The Forbidden Heart by V.C. Andrews

help was something a soldier
     did in battle, and surely my father was thinking that this battle was over. Not that
     his family was very religious, anyway. To me, it seemed that they thought of churches
     the same way they thought of the officers’ club, just another place you visited from
     time to time to remind yourself that you were special.
    My sister, Emmie, heard nothing of this argument. She was fast asleep in her bedroom,
     snug under her comforter, her teddy bear dressed in a soldier’s uniform beside her,
     its glass button eyes catching bits of light seeping through the curtains. Emmie was
     nearly nine years old and admittedly very bright for her age. Unlike me, she had a
     warm, very outgoing personality. She was easy to love. I was more like a seamless
     walnut, impossible to crack or get into. You had to smash me to peel off my hard shell.
     I trusted no one and believed that everyone was selfish like me. Even nuns were doing
     what they were doing solely to get themselves into heaven.
    It seemed to me that my father had been complaining about me from day one, not that
     I could remember day one. But he often made reference to my infant days, describing
     how difficult and stubborn I could be. It was safe to say that my father rarely, if
     ever, complimented me about anything. It was as if he thought that one compliment
     would open a fortress, and I would rush through with all of my bad behavior. Although
     I wasn’t particularly looking for excuses, I suppose a good therapist would say that mon père was at least partly responsible for how I had turned out. My father might not have
     chosen an army career for himself, but he certainly ran our home and family as if
     we were a military unit. Sometimes I thought he wasn’t my father; he was just someone
     in charge, someone assigned guard duty.
    I wasn’t exactly Miss Popularity at my school, either, but I was close enough with
     some of the other girls to hear about how their fathers treated them, fawned over
     them, and, most important, made excuses for any of their failings. Some of the girls
     enjoyed playing their fathers for sympathy and bragged about how easy it was for them
     to get “Daddy” to do anything for them or let them do anything. Even the girls who
     came from very conservative and religious homes seemed to have more freedom and longer
     leashes than I had, not that I ever paid much attention to my leash.
    Although I was good at hiding it, a therapist would surely say that right from the
     beginning, I had more fear of my father than love for him. I could recall how he loomed
     over me ominously when I was a little girl. There was such an obvious look of displeasure
     and frustration on his face. I could almost hear him thinking, Is this the child for which my wife almost lost her life?
    I couldn’t begin to count how many times he had told me about my birth and Mama’s
     flirtation with death. Sometimes he made me sound like an infant assassin, a spy planted
     inside her. Mama would try to tone him down, but he was ready with his far-too-graphic
     and detailed description of how difficult my birthing had been. Eventually, I realized
     that the memories haunted him and not her. He had gotten her pregnant, so he, not
     she, bore more responsibility. For what had they taken this great risk? Yes, for what?
     I didn’t need to hear him say it. I knew what he thought. They had taken it for this
     little monster, this grande déception they had named Roxy.
    I believed I suffered with mon père ’s anger more than Emmie because I was born closer to his break with his own father,
     not that it was in any way my fault. He had made his choice long before Mama became
     pregnant. He had wanted to be who he was and do what he was doing, but he couldn’t
     escape the guilt. There was just too much family tradition haunting him. In making
     his decision not to be in the military, he made all of his ancestors and especially
     his own father and