“Don’t forget, you are always on our minds.”
Towards the end of the third chapter, Rosemary was having Thanksgiving dinner with her family and her father gave her a fortune cookie. When Rosemary opened the cookie, the message from above was inside it. It is then when Rosemary felt a connection with her family, something she hadn’t felt in a long time. The fortune in the cookie has the purpose of revealing how Rosemary’s parents felt about her even though they never openly express their affection for her. What the author wanted to highlight through this was that Rosemary was loved but that unfortunately her parents were unable to communicate properly with her.
"Once upon a time, there was a family with two daughters, and a mother and a father who promised to love them both exactly the same.’’
The quote from above appears in the chapter where Rosemary remembered the time when her family moved into a new home. However, as she woke up in a new environment, she was shocked to see that her sister Fern was gone and that there were only three bedrooms in the house, one for her parents, one for herself and one for her brother, thus signaling that Fern will not return. Rosemary notes however how her parents promised to love every child equally and thus this made her worry that maybe just like her parents gave up Fern, they will one day give her up as well.
"My parents persisted in pretending we were a close-knit family, a family who enjoyed a good heart-to-heart, a family who turned to each other in times of trial.’’
From the beginning, it becomes clear that Rosemary’s parents are not what they seem to be. They pretend they are a normal family when in reality they have their secrets just like any other family. However, they are successful at fooling those they are around and thus some never expect the family to have so many secrets and to be so dysfunctional. Also, the members of the family do a great job at maintaining appearances and at pretending they are something else.
