“No. The family is what keeps us strong. I know that now. Your father’s alone, and you’ll be alone.”
“Not if I have you.”
“You won’t,” I said.
His smile changed quickly to a grimace of incredulity. “You can’t really want to stay here, be with them, after all they’ve done to you, Sage.”
“They did what had to be done. I believe in them.”
His incredulity turned to raw anger, his eyes reddening, his lips taut. The bones of his jaw and his cheeks pressed up against his skin. I could feel his rage flowing out of his body, but I held my ground. I locked my eyes on his. I had grown stronger. He couldn’t make me back down, and he knew it.
“We’re going,” he said. “We won’t be back. My father won’t let me return.”
“Then don’t go. Come inside the house with me, and meet those who can help you, change you, make you a part of the family.”
“Part of that family?” He shook his head. “You’re a terrible disappointment, Sage. You’ll make my father see me as a failure. I was supposed to bring you into our family.”
“He’s the failure, and you’ll be one, too. I can see your future. It’s dark and full of unhappiness and pain, but you can change it.”
He shook his head. He looked like he was going to cry now.
“Summer, please, listen to me.”
“No,” he said, stepping back. He looked up at the house. “I’m going. You’ll be sorry. No one will love you like I do.”
“Yes. Someone will,” I said.
“You can’t see your own future.”
“I can see his. He’s out there for me.”
He turned and started back toward the forest. Before entering it, he looked back at me. Then he looked toward my house and started to run deeper into the woods. I watched him disappear in the trees, run into a shadow of himself, as if his body had been vaporized. I took a deep breath and started back to the house, pausing when I looked up and saw them all standing out front, looking my way. That was what had made him run, the sight of them gathered, the power of their combined energy sent in his direction. I walked faster toward them. They waited for me, but no one was smiling.
“Why did you meet him?” my mother asked immediately.
“To see if you were right that he knew who I was. I had to know for certain. I won’t live with doubts. Not anymore,” I said, with a firmness they recognized and appreciated.
“Well? What did you learn?” she asked.
“You were right, but it isn’t all his fault.”
“He is what he is now,” my father said.
“We can’t change that,” Uncle Alexis added. “It’s beyond our powers. Many things are. You’ll learn the limits.”
Yes, yes, I thought with exhaustion. I’ll learn everything. I looked back at the woods. “Where will he go?”
“Where he has already gone . . . into the darkness,” Uncle Alexis said. “It’s where he would have taken you, too.”
“Despite what you’re saying, I want you all to know that I can’t help but feel sorry for him.”
“That’s the goodness in you,” Aunt Suzume said.
“Soon he’ll feel sorry for himself, too,” my mother added. “Come into the house now, Sage. We have things to teach you, things for you to do.”
She held out her hand. I glanced one more time at the forest shadows, then took her hand and started to walk with them.
I suddenly stopped. “Wait,” I said, letting go of her. “I have something else to do first. I’ll be right there.”
They looked at me a moment, and then Uncle Alexis nodded at the door, and they all went inside.
I went to our garage and got a shovel. Then I walked fifty paces toward the north and stopped to dig a hole in the ground. Instinctively, I knew how deep it had to be. When it was deep enough, I reached into the pocket of my jeans and took out Summer’s pendant. I dropped it into the hole and covered it with dirt and small rocks forming the shape of a pentacle.
After I patted it down, I looked out at the lake and the woods. The crow had come back. It was flying its own patterns over the water, feeling free and alive again. When it reached the farthest end of the lake, it looked like a large dot moving through the air. I glanced back at the covered hole.
“He’s gone,” I whispered to the breeze that embraced my words to carry them off. “He’s gone for good.”
Silently, I walked back to the house to join my family and become one of them forever.
Epilogue
I stood off to the side in the girls’ section of the department store and watched her with her two daughters, one fourteen and one ten. There were clear resemblances to me in her, I thought. Our hair was the same color. Our noses and mouths were the same. She was very pretty, and so were her daughters. I was confident that in time, I would look more and more like her, and what in me that resembled my biological father would retreat into some small, dark pocket of my very being, never to resurrect itself.
My adoptive father and Uncle Wade were standing off to the side like two mother hens. They had come with me, expecting that all I would do was look at her and then turn around and go back with them, but I wanted more. I approached her and her daughters. They were sifting through a rack of blouses.
“The fashions change so quickly these days,” I muttered as I sifted through another rack close to the one they were at.
She turned to look at me, and her daughters did the same, but the girls quickly went back to their perusal of the blouses.
She smiled. “Which is what makes it harder for the mothers of girls who are too eager to grow up,” she said.
“That doesn’t change even when they grow up.”
“No, I suppose not. I like what you’re wearing.”
“Thank you. I like what you’re wearing, too.”
“I want to try this on, Mom,” her older daughter said, holding up a mint-green jeweled sweater.
Our mother looked at the price tag. “Just like Tara to pick out the most expensive one on the rack,” she said with a smile.
“Tara? You’re a fan of Gone with the Wind?” I asked, and she laughed.
“I’m surprised you’re aware of that. Most teenagers these days haven’t seen it or read it, but Tara will someday, won’t you, Tara?”
“Just to stop you from nagging me about it,” my half sister said. I smiled at her, and she laughed. She reminded me a lot of myself at her age.
“Go on. Try it on,” our mother told her, and she and her sister headed for the changing room.
“What’s your younger girl’s name? And don’t tell me Scarlett.”
“No. My husband wouldn’t put up with two from the same novel. She’s named after his mother, Grace.”
“Sweet. They’re both very pretty.”
“Thank you.” She looked at me curiously for a moment. “Have we met?”
“No. I’m just visiting an aunt in this town. I live in Massachusetts.”
“Oh. I have a cousin in Boston.”
“I’m in a smaller city, Dorey,” I said.
“What grade are you in?”
“I’m a senior now.”
“How wonderful. These are the best years of your life. Don’t rush them,” she advised.
I shrugged. “We don’t listen. Someone once said that youth was wasted on the young.”
“George Bernard Shaw.”
“Oh, you know.”
“I’m a community college English teacher,” she said. “I don’t volunteer that information,” she told me, leaning toward me to whisper as if we were sharing a state secret. “As soon as people learn that, they watch how they speak. Some don’t speak.”
I laughed. “I know exactly what you mean. I had an English teacher who would pounce on anyone who left out a consonant, like saying ‘mou-in’ instead of ‘mountain.’ ”
“Exactly. Where do you hope to go to college?”
“Probably somewhere in California, like Occidenta
l or UCLA. Maybe Stanford.”
“What do you want to study?”
“Humanity,” I replied, and she laughed. “The arts.”
“Something tells me you’re going to do well. What’s your name?”
“Sage,” I said.
She blinked her eyes. “I almost named my older daughter that. I mean, it came to me, but my husband thought it was a little too different. He was wrong, of course. It’s a beautiful name.”
“Thank you.”
I looked off to the right. My father and Uncle Wade were moving closer. Both looking very concerned.
“Well, I guess I had better go look for my aunt,” I said. “It was very nice meeting you.”
Tara came out of the changing room and stood in front of the mirror.
“Oh, she looks good in that,” I said.
“I know. I’m not ready for what’s coming.”
“Yes, you are,” I said. I knew. I knew she would be a wonderful mother and a wonderful grandmother for both her daughters’ children.
She looked at me strangely. “You sound so confident when you speak about the future, Sage. You have a fortune-teller’s eyes,” she said, and out of some instinct that no woman could subdue no matter what, she leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek before turning away to go to her children.
For me, it was as if I had traveled through time and for a moment lived and understood the life I would never have.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t even feel sad.
We had touched.
And really, that was what was most important after all.
ABOUT
One of the most popular authors of all time, V.C. Andrews has been a bestselling phenomenon since the publication of Flowers in the Attic, first in the renowned Dollanganger family series, which includes Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and Garden of Shadows. The family saga continues with Christopher’s Diary: Secrets of Foxworth, Christopher’s Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger, and Secret Brother. V.C. Andrews has written more than seventy novels, which have sold over 106 million copies worldwide and have been translated into twenty-five foreign languages.
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V.C. Andrews® Books
The Dollanganger Family Series
Flowers in the Attic
Petals on the Wind
If There Be Thorns
Seeds of Yesterday
Garden of Shadows
Christopher’s Diary: Secrets of Foxworth
Christopher’s Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger
Secret Brother
The Casteel Family Series
Heaven
Dark Angel
Fallen Hearts
Gates of Paradise
Web of Dreams
The Cutler Family Series
Dawn
Secrets of the Morning
Twilight’s Child
Midnight Whispers
Darkest Hour
The Landry Family Series
Ruby
Pearl in the Mist
All That Glitters
Hidden Jewel
Tarnished Gold
The Logan Family Series
Melody
Heart Song
Unfinished Symphony
Music in the Night
Olivia
The Orphans Miniseries
Butterfly
Crystal
Brooke
Raven
Runaways
The Wildflowers Miniseries
Misty
Star
Jade
Cat
Into the Garden
The Hudson Family Series
Rain
Lightning Strikes
Eye of the Storm
The End of the Rainbow
The Shooting Stars Series
Cinnamon
Ice
Rose
Honey
Falling Stars
The De Beers Family Series
Willow
Wicked Forest
Twisted Roots
Into the Woods
Hidden Leaves
The Broken Wings Series
Broken Wings
Midnight Flight
The Gemini Series
Celeste
Black Cat
Child of Darkness
The Shadows Series
April Shadows
Girl in the Shadows
The Early Spring Series
Broken Flower
Scattered Leaves
Secrets in the Attic
Secrets in the Shadows
The Delia Series
Delia’s Crossing
Delia’s Heart
Delia’s Gift
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The Heavenstone Secrets
Secret Whispers
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Family Storms
Cloudburst
The Kindred Series
Daughter of Darkness
Daughter of Light
The Forbidden Series
The Forbidden Sister
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Roxy’s Story
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My Sweet Audrina
Into the Darkness
Capturing Angels
The Unwelcomed Child
Bittersweet Dreams
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Following the death of Virginia Andrews, the Andrews family worked with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Virginia Andrews’s stories and to create additional novels, of which this is one, inspired by her storytelling genius.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Pocket Books mass market edition February 2016
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Cover design by Anna Dorfman
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ISBN 978-1-4516-5091-4
ISBN 978-1-4516-5099-0 (ebook)
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