Whispering Hearts (House of Secrets #3) - V.C. Andrews
PROLOGUE
“You walk out that door now, you walk out of this house and this family forever,” my father shouted, standing in our entryway like the statue of Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square, punching his fist toward our front door. He wasn’t close enough to touch it, but in my mind I could hear the pounding.
My father always seemed predisposed to keep parental controls tighter on me than on my sister. One would think he had seen defiance in me the day I was born.
A forefinger poking the air was his way of showing anger or disappointment; a fist was absolute rage and was often accompanied by rose-tinted cheeks, flaming wide eyes, and a tight jaw. Sometimes, he would speak through his clenched teeth and have a way of hoisting his shoulders that made him look even more frightening. I knew all of it was meant to intimidate me. When I was much younger, his reactions always succeeded in sending me into retreat, but eventually I did what he himself often advised: I grew a little more backbone.
From what my sister told me months later, that morning, “as if he had been sitting on a large spring,” he had popped up and out of the living room when our short stairway creaked beneath my feet, revealing that I had begun to descend.
I continued down, carrying my small suitcase, my brown leather Coach drawstring bag hung off my shoulder, clutched under my arm as tightly as I would cling to a life preserver. It had been my maternal grandmum’s; I had often been told that I had inherited her cheekiness. Julia had been given her ivory brush, and we shared her sterling silver hand mirror. I would never tell her, but sometimes I saw my grandmum smiling at me over my shoulder when I gazed into her mirror. She would be whispering, Your perfect features should be captured in a cameo. If I did tell Julia about that, she would only accuse me of being conceited.
I had lowered my head after taking my first step on the stairway this morning and had held my breath from the moment I left my room, anticipating the confrontation with my father. I knew this would be the worst altercation ever between us, and there had been some fierce ones recently. I had put my hair in a braided bun earlier, looking at myself in the mirror and taking periodic deep breaths while I chanted, “You can do this. You must do this, Emma Corey. Do not retreat when he growls.”
I had dressed in my new light-blue pleated skirt suit that I had bought with an employee’s discount at Bradford’s Department Store and had saved to wear on this day. It was practically the only thing I had purchased for myself during the two years I had worked there, anticipating how much money I would need for the journey across the Pond to New York City.
When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I ignored him and instead looked into the living room and saw my mother and sister sitting beside each other on the sofa, their hands clutched in their laps, knuckles white. Absolutely terrified, neither dared glance toward the door. It was as if the whole house had frozen. Clocks were holding their breaths, hands trembling.
It was one thing to talk about my leaving for America and hear his objections, his protests and threats, but far another to actually do it. I was as determined as Mercedes Gleitze, the first British lady to swim across the English Channel, in 1927. My father wasn’t going to block me and stymie my ambitions, either.
For months I had been talking to my mother and my sister about my going to New York to work and to audition for opportunities to develop my career as a singer. I was trying to prepare them and boost my own courage simultaneously. My excitement sprouted and blossomed as the time for leaving grew closer, and my resolve strengthened.
My sister didn’t help. She was never supportive of my pursuing a career as an entertainer. In fact, for as long as I could recall, she did her best to discourage me.
My mother’s silence whenever I discussed it telegraphed her utter dread of anticipating my father’s reaction. Whatever she did say was almost always discouraging.
“You really don’t know anything about that world, especially in America,” she told me. “You’ll be a poor little lamb who’s lost her way.”