“It doesn’t weaken you to have family,” I said, and he smiled.
“Almost my exact words. Let her find her way back herself. She’s happy. I can tell you that, but she’s frightened it won’t last and she’d be bringing you into her troubles again.”
“I understand. I’ll be fine, Uncle Alain.”
“I know you will,” he said.
We walked back to his home arm in arm. Like all cities, much of Paris went to sleep at night, but so much would never sleep through a night. It seemed as if people tried to surprise it at all hours, appearing here and there, laughing or just walking quietly, as we were. Lights danced on the Seine. Despite all the beauty surrounding me, I couldn’t help but think back to earlier days.
There was a time—rare, I know—when we were almost a family. A truce was called between my father and Roxy. My mother was very happy. The four of us were doing something very simple, walking through Central Park on a warm spring day. I was too young to remember real details, but I could vividly remember a feeling. It was warm and hopeful. Love seemed so strong, invulnerable. Nothing could harm us. There wasn’t even a rain cloud in the distant sky.
Roxy walked ahead and then paused and waited for me. I took her hand. I looked back at my mother and my father. They had never looked as young to me.
We walked on, lost in our own thoughts, drifting into tomorrow and the promises we hoped to keep.
Which was what Uncle Alain and I were now doing.
Isn’t that what we all do?
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Forbidden Sister
V.C. Andrews®
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Forbidden Sister . . .
Prologue
My mother wasn’t supposed to have me. She wasn’t supposed to get pregnant again.
Nearly nine years before I was born, she gave birth to my sister, Roxy. Her pregnancy with Roxy was very difficult, and when my mother’s water broke and she was rushed to the hospital, Roxy resisted coming into the world. My mother says she fought being born. An emergency cesarean was conducted, and my mother nearly died. She fell into a coma for almost three days, and after she regained consciousness, the first thing her doctor told her was never to get pregnant again.
When I first heard and understood this story, I immediately thought that I must have been an accident. Why else would they have had another child after so many years had passed? She and Papa surely had agreed with the doctor that it was dangerous for her to get pregnant again. Mama could see that thought and concern in my face whenever we talked about it, and she always assured me that I wasn’t a mistake.
“Your father wanted you even more than I did,” she told me, but just thinking about it made me wonder about children who are planned and those who are not. Do parents treat children they didn’t plan any differently from the way they treat the planned ones? Do they love them any less?
I know there are single mothers who give away their children immediately because they can’t manage them or they don’t want to begin a loving relationship they know will not last. Some don’t want to set eyes on them. When their children find out that they were given away, do they think about the fact that their mothers really didn’t want them to be born? How could they help but think about it? That certainly can’t be helpful to their self-confidence.
Despite my mother’s assurances, I couldn’t help wondering. If I wasn’t planned, was my soul floating around somewhere minding its own business and then suddenly plucked out of a cloud of souls and ordered to get into my body as it was forming in Mama’s womb? Was birth an even bigger surprise for unplanned babies? Maybe that was what really happened in Roxy’s case. Maybe she wasn’t planned, and that was why she resisted.
Wondering about myself always led me to wonder about Roxy. What sort of a shock was it for her when she first heard she was going to have a sister, after having been an only child all those years? She must have known Mama wasn’t supposed to have me. Did she feel very special because of that? Did she see herself as their precious golden child, the only one Mama and Papa could have? And then, when Mama told her about her new pregnancy, did Roxy pout and sulk, thinking she would have to share our parents’ attention and love? Share her throne? Was she worried that she would have to help take care of me and that it would cut into her fun time? Although I didn’t know how she felt about me for some time, from the little I remembered about her, I had the impression that I was at least an inconvenience to her. Maybe my being born was the real reason Roxy became so rebellious.
My mother told me that my father believed her complications in giving birth to Roxy were God’s first warning about her. However, despite her difficult birth, there was nothing physically wrong with Roxy. She began exceptionally beautiful and is to this day, but according to Mama, even when Roxy was an infant, she was headstrong and rebellious. She ate when she wanted to eat, no matter what my mother prepared for her or how she tried to get her to eat, and she slept when she wanted to sleep. Rocking her or singing to her didn’t work. My mother told me my father would get into a rage about it. Finally, he insisted she take Roxy to the doctor. She did, but the doctor concluded that there was absolutely nothing wrong with Roxy. My father ordered her to find another doctor. The result was the same.
Roxy’s tantrums continued until my mother finally gave in and slept when Roxy wanted to sleep. She even ate when Roxy wanted to eat, leaving my father to eat alone often.
“If I didn’t eat with her, she wouldn’t eat, or she’d take hours to do so,” my mother said. “Your father thought she was being spiteful even when she was an infant.”