Secrets of Foxworth by V.C. Andrews Page A

was obsessed with it. The implication was that she spent too much time on her makeup and hair and clothes, pushing her responsibilities onto both him and Cathy. Maybe Cathyloved her father more, but I sensed that she loved the idea of becoming as beautiful as her mother most. I wasn’t sure yet how Christopher felt about that. Did he want her to be as beautiful as their mother? Did he think she really could be?
    I noticed that whenever any of my friends complimented another on how handsome or beautiful their older brothers or sisters were, they seemed surprised. Was there something about being a brother or sister that made you feel weird or guilty if you were a girl and thought your older brother was handsome or if you were a boy and thought your older sister was beautiful? No one would deny that his or her mother was pretty.
    My mother was very attractive but in a more natural sort of way. We had the same hair and eyes, but I thought she had fuller lips and higher cheekbones whenever I compared myself to her now. I would hold her picture up beside me and look at myself in the mirror. Was that something Cathy Dollanganger would do? My mother didn’t use very much makeup, as I recall. According to Dad, she didn’t go to the beauty salon as often as most of her friends.
    â€œBut she could gussy up,” he told me, “whenever we had a fancy affair to attend.” He said that expression was something he had picked up from his grandmother, “gussy up.”
    â€œAll I have to do is use that once, and I’ll be marked for life in my school,” I told him.
    â€œIt says a lot more than cool, girl,” he replied, and we both laughed.
    More than once, I’d wished I had been born in an earlier time. Maybe Dad was exaggerating or saw things as having been better when he was younger because he wanted to think of them that way. One of my English teachers, Mr. Stiegman, once told us that nostalgia was nothing more than dissatisfaction with the present. Anything looked better than now, even harder times. It was a fantasy that people accept. Not according to my father, however. Besides harping on loyalty and complaining that youth was wasted on the young, he seemed genuinely happy with the twists and turns he had made in his life.
    It took a few hours to shop and then get everything put away. While Dad planned our dinner and then watched a basketball game, I went up to my room to do my homework. No matter what I was working on, my eyes would drift toward Christopher’s diary. It felt as if it was really calling to me: Read me. I need you to read me.
    But I resisted. I needed to concentrate on my work. Kane was right. I was neck-and-neck with another student in our class to be valedictorian, and I so wanted that to please my father and in my heart to please my mother, too. Ironically, that thought gave me pause again and drew me to look at the diary.
    I had felt Christopher’s pride in his accomplishments and how they pleased his parents. He wanted to be a doctor almost more for their sake than his own, but Cathy struck me as being far more self-centered. Was that because she was so young? On the otherhand, young children are always looking for their parents’ approval. That was why she was so afraid when the twins were announced. She thought she might lose that approval or have it diluted. After the twins were born, she was, according to Christopher, becoming more and more of a help to her mother and to her father before his death. Maybe she wanted the twins to love her more than they loved their mother. Maybe that was her sweet revenge.
    What a complicated family they had been, or were all families really just as complicated? Dad and I basically only had each other. We were a simple family now. After reading only part of Christopher’s diary, I made a mental note to pay more attention to my friends and their relationships with their parents and siblings to see if there were any sorts