Free Willow by V. C. Andrews

of how and why he married my adoptive mother in the first place. Despite what I saw of her in our home at times, I would have to agree with him that she could be a very charming woman. They apparently had some good years in the beginning.
Not long after my birth and subsequent adoption, my real mother left the clinic. His
description of their parting brought a flood of tears to my eyes. They both knew that his career, all his good work, all he had built up during his life, was in jeopardy, otherwise.
By the time I finished reading, I was truly physically and emotionally exhausted. I put all the pages back into the envelope and then hid it well under a pile of folders in one of my father's file cabinets. It terrified me just to imagine Aunt Ames getting her hands on it.
I went up to my room, my heart tossing and turning in a sea of emotions. When my head finally rested on my pillow, I felt as if I were sinking in that sea, all of the sadness, the joy, the fears. and the pleasures I'd read of and felt washing over me. I tossed and turned as if my bed were a small boat being rocked in a storm and actually woke up more exhausted than I was when I had gone to sleep.
Aunt Agnes didn't temper her voice in consideration of my still being asleep. I heard the house echoing with the orders she was shouting at the temporary hired help. It sounded as if she were rearranging the furniture below. Doors were slammed, and there were heavy footsteps up and down the stairway. The weight of what was to come kept me from rising, but I had to find the strength to face the day.
People began arriving soon after breakfast, and the steady flow never stopped until close to nine that night. The one visitor who interested me more than anyone at the moment was Dr. Renaldo Price, the chief administrator at my father's clinic. He was a man of about fifty but with a completely gray head of hair. He had been with my father from the beginning and surely knew the secrets that were buried in the envelope I had hidden under the files in Daddy's office.
I didn't see him very often. My adoptive mother was never fond of socializing with Daddy's
colleagues, especially the ants at the clinic.
"What could be worse than sitting at a dinner table with a Troup of psychiatrists?" she flippantly told him. "Everyone will be analyzing everyone else. I'd be afraid to utter a sound. and I'd be so selfconscious of every gesture. I'd be on pins and needles. I'd rather go to dinner with some of your patients," she said.
At first. he thought it was funny, but as time went by. I was sure he regretted the limitations she imposed. He was fond of his staff and enjoyed being with them. Slowly, piece by piece, she took apart the house of pleasure he had constructed, I thought. Maybe that was why he was so vulnerable to Cupid's arrow, even in his own clinic and with his own patient.
The few times I was able to meet and speak to Dr. Price, I found him to be a very kind, gentle man, with a fatherly demeanor about him. When he looked at me with his soft, hazel eyes. I felt he was really looking at me, listening to me, and wasn't like so many adults I knew, being polite, half distracted, not believing I, a child, was worth the investment of attention. One other thing made me feel comfortable with him: he never talked down to me. He spoke to me just the way he would speak to any adult and made me feel the things I told him were important and significant.
Now, here we were years later, neither of us feeling particularly talkative. Nevertheless, we spoke for a while in the living room. The chatter of the visitors had grown quite loud, overwhelming, in fact. Just like so many of these sad affairs I had attended with my father in the past, people were renewing old friendships, moving the conversation away from the tragedy to more comfortable zones. They were like horses with blinders, afraid to turn right or left for fear of catching someone wiping away a tear or speaking through trembling