Whitefern by V.C. Andrews

said.
    She put her hand on mine on her shoulder and smiled.
    â€œWhat, Sylvia?” I asked, smiling back at her.
    â€œAudrina,” she said. “Baby. Coming.”

A Tree of Secrets

    Right after Sylvia and I finished breakfast, there was an early but quick brushing of snowflakes. The rain that had begun falling at daybreak suddenly was captured by a breath of winter. I had intended to go shopping for food but hesitated when I saw the snow. I hoped that it would soon turn back to only cold rain. It did, and the roads didn’t freeze over.
    Weather of all sorts fascinated Sylvia, especially snowflakes. When she was little, she loved holding up her palms and letting the flakes fall into them and melt. Papa had once told her that rain and melting snowflakes were like the sky crying. That fascinated her. Actually, she loved the surprises of all seasons and the wonder of spring flowers, rich green leaves, and the birds returning after winter. I never appreciated the abundance of nature that surrounded us as much as she did.
    Aunt Ellsbeth used to say, “That girl will be a child until her dying day.” When it came to her appreciation of Mother Nature, I didn’t think that was such a terrible prediction. The rest of us seemed to ignore how beautiful the outside world could be, perhaps becausewe were so shut up inside our own. Our world was lit with the lights we cast over ourselves with our petty jealousies. Who had time to look at the stars?
    Sylvia never paid much attention to what month we were in, and if told, she wouldn’t remember when asked later. The poor girl couldn’t even remember her own birthday. Whenever I told her it was her birthday tomorrow, she would look astonished. I knew that if I was going to help her develop, I had to work on her memory, get her to associate things. She was improving, but lately I had begun to suspect that the problem was more a question of what she thought was important enough to remember rather than the failure of memory itself.
    Anyone who heard this would immediately say, “Well, my birthday is important. How could I ever be expected to forget that?”
    But that memory wasn’t so simple for Sylvia.
    Before she died, Vera was fond of reminding Sylvia that my and Sylvia’s mother had died giving birth to her. I caught her saying things like “If you hadn’t made it so difficult to be born, your mother would have lived,” or “You were so afraid of being born, you tried to stop it, and that killed your mother.” Of course, she was right there on every one of Sylvia’s birthdays, between the time Sylvia understood what a birthday was and Vera’s accidental death, to ask, “How could you be happy it’s your birthday? Your mother died on this day. You should spend the whole day kneeling at her grave and asking her to forgive you.”
    No wonder Sylvia was not looking forward to itenough to remember it, or if she did remember, she would pretend not to, I was sure. I constantly told her that our mother’s dying was not her fault. “A baby can’t purposely do that,” I told her, after I had shouted at Vera, and Papa told her the same thing in his way, too, although I knew now that he wasn’t eager to bring Sylvia home from the hospital quickly. He made all sorts of excuses about her weight, illness, anything he could think of to keep her from being released to our care. It took him quite a while to accept that he would have such a daughter and to look at her and not think about my mother. Nevertheless, to this day, Arden insisted that Sylvia had no concept of what had happened, no matter what terrible things Vera had told her.
    â€œTo tell you the truth, I don’t think she even understands the concept of death. It wasn’t too long ago that I saw her beating a dead bird with a stick to try to get it up and flying again. You’ve seen her do things like that, too.”
    I