Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger, #2)

by V.C. Andrews

How could a stranger come so easily into our lives and give us love, when our own blood kin had sought to give us death?

If at twilight there was anything more beautiful and somehow romantically, sadly mystical than a live oak dripping with Spanish moss that would in the end kill its host, I’d yet to see it. Love that clung and killed.

April wasn’t meant for September.

Midnight found me all alone on the back veranda, rocking back and forth in Paul’s favorite chair. My head was full of thoughts for the future. Thoughts of the past conflicted and nearly drowned me. The floorboards squeaked faintly; they were old and had known grief like mine before; they sympathized. The stars and moon were out; even a few fireflies came to bob about in the garden darkness.

“I want everything impossible to become possible, and everything implausible to reverse and become reality. Then when everything is explainable I want new mysteries to confront me so I always have something inexplicable to think about.”

The mountain trees that grew between the pines were a brilliant blaze of fall colors, like fire against the emerald green of the pines, firs and spruces. And it was, as I’d told myself long ago, the year’s last passionate love affair before it grew old and died from the frosty bite of winter.

Holding tight to my son’s small hand I led him out into the cold morning air on my way to work. Faint and far away I heard someone calling my name, and with it came the scent of old-fashioned roses. Why don’t you come, Paul, and save me from myself—why only call in your thoughts?

a secret kept too long becomes impossible to explain.