We never heard from them after that, until years later when I was very ill, on my deathbed. Olivia received a letter from Corrine stating that Christopher was dead and she had no place to go. My eyes softened and all the love I had for her came back to my heart. I saw the look in Olivia's eyes. Like she was glad I didn't know everything. I would wonder about that look, for a long time. I then learned from John that Corrine had four children. Four beautiful children. I longed to see them, but John reminded me that they were products of an unholy union.
"But they are Corrine's, they are her lovely children. I must see them. We must learn to forgive, not punish." I had struggled saying those few lines, but I managed even in my sickness. I wanted to see those beautiful children and be what a grandfather should be to them.
"No," John spat, "they are unholy children. You will be forever punished for this if you choose to love them. And with you so close to death, are you willing to risk having to burn in everlasting hell?" He asked with fire in his eyes. I quickly shook my head and he smiled. "Corrine was born out of lust and she is wicked, she needs to be punished for the sins that she has committed."
He glared at me fiercely and I just nodded. I gazed into his burning eyes and tried to harden my heart as he did. I thought of Olivia and her coldness about those children. Was it I who turned her into that woman? All she had wanted was love, and I refused to give it, I was in love with someone else...
And then I realized that I was wrong about women, I was. For the most important woman in my life promised to make me happy 'til the day she died, and she did, she truly did. Soon I would be with her again and everything would be as it should have been years ago. John eyed me suspiciously and I closed my eyes.
He left me then and I thought about the four children up in the attic, playing in the prison I had been stuffed away in so many times. They were so like me, more than they would ever know, and I had helped plant them there. I helped plant the flowers in the attic.

[rest of the chapters and the prologue are separate]


The Doll House
(my VC Andrews site)