the ghost

My stepmother was vile.  I guess most kids think that when their father remarries.  But in this case, it was true.  She only married Father because he was rich, and she hated children.  There were three of us – me (Marie), my middle brother Richard and my youngest brother Charles.  We were the price my stepmother Gerta paid for being rich.  And we were all that stood between her and inheriting Father's money when he died.  So she took steps against us.

    She sent my youngest brother Charles away to boarding school overseas.  It had a good, scholarly reputation, but it also had the reputation for being a hard school that was full of bullies and strict discipline.  Not a place where a delicate child like Charles, who had been sickly as a baby, would thrive.  He was miserable there.  Somehow, Gerta contrived to keep him there for all but the summer holidays, and when he came home the first year he was pale and thin with dark circles under his eyes that looked like bruises.  He cried – he actually cried! – when Father told him he had to go back to the school.  But Father didn’t listen to him.  Gerta thought it would be good for Charles to go there, and so Charles went.  

 I did everything I could – encouraging letters and daily phone calls – until Gerta said it was too expensive and restricted calls to five minutes once a month.   I even got Father to book me a ticket to Europe so I could visit Charles.  Gerta was enraged when she found out.  Her blue eyes went so cold it made chills run up my spine, and her pink mouth thinned into a bitter line that bade ill for me since I had dared to interfere.  Two days before my plane left for Europe, the school called and told us that Charles had climbed up to the tallest tower and flung himself off.  He was dead.

 Father was shocked, of course, and Gerta was quietly triumphant.  For a few months, Father paid more attention to Richard and myself then he had since our mother died.  But Gerta was beautiful and had winning ways about her that soon drew my Father’s attention away.  And now that one of her hated stepchildren was dead, she focused on another.  Poor Richard was next...