A House Of Secrets 31-52

Summary
In these chapters of the novel "A House of Secrets" Patti Davis has a flash back about her childhood.  In the flashback she remembered one night when she sneaked into the kitchen to eat some pie.  They enjoyed there pie, smiling and laughing with every tasty bite, but once the sound of footsteps came she was in a state of shock.  Patti attempted to quickly put the pie back into the refrigerator so her mom would not suspect what she was doing.  When her mom came into the kitchen she calmly, but sternly told her to come.  While she told her to come, she went into the fridge and brought out the pie.  With anger, and force she told Patti to eat the pie, and she was allowed to leave until she finished it.  Patti stared at the pie in fear and in sadness, tears running down her face with each painful bite.  Once she stuffed herself to her limit she instantly vomited all over the floor.  Instead of the mother tending to her now sick child, she coldly told her "I hope you have learned your lesson" and walked off.  After the flashback the story returns to the present.  In the present the mother has numerous strokes which has caused her to stop talking to both of her daughters.  Patti visits her everyday out of respect, but she does not want to because of all the emotional pain that she has put her through.  Patti's sister Lily is quite the opposite; she always visits her mother, trying to make sure that she is extremely comfortable.  Once Patti and Lily were alone with their mom, they had an argument.  Patti did not understand why Lily tried so hard to be nice to their mom since she treated them so badly when they were children.  Patti eventually gets mad because she felt that Lily is being fake to pretend that all of the suffering that their mom had put them through had never happened.  This caused her too quickly and angrily storm out of the house. 

Quote
“My parents built the house of their dreams-a house of secrets- and even though my father is gone and my mother is lost to silence, the secrets still live here. They dart from corners, teasing, laughing…and then they retreat again.” (Davis 43)

Reaction
I absolutely adore this quote. So far, I think that this has to be the most powerful quote in the whole novel.  I loved how Patti Davis effortlessly described how secretive and malicious the house really was without actually saying it.  I also admired how she used personification to describe how the house still holds all the secrets by saying that the corners tease, laugh and then they retreat.  Reading this quote makes me more intrigued to keep reading.