Free Willow by V. C. Andrews Page A

lips.
Margaret Selby was certainly helping the younger people feel at ease. She was rattling on and on about her impending wedding, reviewing the details as if she were embarking on a military campaign instead of a social event. She pounced on my cousin Lance the moment he entered the room, hardly giving him time to greet me or Aunt Agnes. I laughed to myself as I watched him searching for some avenue of escape, but she was relentless-- and whatever she was saying brought blush after blush to his face.
I had to admit. Aunt Agnes's arrangements were well suited to all this. Despite the darkness of the occasion, it soon took on a festive air. It disturbed me, but at the same time, I understood everyone's need to get their hands out of the coffin, so to speak, as quickly as they could, especially the relatives.
Most of my relatives were little more than strangers to me, names, voices, faces I passed quickly when I thumbed through family albums. They could have been faces in a mail-order catalogue, for all I cared or knew, and they were as insignificant to me now.
"You're holding up well, Willow." Dr. Price told me. "Your father would be very proud of you." He looked out the window so I wouldn't see the tears filling his eyes.
"Take a walk with me. Dr. Price?" I asked. He looked surprised but pleased by my request.
Once again. Aunt Agnes's eyes followed me like a searchlight until I was out of the room. I led Dr. Price out the rear door and walked with him toward one of my father's famous paths.
It was an unusually warm fall day with a few clouds looking like small dabs of whipped cream on blue icing. The breeze was gentle, barely lifting the leaves or stirring the grass. This was hardly a day for bereavement. I thought. It was more of a day to celebrate life,
"Your father was very proud of your college work the first year. Willow," Dr. Price said. He smiled. "I remember him telling me, 'I wasn't on the dean's list the first semester of college. I guess I can't call her a chip off the old block.' "
"How could he. anyway. Dr. Price? I am an adopted child. aren't I?" I asked pointedly, my eyes fixed on his.
He shifted his gaze guiltily away, pretending interest in the flight of a sparrow.
"Right?" I pursued.
"Your father wouldn't have treated you any differently had you not been," he said. "Believe me."
"Oh. I believe you. Dr. Price, but perhaps that was because I really wasn't some orphan, some stranger, someone not of his blood," I said.
He looked at me, his face freezing, his eyelids holding wide.
"Let's sit for a while." I suggested, pausing at one of the stone benches.
He looked back at the house and then sat beside me. We were both quiet for a long moment. The sparrow he had been watching perched itself on the fountain in front of us, strutted about, and then looked at us curiously. Something else caught its interest, and it was off again,
"How did you find out?" Dr. Price asked finally. He told me," I said.
He turned sharply. He told you? But he vowed to me he never would."
"While he was alive, perhaps, but he told me after he died," I said.
"I don't understand," Dr. Price said, shaking his head. "He left me his diary."
"Diary? Claude kept a personal diary? How extraordinary," he said.
"You've known from the beginning, haven't you?" I asked him.
"Well, maybe not from the very beginning. I don't know what he wrote, but from what he described, it wasn't exactly an instantaneous thing. Of course, no one knew anything, although we had a nurse back then. Mrs. Gordon, Nadine Gordon, who had deep enough suspicions to question some of the therapy. Actually. I think she had a crush on your father herself. She left about five months before you were born. She gave no reason, just her notice, and as far as I knew, neither your father nor anyone else at the clinic has ever heard from her.
"Look," he continued, "I'm not going to say it didn't border on unethical and certainly
unprofessional. If it had involved anyone else but your father,