Dollenganger 02 Petals On the Wind Read Online Free Page B

something to convince me, but I must dissuade you. First you have to tend to your health and Carrie's. Any day the two of you could come down as swiftly as Carrie and be just as sick. After all, didn't all three of you exist under the same miserable
conditions?"
Four of us, not three, was the whisper in my ears, but I didn't speak of Cory.
"If you meant it about taking us in until Carrie is well," said Chris with his eyes shining suspiciously, "we're extremely grateful. We'll work hard, and when we can we'll leave and repay you every cent you spent on us."
"I meant it. And you don't have to repay me, except by helping out in the house and the yard. So, you see, it isn't pity, or charity, only a business arrangement to benefit all of us."

A New Home
.
    That's the way it started. We moved quietly into the doctor's home and into his life. We took him over, I know that now. We made ourselves important to him, as if he hadn't had a life before we came. I know that now too. He made it seem we were doing him a favor by relieving him of a dreary, lonely life by adding our youthful presence. He made us feel that we were being generous to share his life, and oh, we did want to believe in someone.
    He gave Carrie and me a grand bedroom to share, with twin beds and four tall windows facing south, and two windows facing east. Chris and I looked at each other with a terrible shared hurt. We were to sleep in different rooms for the first time in ever so long. I didn't want to part from him and face the night with only Carrie, who could never protect me as he had. I think our doctor may have sensed something that told him to fade into the background, for he excused himself and drifted toward the end of the hall. Only then did Chris speak. "We've got to be careful, Cathy. We wouldn't want him to suspect. . . ."
    "There is nothing to suspect. It's over," I answered, but I didn't meet his eyes, guessing, even then, that it would never be over. Oh, Momma, look what you started by putting the four of us in one locked room, and leaving us there to grow up, knowing how it would be! You of all people should have known!
    "Don't," Chris whispered. "Kiss me good night, and there won't be any bedbugs here."
He kissed me, I kissed him, we said good night, and that was all. With tears in my eyes I watched my brother back down the hall, still holding his eyes on me.
In our room Carrie let out a loud howl. "I can't sleep in no little bed all by myself!" she wailed. "I'll fall off! Cathy, why is that bed so little?"
It ended up with Chris and the doctor coming back so they could take away the nightstand that separated the twin beds. Then they shoved the narrow beds so close they appeared one wide bed. This pleased Carrie enormously, but, as the nights passed, somehow the crack between our beds grew ever wider until I, the restless sleeper, finally woke up with one leg and one arm in the crack and Carrie being pulled along with me to the floor.
I loved that room Paul gave us. It was so beautiful with its pale blue wallpaper, and matching curtains. The rug was blue; each of us had a chair with lemon-yellow cushions and all the furniture was antique white. It was the kind of room a girl should have. No gloom. No pictures of hell on the wall. All the hell I had was in my mind, put there by thinking back much too often. Momma could have found another solution if she'd really wanted to! "She didn't have to lock us up!
It was greed, avarice, that damned fortune. . . and Cory was in the ground because of her weakness!
"Forget it, Cathy," said Chris when we were again saying good night.
I was terribly afraid to tell him what I suspected. My head bowed low against his chest. "Chris, it was a sinful thing we did, wasn't it?"
"It won't happen again," he said stiffly, then broke away and almost ran down the hall as if I were chasing. I wanted to lead a good life and hurt no one, especially Chris. Even so, I had to leave my bed around midnight and go to Chris. While he