Dollenganger 06 My Sweet Audrina Read Online Free

rocking me back and forth in the rocker that my great-great-greatgrandmother had used to nurse her twelve children in. "Each child inherits genes from both parents, and that determines his or her hair color, eye color and personality traits. Babies come into the world to be controlled by those genes and by the particular environment that surrounds them. You are still waiting to fill with your dead sister's gifts. When you do, all that is good and beautiful in this world will belong to you, as it belonged to her. While you and I wait for that marvelous day when your empty pitcher is filled, I am doing my damnedest to give you the very best."
At that moment my aunt and mother came into the kitchen, trailed by Vera, who carried a basket of freshly picked butter - beans.
Aunt Ellsbeth must have overheard most of what Papa had just said, because she remarked sarcastically, "You should have been a philosopher instead of a stockbroker, Damian. Then maybe someone would care to listen to your words of wisdom."
I stared at her, dredging up from my
treacherous memory something I might or might not have dreamed. It could even be a dream that belonged to the First Audrina, who'd been so clever, so beautiful and so everlastingly perfect. But before I could capture any illusive memory, all were gone, gone.
I sighed, unhappy with myself, unhappy with the adults who ruled me, with the cousin who insisted she was really my only sister because she wanted to steal my place, when already my place had been stolen by the First and Best Audrina, who was a dead Audrina.
And now I was supposed to act like her, talk like her and be everything that she'd been . . and where was the real me supposed to go?
Sunday came, and as soon as the church services were over, Papa drove, as he always did, straight to the family cemetery near our house where the name Whitefern was engraved on a huge arching gateway through which we slowly drove. Beyond the archway the cemetery itself had to be approached on foot. We were all dressed in our best, and bearing expensive flowers. Papa tugged me from the car. I resisted, hating that grave we had to visit and that dead girl who stole everyone's love from me.
It seemed this was the first time I could clearly remember the words Papa must have said many times before. "There she lies, my first Audrina."
Sorrowfully, he stared down at the flat grave with the slender white-marble headstone bearing my very own name, but her birth and death dates. I wondered when my parents would recover from the shock of her mysterious death. It seemed to me that if sixteen years hadn't healed their shock, maybe ninety wouldn't, either. I couldn't bear to look at that tombstone, so I stared up into my papa's handsome face so high above. This was the kind of perspective I would never have once I grew up, seeing his strong, square chin from underneath, next his heavy pouting lower lip, then his flaring nostrils and the fringe of his long lower dark lashes meeting with the upper ones as he blinked back his tears. It was just like looking up at God.
He seemed so powerful, so much in control. He smiled at me again. "My first Audrina is in that grave, dead at nine years of age. That wonderful, special Audrina--just as you are wonderful and special. Never doubt for one moment that you aren't just as wonderful and gifted as she was. Believe in what Papa tells you and you will never go wrong."
I swallowed. Visiting this grave and hearing about this Audrina always made my throat hurt. Of course I wasn't wonderful or special, yet how could I tell him that when he seemed so convinced? In my childish way I figured my value to him depended on just how special and wonderful I turned out to be later on.
"Oh, Papa," cried Vera, stumbling over to his side and clutching at his hand. "I loved her so much, so very much. She was so sweet and wonderful and special. And so beautiful. I don't think in a million years there will ever be another like your First Audrina." She