Losing Spring (Sutherland Series, The) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 3: Sutherland

Andrews, V.C.

 
9781668015902: Losing Spring (Sutherland Series, The)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1668015900 ISBN 13: 9781668015902
Verlag: Gallery Books, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

This atmospheric and moving novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Flowers in the Attic and Landry series—now popular Lifetime movies—combines a forbidden romance with a family fortune and a young girl in peril.

Caroline Bryer is the daughter of a very conservative TSA agent and former military brat, Morgan Bryer. Her mother, Linsey Bryer, is a descendent of the Sutherland real estate family. Their organized, suburban life in Colonie, New York is rigorously regulated and leaves little room for deviation from the norm.

When Linsey, Morgan, and Caroline attend the wake of their neighbor Mr. Gleeson, they meet his charming daughter Natalie “Nattie” Gleeson, who works for the American ambassador to France. Linsey and Nattie strike up a fast friendship as women of a similar age in very different places in their lives—Linsey a devoted mother and housewife, and Nattie an international diplomat living an independent and freewheeling life. Their friendship soon evolves into a romance, leading to the collapse of Linsey’s marriage and her disinheritance from the Sutherland family fortune.

In true V.C. Andrews fashion, a whirlwind of unexpected death, family estrangement, and a forbidden inheritance become Caroline’s new reality as she struggles to navigate the loss of her mother, the mind-boggling wealth of the Sutherland family (who quickly lock her away from the world), and the loss of contact with her father following the divorce.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

One of the most popular authors of all time, V.C. Andrews has been a bestselling phenomenon since the publication of Flowers in the Attic, first in the renowned Dollanganger family series, which includes Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and Garden of Shadows. The family saga continues with Christopher’s Diary: Secrets of Foxworth, Christopher’s Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger, and Secret Brother, as well as Beneath the Attic, Out of the Attic, and Shadows of Foxworth as part of the fortieth anniversary celebration. There are more than ninety V.C. Andrews novels, which have sold over 107 million copies worldwide and have been translated into more than twenty-five foreign languages. Andrews’s life story is told in The Woman Beyond the Attic. Join the conversation about the world of V.C. Andrews at Facebook.com/OfficialVCAndrews.

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Chapter 1
Chapter 1

I have come to believe that I was almost wrong to be a child, to be a prisoner of hope and good dreams and see brightness and color in a world that could quickly rain down darkness and rage.

Daddy used to say, “At the moment you are born, you get your first hint that bad things can happen. That’s why babies cry.

“It might be the last time they’re right.”

Fortunately, until I was nearly thirteen, I really had never known deep unhappiness or dreary silence. My days were filled with music. There were balloons on birthdays along with funny talking cards, toys, books, and pretty clothes and shoes. I overheard my early grade-school teachers, in whispers, praise my mother on how nicely dressed she kept me. At times I felt more like a precious doll than just another little girl. But most of all, there was music, lively and fun. It was almost like a soundtrack in a movie accompanying whatever we did or wherever we went. Our house was rarely silent and shadows were never foreboding. They were simply pauses in the stream of sunshine, like commas in a sentence, and certainly nothing to fear.

Like most children whose view of the world was formed in comfort, having all the love and attention needed, living in a safe community as well as attending a good school with caring teachers, I thought my joy and contentment would last forever. I had only glimpses of poverty, social injustice, and crime. My mother especially shielded me from all that when I was very young. “There will be plenty of time later for this horror,” she might say when turning off something on television.

Daddy didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue vociferously about it. The most he would do was issue a warning. He would almost sing it: “You’ll be sorry if you turn her into a turtle.”

Sometimes, when I was five, I tried to imagine what that would be like. I would crawl under my blanket and poke my head out at the foot of the bed and then quickly pull it back under as if I had seen something ugly there or something to hurt me. It wasn’t terrible, but it was boring under a blanket. In that special place in my heart where I kept secrets, I put this one: I agreed with Daddy. I didn’t want to be a turtle. I wanted to be more like him and be strong enough to face down anything ugly, anything mean.

But for all my early childhood years, there was really nothing terribly unpleasant in my personal world from which I should hide anyway.

Consequently, for me there was only one season back then: spring, when everything brightened and everyone wore a bright, warm smile like the smile of the sparrow in the preschool picture book I had, The Laughing Sparrow, a wide grin with eyes that gleamed with happiness and hope. Remembering those early years, even for a few moments, washes away the dreary fog that settles every morning at the bay windows of my bedroom in my grandfather’s mansion, a bedroom that is at least three times as large as my bedroom was at home, but with ten times the emptiness.

Whatever, remembering my happier spring days doesn’t keep the haze from returning here almost daily. It is almost like a bad memory that challenges me to forget it and dares me to even try.

The seasons are so different now, never bursting out like some wonderful surprise in the morning, but instead tiptoeing into my life almost as if they were asking for my permission to emerge. “Should we move the year ahead? Does it matter?”

Birds don’t ever seem happy like the ones I saw in my children’s books or around our home when I was younger. Now they look as confused as I am, fluttering about this magnificent, regal estate that has become my whole world, a prison with all the necessities of life save one: normal childhood and adolescence. Here I have no friends; I play no games. I don’t dance. I don’t go to birthday parties, not even my own.

“It’s time to put aside all that nonsense,” Grandfather Sutherland often said, even before I was brought here. True to his word, he doesn’t celebrate his own birthday with parties and gifts, and if anyone should forget and give him something or wish him a happy birthday, he roars his displeasure. “I don’t need you to remind me,” he might say. I recall hearing that when I was younger, and I remember my mother brought him a birthday gift, more to annoy him than to please him. She gave it to him with that wry smile on her face. He reluctantly celebrated Grandmother Judith’s birthday and celebrated their anniversaries with parties and dinners because she insisted on that.

Now other happy events that would please and excite someone as young as I am only happen out there beyond the walls and gates, but I don’t see them. I don’t even hear about them. It occurred to me that if your birthday was treated like just another day, you might eventually forget how old you were. Maybe my grandfather is simply afraid of his birthday. Perhaps he wants to make a fist around the hands of a clock and stop them from moving one second more. I have no doubt that he believes he can hold back time for himself and can mold my world, even diminishing my peepholes, eventually turning me into a turtle.

I have a computer but with all sorts of censorship devices inserted, squeezing it into a narrow road out with NO at any possible turn that could lead to even an imaginary escape, let alone an internet friend. And I haven’t got a television set because my grandfather believes it’s “mostly garbage dumped into the innocent minds of children. And look how they’re turning out!”

There is no point to my having a phone, as there would be no friend to call, and anyway, I’d be ashamed to tell a friend anything about myself now. I never had the chance to say goodbye to anyone I knew. Maybe they know I live here or wonder where I have gone, but by now most of them, if not all of them, likely have lost interest in caring about or finding out exactly what happened to me.

And even in here, inside the grand house with its high ceilings, its elaborate gilded chandeliers, its tiled floors with expensive area rugs, and its luxurious drapes, I know I will never be happy. Even if I please my grandfather, no for me is written in many places. I will never enjoy any of it. There will always be so many doors locked to me in my grandfather’s mansion. Right now, windows are shut almost mechanically at certain times of the day, and opinions and orders are filtered to prevent certain words and ideas from reaching my ears. My grandfather’s employees look like their mouths are zipped shut when they see me. Some even seem surprised that I am still here and are even afraid to ask me how I am. The chains on secrets are so heavy that they can’t be lifted.

The walls and the door to my room are thick enough so that I don’t overhear anyone talking in hallways, especially the dark corridor where my room is located. No wonder, then, that I think of my grandfather’s estate as someone would think of a turtle shell. How right Daddy was. I did end up in there.

It’s almost as if beyond the gates there is only emptiness resembling outer space. We’re set so far from a main highway that I can barely catch the sounds of passing cars and trucks, their horns baaing like frightened sheep. When I was finally permitted to go out for fresh air, I could only get a glimpse of them through a...

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Verlag
Gallery Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1668015900
ISBN 13 
9781668015902
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande

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