Read Online The Unwelcomed Child by V. C. Andrews - Free Book Online

moment and then shook her head. “None of them would work now. They all have dead batteries,” she said, and looked relieved about it.
    “Here,” Grandfather Prescott said, rising and slipping his watch off his wrist. “For now, you can use my watch.”
    “Thank you, Grandfather,” I said, and watched him slip it over my left hand. He made the band as tight as he could without it being too tight.
    “Feel okay?”
    “Yes.”
    “Don’t break that watch, missy,” Grandmother Myra said. “It’s a very expensive one.”
    “She won’t break it, and it’s not that expensive, Myra.”
    “If she gets too close to the water, she could get it wet, and it’s not waterproof.”
    “She won’t go swimming in it, Myra.”
    “I’ll be careful,” I said.
    As casually as I could, I went into my room, gathered my paper and pencils, and walked slowly toward the back door. I knew her eyes were on me.
    “Have a good time,” my grandfather called.
    I looked back and smiled. He smiled, but my grandmother’s face was as full of suspicion as ever. She didn’t even nod.
    I took a breath and stepped out as if I were someone fleeing, about to cross a border to safety, and then closed the door softly behind me. The sense of freedom seemed to cleanse my lungs. It was a most glorious day, with moderate temperatures and a soft, warm breeze just nudging the leaves on the trees. Small, puffy clouds looked as if they had been dabbed against the blue background. Maybe it was my wishful imagination, but as I stepped down and began to walk toward the forest, I thought the birds grew excited and called others to watch me enter their world.
    “You’ve been waiting for me, haven’t you?” I told them. “You’ve been waiting for me for a long time.”
    They chirped louder. A few moments later, I stepped into the cool, dark forest and felt as if I had entered another world and escaped from the one drifting away behind me. I didn’t look back. I was so excited about being alone and far from my grandmother’s scrutinizing eyes that my heart began to race. I walked faster, finding a natural path and pausing only to look at a narrow brook that seemed to erupt from under a pair of rocks and cut its path off to the right.
    I heard branches cracking and turned sharply to my left just in time to see a doe pause to look at me and then calmly trot off in the opposite direction. I was tempted to follow it. Where do deer go anyway? I wondered. They were always moving in the woods, probably looking for food, but they had to have someplace they thought of as home. Instead, I continued in the direction of the lake. The time my grandfather had taken me through the woods was so long ago that I had forgotten where we’d come out. The woods were thicker now anyway. I could remember nothing. I didn’t want to remember anything. I wanted this to be my first time.
    I walked faster when the brush and the trees thinned out, and then I paused, because I was sure I heard human voices. Could it be someone in a boat on the lake? Curiosity overwhelmed me. I sped up, nearly scratching myself on some low-hanging branches, and then, through an opening ahead, I saw the lake.
    It was narrower there. I had forgotten that some lucky people had homes close to or on the shores of the lake. When I stepped out of the forest into a small clearing, I saw that one of those houses was very close by. I heard laughter and then the sound of a screen door slamming shut. Moments later, two young people came around the corner of the house just across the water. There was a short dock with a rowboat attached. I pulled back as the two drew closer. One was a girl, and the other . . .
    The breath went out of me as sharply as if someone had punched me in the stomach. The sight of him walking barefoot with his towel wrapped around him stunned me. There was no doubt. It was the young man from the restaurant, and the girl who followed him, playfully tossing grass at him, was his sister.