Free Secrets in the Shadows by V. C. Andrews Page A

literally a few feet from my mother's room, I felt too weak to even speak.
"Today. The date. Don't you get it?"
"No."
"It's the date of the murder!"

5 The Scene of the Murder
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    I suddenly completely understood the concept of selective amnesia.
Of course, I knew the date of Harry Pearson's death, but neither my grandmother nor my
grandfather, no one in the family, as a matter of fact, ever mentioned it or acknowledged it in any way. Maybe they had selective amnesia as well, or maybe they just thought it was wise never to mention it, even to themselves. I had heard that when I was very young, not more than three perhaps, one of the local newspapers did a column on the murder and that had revived interest, but nothing had been written about it ever since.
"I thought that was why you had come around today," Craig said.
I shook my head. He looked skeptical.
"Are you telling me you didn't know what had happened today?"
"I forgot," I said.
"Wow. Interesting. Well, it is the date anyway. C'mon up. We'll be like historical detectives or something."
I continued up the stairs slowly, stairs my mother had climbed many times, my legs feeling heavier. It was as if l were dragging my grandmother behind me because she had seized me at the waist and was trying to prevent me from going any farther. I knew she would be upset to know I was in this house.
"Everything's changed up here as well." Craig explained when I reached the landing. "My mother put in all new lighting, including those chandeliers," he said, pointing to the two in the upstairs hallway. "She redid the flooring, covered the walls with this wallpaper, had doors replaced and redid the fixtures in the bathrooms as well. My room was changed from top to bottom, including the fixtures and the closet. She ripped out part of a wall to expand it. Then, she had the wall on the opposite side torn out and had a bathroom put in for me. That was a very big job. My father complained that it was costing as much to redo the house as it was to have bought it.
"But, being we could get all the materials wholesale and great deals on the labor, he didn't stand a chance." He leaned toward me to whisper, as if there were others in the house. "The truth was my mother wouldn't have moved in here if he didn't go along with all her changes. A dead body in your house is a dead body. For most people it would give them the creeps, but this was too good a house to pass up, especially for the price."
"I understand," I said. "Your parents were smart to buy it, I'm sure."
He nodded.
"My dad's a good businessman. It's supposed to run in the family, so there's high hopes for me."
He went to his right and opened his bedroom door.
Then he spread out his arms and cried, "Ta-da. Here it is. The scene of the crime."
He stepped back. I hesitated. How many times had I imagined myself here, dreamed of looking into the room and envisioning Harry Pearson's body on this floor, my mother standing over him? It was the meat to fatten the bones of my worst nightmare.
"Harry Pearson's body was sprawled on the floor just inside the door. He was lying facedown, both arms out above his head." Craig looked down as if the body was really there. It gave me a surge of ice along my spine, and I actually shuddered. He turned to me. "You know how she did it, right?"
I nodded even though I really didn't know any of the gruesome details. I felt as if I had a heavy stone on my tongue.
"She stabbed him in the throat," he told me.
I didn't need to hear it. I didn't want to hear those details, and yet I did. I was caught in the web of that horrible contradiction. I was like a moth drawn to a flame. Get too close and you set yourself on fire. Craig smiled.
"I know the whole story, of course. I couldn't help but be curious about something like that, happening in the house we had bought and were going to live in and especially the bedroom I would sleep in," he added, as if he had to provide me with an excuse.
I nodded, but I couldn't get my gaze