Dollenganger 01 Flowers In the Attic Read Online Free

who would have to go on living without him And the twins, they hadn't even had the chance to know how wonderful he was--or had been. And when my tears were over, and my eyes swollen and red, and hurt from the rubbing, I heard soft footsteps coming to me--my mother.
She sat down on the grass beside me and took my hand in hers. A quarter-horned moon was out, and millions of stars, and the breezes were sweet with the newborn fragrances of spring. "Cathy," she said eventually when the silence between us stretched so long it might never come to an end, "your father is up in heaven looking down on you, and you know he would want you to be brave."
"He's not dead, Momma!" I denied vehemently.
"You've been out in this yard a long time; perhaps you don't realize it's ten o'clock. Someone had to identify your father's body, and though Jim Johnston offered to do this, and spare me the pain, I had to see for myself. For, you see, I found it hard to believe too. Your father is dead, Cathy. Christopher is on his bed crying, and the twins are asleep; they don't fully realize what `dead' means."
She put her arms around me, and cradled my head down on her shoulder.
"Come," she said, standing and pulling me up with her, keeping her arm about my waist, "You've been out here much too long. I thought you were in the house with the others, and the others thought you were in your room, or with me. It's not good to be alone when you feel bereft. It's better to be with people and share your grief, and not keep it locked up inside."
She said this dry-eyed, with not a tear, but somewhere deep inside her she was crying, screaming. I could tell by her tone, by the very bleakness that had sunk deeper into her eyes.
With our father's death, a nightmare began to shadow our days. I gazed reproachfully at Momma and thought she should have prepared us in advance for something like this, for we'd never been allowed to own pets that suddenly pass away and teach us a little about losing through death. Someone, some adult, should have warned us that the young, the handsome, and the needed can die, too.
How do you say things like this to a mother who looked like fate was pulling her through a knothole and stretching her out thin and flat? Could you speak honestly to someone who didn't want to talk, or eat, or brush her hair, or put on the pretty clothes that filled her closet? Nor did she want to attend to our needs. It was a good thing the kindly neighborhood women came in and took us over, bringing with them food prepared in their own kitchens. Our house filled to overflowing with flowers, with homemade casseroles, hams, hot rolls, cakes, and pies.
They came in droves, all the people who loved, admired, and respected our father, and I was surprised he was so well known. Yet I hated it every time someone asked how he died, and what a pity someone so young should die, when so many who were useless and unfit, lived on and on, and were a burden to society.
From all that I heard, and overheard, fate was a grim reaper, never kind, with little respect for who was loved and needed.
Spring days passed on toward summer. And grief, no matter how you try to cater to its wail, has a way of fading away, and the person so real, so beloved, becomes a dim, slightly out-of- focus shadow.
One day Momma sat so sad-faced that she seemed to have forgotten how to smile. "Momma," I said brightly, in an effort to cheer her, "I'm going to pretend Daddy is still alive, and away on another of his business trips, and soon he'll come, and stride in the door, and he'll call out, just as he used to, 'Come and greet me with kisses if you love me.' And--don't you see?-- we'll feel better, all of us, like he is alive somewhere, living where we can't see him, but where we can expect him at any moment."
"No, Cathy," Momma flared, "you must accept the truth. You are not to find solace in pretending. Do you hear that! Your father is dead, and his soul has gone on to heaven, and you should understand at