Heartwarming / Flowers in the Attic

• Chris, Sr. reassures seven-year-old Cathy that she will always be his favorite daughter (so long as she never says that to anyone else). Even though he's mostly calming down his temperamental daughter, one gets the sense that he really does consider her his favorite.
• The twins in general tend to be described in glowing terms that stress their adorableness and the closeness of their relationship. There's a scene in particular where Cathy imagines the sleeping twins as a matched life-sized pair of dolls.
• In another scene, Chris asks to sit in the rocking chair while Cathy and the twins pile onto his lap, the way their father used to hold young Cathy and Chris with their mother. The twins by this point barely remember their father, and Cathy thinks to herself how sweet her brother is to give the twins an experience of love and safety that their older siblings remember so fondly.
• In their first weeks in the attic, Corrine, who hates housework, voluntarily puts on an old shirt and a pair of jeans and gets down on her hands and knees to help scrub the attic in order to make it a pleasant, clean place to play. In light of what happens later, the scene comes off as a rare genuine moment of how much she truly loved her children in the beginning, and Cathy's description of her mother as bright, chattering, and uncomplaining in spite of the grubby, sweaty work paints Corrine as very appealing.
  • Likewise the efforts of the older children to make the attic into a garden for their young siblings is very sweet, dedicating all their time and (in the case of Chris hanging swings) risking their own necks for the twins' happiness.
• The scene at the lake, where Cathy and Chris sneak off for a moonlight swim, is a rare peek at the pair as rowdy, happy, playful kids, rather than the miniature adults they've been forced to be in the attic.