What happens at the end of Flowers in the Attic is even crueller than the attic itself
V.C. Andrews's 1979 novel begins with a fairly complete catalogue of misery — four children locked above a Virginia mansion for more than three years, starved, whipped, and hidden from the world. The final chapters manage to top all of it.
Full spoilers for the book (and its film versions) below.
The setup, briefly
After their father dies in a car crash, Chris (14), Cathy (12), and five-year-old twins Cory and Carrie are moved into Foxworth Hall by their mother, Corrine. The catch: her dying, disapproving father must never know his grandchildren exist, so they're locked in an upstairs room with attic access, under the rule of their scripture-quoting grandmother, while Corrine works her way back into the will. Weeks become years. Corrine's visits thin out, then stop.
The ending
Little Cory falls seriously ill. Corrine and the grandmother finally take him away — supposedly to hospital — and Corrine returns with the news that he has died of pneumonia.
He hadn't. The children's pet mouse, Mickey, dies after nibbling a leftover doughnut, and Chris works out what's been happening: the powdered sugar on the doughnuts delivered daily to the attic was laced with arsenic. Someone in the house has been poisoning all four of them, slowly, for months.
The reveal that makes it worse
Sneaking through the house to steal escape money, Chris discovers Corrine's rooms stripped bare — she has married the lawyer Bart Winslow and left Foxworth Hall entirely. Eavesdropping on the servants, he learns the rest:
- The grandfather had already been dead for months — the children were being kept locked up, and poisoned, after the reason for hiding them was gone.
- The will had a catch — Corrine inherited everything on the condition she had no children from her first marriage. Proof of the children's existence would cost her the fortune.
- The doughnuts came from Corrine — the arsenic wasn't the grandmother's doing. The children's mother had the motive, and the sugar.
The escape
Chris, Cathy, and Carrie walk out of Foxworth Hall and board a train south towards Florida. They decide against going to the police — staying together matters more than justice — but Cathy privately vows that Corrine will pay one day.
The sequels (Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, and Seeds of Yesterday, plus the prequel Garden of Shadows) spend the next decade collecting on that promise.
One footnote for film viewers: the 1987 adaptation invented a tidier ending, with Cathy crashing Corrine's wedding and Corrine dying when her veil catches on a trellis. The 2014 Lifetime version restored the book's finish — the mother simply gets away.