be in arrears for as much as three months, but I was sure his patience and sympathy had run their course. It was expected. He had a building with apartments in demand because it was in an ideal location. There was no question that he could rent the one I was in minutes after he had evicted me. I imagined he had a waiting list anyway.

  “I had no more promises to make and no pending possibilities to offer with any plea for more time. When he asked to come in to speak to me, however, I sensed different vibes coming from him. Unexpectedly, he was as pleasant as he was when I had first moved in. He asked me what I was intending to do now. I cried and admitted that there was nothing left to do but return to England. I promised him that I would find a job there and send him money until my back rent was paid up. He nodded and listened, and I thought that was it. I was ready to contact my mother and throw myself on my father’s mercy.

  “ ‘Well,’ Mr. Abbot said, ‘I guess you don’t have a young man to help, no romances, yet?’ I didn’t. I had dates, but I had yet to get serious with anyone. I was so fixed on my career. I wouldn’t permit myself to be distracted, and I knew how obligations to someone would conflict with potential opportunities. I had the ruthlessness to succeed. I was just . . . maybe not good enough.”

  “Or lucky enough,
” I offered. “You always said it was at least fifty percent luck, if not more.”

  She smiled. “Yes. You can tell yourself that. It helps relieve some of the pain of disappointment. Blame it on capricious luck, but you know I’ve told you many times that people who succeed simply have the persistence to accept defeat after defeat and still keep going. You can have all the talent in the world, but without that persistence, you won’t make it. Maybe I didn’t have it. Anyway, I told him I had no one like that. What difference did it make now, anyway?

  “ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘how would you like to make seventy-five thousand dollars?’

  “ ‘Seventy-five thousand?’ I said.

  “ ‘Yes.’ That seemed like all the money in the world to me. Then he added, ‘Your back rent due will be paid for, and you will have no living expenses for some time. Everything will be tax-free. I can assure you. You’ll actually have seventy-five thousand dollars after it’s over.’

  “ ‘After what’s over?’ I asked him. What did I have to offer anyone who would willingly pay me seventy-five thousand dollars? Be his or her private singer?

  “ ‘Pregnancy,’ he said.

  “ ‘What?’ I replied. My indignation began to shoot through my blood.”

  “I don’t blame you,” I said. “I’d have thrown him out.”

  She smiled. “The fury of youth. Not something easy to hold on to when you’re desperate, love. Hopefully, you never will be. Anyway, it wasn’t what you’re thinking. He wasn’t pimping me out, at least not in that sense.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “Surrogate conception,” she said.

  “Surrogate conception? I don’t really know what that is. I mean, I’ve heard something about it, but . . .”

  “That’s all right. At that time, I didn’t know anything about it, either.”

  “But who wanted you to do that?”

  “Dr. Davenport and his first wife, Samantha, were looking to employ a surrogate mother.”

  I felt the heat rise up my neck and into my face. What was she telling me? “You mean for Ryder?”

  “Yes, but let me explain. There are two kinds of surrogate mothers, traditional and gestational. The traditional is artificially inseminated with the father’s sperm. She carries the baby and delivers it and is the baby’s biological mother. Gestational surrogates have the egg from the mother and the father’s sperm from something known as in vitro fertilization. The egg and the sperm are combined in a laboratory. Once the embryo is formed, it’s placed in the uterus of the surrogate mother. That was what I had done to me.”

  “But why? Why did they want to form Ryder in a laboratory?”

  “It wasn’t that they wanted him formed in a laboratory, exactly. It’s not some Frankenstein experiment. At the time, it wasn’t that unusual.”

  “But why do that? Why have a surrogate mother?”

  “Samantha wanted a child, her own child, but she didn’t want to go through pregnancy. I told you once that she was like a child herself. Everything in her life was easy, had been made easy for her. She was very beautiful, and she knew it. She didn’t want to do anything that would threaten her beauty. The image of a pregnant woman and that woman being her terrified her. No, I should say it disgusted her. She simply couldn’t do it. She was afraid of every aspect of it, the pain, discomfort, stretch marks. You name it, she was afraid of it. There are many women like that.”

  “But how did you know all this?”

  “I didn’t at the time. She told me all this months later. The why wasn’t my business, and I wasn’t thinking or caring about reasons. The money was overwhelming.

  “So what I was offered was seventy-five thousand dollars to carry Samantha and Dr. Davenport’s baby. Leo Abbot had convinced Dr. Davenport that I’d be an ideal surrogate mother. My age and my situation recommended me. Dr. Davenport had me brought to his office in the family limousine to be examined by an obstetrician and pediatrician, Dr. Bliskin, who was a good friend of his. He was a very nice, good-looking man. He put me through extensive tests to confirm my health and my ability to carry a child, and then Dr. Davenport had his attorney draw up a contract between me and himself and his wife. There would be no question the baby belonged to them. I thought I’d go through it, deliver the baby, get my money, and return to New York well financed to pursue my career. I even sent my mother and my sister Julia some expensive gifts just to annoy my father.” She smiled.

  “I lived in the main house then, one bedroom down from Dr. and Mrs. Davenport’s bedroom. He had a nurse visit twice a week to check everything. I gave birth to Ryder in this house. Dr. Bliskin delivered Ryder. He remained Ryder’s and, for a while, your doctor, but you were too young to remember him, I’m sure. He was married with triplet girls, all prematurely born. He had a lot to do with his own family, obviously, so this was something of what we called a busman’s holiday.”

  “Why isn’t he my doctor now? The last time I went to a doctor, it was Dr. Abrams.”

  “He’s no longer working here. Years later, he went on to work in a big New York City hospital. How’s that? He got to New York, but I didn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you leave immediately afterward?” I asked.

  “I always intended I would. But I was talked into remaining to . . .” She paused.

  I knew what she was going to say. “To breastfeed him?”

  She nodded. “Dr. Davenport and his friend Dr. Bliskin believed that was the healthiest thing to do.”

  “And you were still going to leave when that was completed, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, but Dr. Davenport offered me an additional fifty thousand dollars to remain for a year as Ryder’s nanny.”

  “And you had me eventually to care for, too.”

  “Something I’ll never regret.”

  “What about my father, then?”

  “What about him?”

  “Does he even know I exist?”

  “Yes, but he couldn’t be your father or my husband.”

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “It’s better if you don’t know. Trust me about that, Fern.”

  “You’ll never tell me?”

  “Someday.”

  “He lives in this town?”

  “Just leave it for now. Anyway, the reason I wanted you to know my history here is so you’ll understand how deeply tied I am, we are, to Dr. Davenport. His wife can try to drive a wedge between us, but she won’t succeed.”

  “How could he possibly love her?”

  “She gave him Sam, and she fills a place he needs filled in his life. Why some women stay with the men they’ve married or vice versa is often more complicated than what you read in romance novels.”

  “Does Ryder know about you, what you did?”

  “No!” she exclaimed. “And you must promise me, swear on everything sacred, that you will never tell him. That is something I promised Dr. Davenport, actually agreed to formally in the contract, never to reveal I carried and delivered his son. Will you promise me?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But someday he should know the truth.”

  “That’s between Dr. Davenport and him, not us. Okay? Fern, you can hurt Ryder more than you know. He has a beautiful image of his mother. Just leave it at that.”

  “Okay.” I thought a moment. “But how did she get away with people believing she gave birth to Ryder?”

  “She claimed to be pregnant, and then in what were the latter months—some women don’t show until the seventh month, actually—she left to supposedly give birth in a special maternity hospital in Switzerland. When she wanted people to know she was back and the baby was born, I was introduced as the baby’s nanny, someone she had brought over from England. It made me sound very special, not that I was seen that much by her friends. It’s not hard to hide things in Wyndemere,” she added.

  “The house of secrets,” I said.

  “Yes.” She smiled. “That’s right, love, the house of secrets.”

  W
hen it came to secrets in Wyndemere, I was sure this wasn’t the last one I would learn.

  9

  I WAS HOPING to see Ryder later in the day, but he didn’t come around, and I didn’t dare go into the main house with Bea Davenport on the warpath. Of course, I didn’t see Sam. Ordinarily, I anticipated her sneaking over to see me, especially today to find out about my time at the prom. But now I imagined that she wouldn’t try to come over even if Bea Davenport had gone to one of her lunches with her posh friends. Surely by now, Bea had poisoned Sam even more against me, claiming I was a very bad influence on both her and Ryder, maybe even dangerous.

  A little after four, Alison called to see what I knew about the events that had occurred. She hadn’t gotten up until nearly two and had a message on her phone to call Ryder. She said she had a half dozen other messages from her girlfriends, who had sounded frantic, but she called him first, and he told her all that had happened.

  “He’s so upset,” she said. “And so am I. He was supposed to take me to lunch today. We had planned it.”

  “I think he’s upset about more than just lunch.”

  “Paul Gabriel is just so stupid. He deserves whatever he gets, ruining it for everyone else. You must have been desperate for a date.”

  “I wasn’t desperate.”

  “But I suppose you’re feeling sorry for yourself more than anyone else now,” she said.

  “No. Why would I just feel sorry for myself?”

  “This was your first prom, you got chosen to be queen, and now all everyone’s talking about are the terrible things. I’m glad now I wasn’t chosen prom queen. Not one I want to remember. My parents heard about it already. They know Paul drove us, of course, so they’re very upset and . . .” She paused. I could sense that, as my mother often said, the second shoe was about to drop.

  “What else, Alison?” I prodded.

  “They asked all sorts of questions about you because you were his date. I tried to assure them you had nothing to do with any drugs or alcohol, but . . .”

  “I should expect some people will think I did?”