“We’re going to do this secretly, I imagine.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “My father would be very upset with me otherwise.”
“Then I have another idea.”
The way he was looking at me actually gave me a chill for a moment. “What?” I whispered.
“We’ll read it only when you’re home alone. Mostly after school but also on weekends while your father’s at work on his new project.”
“Yes, of course, but . . .”
He looked up at the ceiling and nodded to himself.
“What?” I asked.
“And to get into it, really get into it, we’ll read it up in your attic,” he said.
I didn’t say yes to that immediately. The idea was both exciting and frightening to me. Kane was right. It would get us both into the story and the situation quickly and dramatically, but did I want to be in it that deeply? I was already finding myself identifying so closely with both Christopher and Cathy that I feared what he feared, cried when she cried, and felt the claustrophobia they both felt. My attic wasn’t as large by any means, but it was still closed in and full of memories. Just like the Dollanganger children had to keep what they were doing secret from all but their grandmother and their mother, we would have to keep what we were doing secret from my father.
I had never kept anything as serious as this secret from my father. What secrets had I kept? What I had bought him for his birthday and Christmas? He knew everything I did at school and everything that happened to me there. He knew every one of my friends. Oh, I didn’t talk about what girls talked about, and I didn’t give him a blow-by-blow description of my dates, especially with Kane, but these weren’t secrets so much as what gave me my independence a
nd my femininity. He didn’t expect to know or hear any of that.
What was more important, perhaps, was that I had never really disobeyed him. I had already done so by telling Kane what the diary was and how I had come to have it. Somehow, in the end, I had to believe in my heart that my father would understand.
“My attic is nothing like the one they were in. I mean, it’s probably not even a tenth of the size.”
He shrugged. “It’s like being on a movie set. Movie sets are only suggestions of what places are really like, but you get the sense of it.”
It was a weird idea, but I thought Christopher would approve of it. He’d want me to fully grasp what they had experienced.
I nodded slowly. “Okay. We’ll start tomorrow after school. Right now, I want to get back to our dinner,” I said.
“You need help?”
“No, I’ve done everything. Just like a man to ask afterward,” I added, and he laughed.
“Okay. I’ll start catching up. Call me when you want me to come down,” he said.
I had to smile. He was into this almost as much as I was. “Put it back under the pillow when I call you.”
“Yes, Mommy,” he said.
I felt the blood rise in my face. Cathy Dollanganger had just stepped into her mother’s shoes firmly and perhaps forever.
I nodded and started to leave the room. I looked back. He was sprawled on my bed, and as crazy as it might seem, I didn’t see him.
I saw Christopher Dollanganger.
Waiting.
For me to join him in the attic.
Read on for a sneak peek at what happens next in
Christopher’s Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger
By V.C. Andrews®