V.C. Andrews - Gemini 03 by Child of Darkness

Author:Child of Darkness
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-17T00:56:45+00:00

Epilogue

Home Again

.

I didn't attend school immediately. Mr.

Nokleby-Cook was right; I needed time to acclimate myself. Although I had never read the novel, my English teacher at the school I attended when I lived at the second orphanage liked to quote Thomas Wolfe and say. "You can't go home again." He meant that so much had changed there and in you that nothing would look or seem the same.

Nothing sounded more irrelevant to an orphan who had never had a home, of course, but I was so different from most of the others. I had had a home once, and I impressed everyone with my remarkable memory. I could recall such detail from my first six years of life, most of it from the sixth year, but vivid enough to astound anyone who listened to me describe my home, our land, and of course, Noble, my grandmother, and eventually, Celeste, my mother Celeste.

Pru and Brice were very patient and

understanding.

Neither pressured me to do anything or go anywhere. I spent the next two days wandering about the farm, sometimes just sitting and staring out at the thick forest. Eventually, I wandered into it and made my way to the brook. It wasn't as full and powerful as I remembered it to be. The water still polished rocks and bubbled about, but it wasn't as wide and didn't look anywhere near as deep. Once it had an almost religious significance for us. It was here that Noble had died, and now I knew that the boy who drowned here had been my father.

The land, the water, all of nature, gives birth to so much within us and then absorbs it all, takes it back in one way or another, I thought. It isn't just dust unto dust. Something of our souls, our spirits, surely finds a place in all this, and that was what my grandmother felt and saw, and what she had passed on to my mother and to me. I had lost it along the way, and now I wanted to regain it.

Would I?

Could I?

Only time would tell, but I had faith, not in myself as much as in the land, in every tree and blade of grass, and especially in the brook. I would touch it all and be sure it was all aware I was here again.

I sat for hours in the old cemetery and thought about the prayer vigils we had held in the darkness, with only a candle sometimes to provide illumination under a fully overcast sky. What are graveyards really, but doorways to memories?

Brice and Pru saw me wandering about or sitting quietly and staring out at the forest.

Occasionally, Pru asked if I were okay, and I assured her I was.

And then, one morning, a Saturday morning, I announced at breakfast that I would like to go to the institution where my mother still lived so I could visit her. Pru immediately volunteered to take me.

"I'll just take a taxicab," I said.

"You will not. I'll drive you there, and I'll wait for you in the parking lot," she insisted.

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