Losing Spring by V.C. Andrews

Author:V.C. Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2023-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

A little more than a week later, we began to move into Nattie’s house. My mother had made it sound like we wouldn’t leave that soon, but she received a letter from Grandfather Sutherland’s bank, and whatever it said made her and Nattie so angry that they both ranted about the power men had over women. I heard Nattie call Mr. Milton and raise her voice when he told her that he was unable to do much about the bank’s decision.

“But break his balls about something, John!” she shouted, and hung up. I would swear I saw smoke stream out of her ears. She and Mommy went right to the bar to have a drink. They didn’t ask me to join them, and I was afraid to go near them. Nattie was rattling off stories about times she had been mistreated in the diplomatic corps.

After a while they calmed down and just laughed and hugged. How could they be so angry and then so happy? I wondered, and went off to my room, not to pout so much as to think deeply about what was happening to me. My father was gone, and my mother seemed to enjoy Nattie’s company more than mine. Other things were disappearing, like the hours we had spent together reading to each other aloud. Whether he was pretending or not, I thought Daddy had enjoyed hearing us. However, even the work we would do together around the house dwindled. Before we left, we still had early fall leaves to rake, and many of the windows needed washing.

“Why leave things so nice for the bank?” Nattie said, but except for doing some specialty cooking and helping to clean up in the kitchen, she didn’t like to do any housework.

More than once I had heard Daddy say that Nattie, being in the diplomatic corps, had everything done for her, especially in France. Mommy told him that when she was growing up at Sutherland, she did, too. She had told me so many times, but she didn’t sound like someone bragging about it. In fact, I wondered if that was why she wanted to do everything for our home herself. She tried to make it all be different, even how our house was cleaned.

But lately, she also blamed Daddy for her housework, telling Nattie, “He wanted to keep me locked away so I wouldn’t develop an independent career, just like my father stifled my mother’s attempt at any independence. She couldn’t even write a check! And if she tried to change anything, even move an ashtray in his office, he would go into a tirade, ranting about how it was upsetting for him to not have things in their proper place.”

For a moment I thought about Daddy and how intent he had been about where his things were, especially in the bathroom. Lately, when Mommy talked about him, she made it sound like Daddy instead of Uncle Martin was Grandfather Sutherland’s son.

“Some men are like that,” Nattie agreed. “It’s part of their DNA.

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