Free Secrets of Foxworth by V.C. Andrews Page A

things he doesn’t tell you.”
    She looked down. “Momma loves you more, and now, with new children, she’ll love me even less,” she said. “There won’t be enough love to share, and I don’t want to share.”
    â€œA parent doesn’t love one of his or her children more than the others.”
    She looked at me strangely. I must admit that it was the first time she had ever looked at me like this. It was disturbing, because it was the look of someone who believed I was either lying to myself or completely fooled. I didn’t think she was capable of seeing through my words. Of course, our mother loved me better and always would. She depended on me more. But I wasn’t going to admit that to Cathy. She would be even more miserable and say hurtful things to our mother.
    How intensely she could glare back at me, though. No one else could make me look away.
    â€œJust think about what I said and see if you can be nicer,” I told her, and left.
    She was right to give me that look, of course. Maybe Daddy loved her as much as or a little more than he loved me, but he respected me more and always would.
    Knowing that and writing it will help me sleep better tonight.
    Christopher’s words resurrected old memories. I had often wondered why my parents didn’t have another child. I never asked my mother about it, but I did ask my father once, and all he said was a cryptic “It wasn’t in the cards.”
    I imagined Christopher being here with me right now and my turning to him to ask him to explain what my father had meant.
    He’d surely shrug as if there was no mystery, but I had heard my father say that when I was just ten. I wouldn’t shrug. Maybe I was more like Cathy than like him.
    â€œThere must have been some physiological reason your mother didn’t have another child,” he would tell me. “Men and women usually don’t feel comfortable talking about it, because one or the other was unable to make it work. Understand?”
    Yes, I understood. I understood years later but never brought it up again for exactly the reason my imaginary Christopher was citing. If there was one thing I would never want to do, it was make my father feel uncomfortable about anything, least of all himself.
    Still, after reading some of what went on between Christopher and Cathy and anticipating how their lives were about to change when the twins were born, I couldn’t help wondering what my life would have been like if I had a younger sister or brother, or even an older sister or brother.
    Cathy was obviously afraid that her parents wouldn’t have enough love for that many children and that she would suffer the most. Reading between Christopher’s comments, I realized she must have felt inferior even at that young age, inferior in the sense that she could see or feel that her mother loved her brother more and that her father held her brother in higher esteem. Both depended on him. She was still too young to be anything more than someone who needed care.
    What is our capacity to love? I wondered. Does amother who has six or even ten children love each of them equally or as much as someone who had only one child? Was that even possible? Was Cathy really so wrong to be afraid and upset?
    â€œHello, up there!” I heard Dad shout. I looked at the clock and leaped out of bed. It was way past time for me to set the table. When I appeared at the top of the stairs, he looked up at me and just shook his head, walking off. I hurried down.
    â€œSorry,” I called, and headed to the dining room to unfold the tablecloth.
    â€œDon’t you have any homework for Monday?” Dad asked when I came into the kitchen to get the dishes and silverware. “Something else to read or do?”
    â€œI’ll do it tomorrow,” I said. “I don’t have that much. I always stay a little ahead, Dad. You know that.”
    â€œUm,” he said. He