The Heavenstone Secrets

  “What do you mean? Why wasn’t her name on his lips? What did he say?’

  “He said … Asa … Asa.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes. He’s not selfish. He’s not suffering just for himself, for his own personal loss. He’s suffering for the entire line of Heavenstones. He needs his Asa, Semantha. The Heavenstone blood in him is boiling with that need.”

  “What can we do, Cassie?”

  “We can give him his Asa.”

  “What?” I shook my head. “I don’t understand. How could there be any Asa Heavenstone now? Mother’s gone. Our children will have their fathers’ names.”

  She smiled.

  Then she turned and walked toward the doorway.

  “Cassie? They’ll have Heavenstone blood because of us, but they’ll have their fathers’ names, won’t they?”

  She paused in the doorway and turned back to me, that smile still there.

  “Not if there is no father,” she said.

  “But how can there be no father?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she kept her wry smile and left.

  And left me hanging by a thread over a pot of boiling confusion.

  Overhaul

  IN THE MORNING, I expected to see a face of sadness and defeat on Daddy, the same face he’d had after dinner the night before, but instead, he looked bright and energetic. He was going to visit one of the stores, the one in Fayette. I didn’t know it until then, but he was going to stay overnight for a meeting the following morning. My second surprise came when Cassie told me that neither she nor I was going with him.

  “We have things to do here,” she told me.

  She didn’t tell me what they were until after Daddy had left. She had been keeping a big secret. On her own, she had contracted with the decorator Mother had used to redo some rooms in our house, and together they had planned out a major renovation of Daddy’s bedroom. Less than an hour after Daddy left, the trucks began to arrive. Cassie, with the decorator, had planned a top-to-bottom renovation. There would be new flooring, new wallpaper, new curtains, new lighting fixtures, and then, even more shocking to me, an entirely new bedroom set. By now, every article of Mother’s clothing that Cassie had not taken had been given to charity, so her closet was completely empty, but Cassie had the decorator redo the walls, floors, and drawers in that closet as well. I stood by and watched the parade of workers, electricians, even plumbers, because she was redoing some bathroom fixtures.

  I couldn’t believe how much was accomplished before the end of the day. When we sat down to dinner, I said so.

  “For the right price, you can get anything done, Semantha. Believe me, I made it worth their while. I wanted it to be completed by the time Daddy enters the house tomorrow.”

  “But why did you want to do all this, Cassie?”

  “Often, when a husband loses his wife or a wife loses her husband, there is a need to get away. The house has too many memories. It takes on the personality of the woman and the man living in it, their taste in everything. It’s painful for the bereaved survivor.

  “Now, Daddy could and would never leave this house, Semantha. This house is part of who and what we are, so I did the next-best thing for him. For him, it will be like moving into a different world, at least when he is alone in his bedroom. He won’t feel Mother’s presence so strongly and miss her so intensely.”

  She smiled as if she had come up with the most wonderful thing. While I understood her reasons, I didn’t feel as good as she did about it. I didn’t want Daddy to forget Mother so quickly, and I certainly didn’t want to forget her at all. Yes, it was painful to wake up every day and realize she was gone and that I would never hear her voice, or feel her kiss on my cheek and her fingers caressing my hair. I wouldn’t have her smile to soothe me when I was unhappy or in pain. If anything, her passing made me feel more alone in this world than ever, even though I still had Daddy and Cassie. But that didn’t mean I wanted to find a way to get her out of my mind. I was sure Daddy didn’t, either.

  I wanted to say this to Cassie, but I could see how much it would hurt her. Once again, she would accuse me of not appreciating her and the good things she did and had done. Once again, she would make me feel ungrateful.

  “Do you understand?” she asked when I said nothing.

  “Yes, but it makes me feel bad, Cassie. I can’t help it.”

  “That’s all right. I feel bad, too, but I’m not thinking of myself. I’m thinking of Daddy. He has to go on, for himself and for us.”

  I nodded. I certainly didn’t want to feel selfish.

  “How do you know he’ll like what you and the decorator have done, Cassie?”

  “Why shouldn’t he like it? Everything was suggested by the same decorator Mother used. He knows Mother’s taste in things, a taste Daddy appreciated, and as it turns out, I have the same taste in most things.” She looked very annoyed at my question. “It’s not brain surgery,” she added sharply.

  “I’m sure you’ve chosen the right things,” I said. “I didn’t mean to say you didn’t.”

  She calmed and then smiled at me. “I do apologize for not taking more interest in you and spending more time with you, Semantha. I know how hard it is for you now, too. How are you feeling? I mean, healthwise? Any problems, female problems, especially?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, young girls sometimes have little difficulties. Take your period, for example. Is it still regular? Because emotional trauma can have a serious effect on all that.”

  “Yes, I’m still regular. Remember? Mother used to say she could set a clock by me.”

  “I remember. As I recall, yours comes around the first of the month, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, Cassie.”

  “So you should be having one any day now.”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “Don’t guess so, Semantha. Take more interest in your body. I want you to let me know when it starts.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, sure.”

  “Good. Now, let’s clean up and watch some television together. We haven’t done that in a long time.”

  “Okay,” I said. She was right. We hadn’t done much together for quite a while. Actually, I hadn’t seen Cassie in this good a mood for just as long. She and I worked side-by-side in the kitchen, and as we cleaned up, she talked about the Heavenstone future, how she envisioned our stores moving to other states and eventually becoming as big as the most famous national chains.

  “Soon we’ll start considering a good private school for you,” she said. “I want to visit them and interview. We’re not placing you in just any private school. As Mother would say if she were here right now, most of these places are just dumping grounds for spoiled children. Their parents are simply searching for a clean place to dump their kids and get them out of their hair. We won’t do that with you.”

  “What about your own education, Cassie? You’re really not going to just stop learning, are you?”

  “Of course not. I learn something new each and every day. Right now, it all has to do with our business. When I feel Daddy is back on his feet one hundred percent, I’ll think about continuing my formal studies.”

  The way she sounded when she said it made me think it was something very far off in her planning. She saw it in my face, read my thoughts easily as usual.

  “Don’t worry about me, Semantha. I have everything well planned out. Everything is going to be all right.”

  She gave me a hug and a kiss, and we went into the den to watch television. After only ten minutes, I recalled why I wasn’t especially fond of watching television with Cassie. According to her, nothing we turned to was worth our time. She especially ridiculed the reality shows.

  “They just pander to voyeurs. It amazes me how willingly people will make fools of themselves in front of millions of viewers. Self-respect is becoming as rare as perfect diamonds.”

>   That didn’t end her critique. She flipped through channels, but every sitcom and even some of the dramas were “stupid.” It occurred to me that Cassie never had any favorite actors or actresses or singers. She had never put up a poster in her room or collected anyone’s CDs. She knew classical composers and famous classical music, but she didn’t include any music in her daily life. I had never seen her buy an entertainment magazine or even browse through one in a dental office waiting room or anyplace like that.

  What, I wondered, were her conversations about with other students, the ones she deemed worthy of her attention at school? By her own choice, she didn’t participate in any social events. Were all of their discussions only about schoolwork?

  On a number of occasions, I tried to get her interested in the music I liked or a movie I had seen and actresses and actors I liked, but she showed no interest and, if anything, ridiculed my choices as being silly, insufficient (whatever that meant), or just poor choices. She often ended the conversation by saying, “You have to be who you are, I guess,” and left it at that. Somehow, she always managed to make me feel stupid.

  Finally, frustrated with everything that was on television, she shut it off. I thought that would be that. We’d go up to our respective rooms and go to sleep, but she surprised me by talking about Porter Andrew Hall.

  “I promised I would tell you about my date,” she said, and sat back on the sofa. “I like to watch the faces of other women when I enter a room with a man, not that I have done that much. Anyway, when we entered Le Jardin Francais, I could see the envy on the faces of other women. Porter is quite an elegant-looking man, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, very handsome.”

  “More than just handsome,” she corrected. “He has an air about him, a demeanor that suggests self-confidence. He doesn’t come off as arrogant. He’s very much like Daddy. You can actually feel his strength. A man like Porter Andrew Hall is rare today. He has that Old World elegance. Simply put, he could easily slip into the shoes of any prince and be treated with the same adulation his subjects express.”

  She paused, but I didn’t know what to say. I had never heard Cassie speak so well of anyone, certainly not of any man.

  “Did you see how understated his style was, his clothing, his hair? I like someone who doesn’t feel the need to announce himself through ostentatious clothing or some outlandish new fad. He doesn’t have to be the center of attention, simply because he already knows he will be. Understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, when you get to know him better, you will definitely understand,” she said. “I’ve decided to invite him to dinner.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really, Semantha. I haven’t decided the exact night yet. I’m waiting on Daddy’s decision about some events and meetings he might or should attend over the next few weeks and then I’ll schedule it. But, I’ll give you plenty of warning so you can think about your own hair and clothes. It will be a special night, a very special night. Is that okay?”

  “Oh, yes, Cassie,” I said quickly. Surely, she must know how I craved some company, some social activity of any kind, even if it was just to entertain her prospective new boyfriend. Someday, I thought, she would be doing the same for me.

  “Good. Well, let’s go up and look at Daddy’s new room again,” she suggested.

  It was still painful to hear her refer to Mother and Daddy’s bedroom as Daddy’s solely, but I nodded and went up with her. We stood in the doorway to take it all in. Cassie walked in and ran her hand lovingly over the headboard of the new bed. It was quite different from the canopy bed Mother had chosen just a few years ago.

  “This is a Victorian Eastern king,” Cassie began, speaking as if she was selling it to me. “It’s done in a terra brun finish and made of solid hardwood. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  I nodded but still wondered if Daddy would like it.

  “I made sure to have one of those newly engineered mattresses, too, the kind that keeps someone from developing aches and pains. You probably don’t recall Daddy asking Mother if she would like him to get one and replace the mattress they had. He was always complaining about it.”

  “No, I don’t remember.” I really didn’t, and I thought that was odd, especially if Daddy had frequently complained. In fact, I never saw or heard him complain about any aches and pains in the morning.

  “Well, take my word for it, he did. He asked her, and she hesitated. You remember how reluctant she was to do anything different, change anything. It was like pulling teeth to get her to allow him to put in that new dining-room table four years ago. You were probably too young to see or remember all that,” she concluded, flipping her hand, “but I wasn’t. I can recall silly little arguments between them when I was barely four. Anyway, now he has the mattress.”

  “You replaced all the pictures of Daddy and Mother,” I realized aloud. “Their wedding picture is gone, too.”

  “They’re put away for now,” she said. “It’s still brutally painful for him to look at them, Semantha.”

  “But he’ll be upset.”

  “Let me worry about it. He’ll be upset only because he’ll feel guilty for not being upset.”

  I felt the folds deepen in my forehead as I squinted my skepticism. It annoyed her.

  “You’ll just have to trust me about this. I know what I’m doing. I think I know him better than anyone now.”

  I knew him just as well, I thought.

  “I don’t mean you don’t, too. It’s just that because I’m older and more acquainted with these problems, I’ll make better decisions. As you see,” she continued, “I have all of his personal things out and arranged just the way he likes them. Go look in the bathroom.”

  I glanced in and saw how neatly everything had been arranged and how anything remotely reminiscent of Mother was gone. Suddenly, seeing the room this way, seeing how thoroughly and completely she had removed our mother from our father, I felt sick. I actually had a wave of nausea. For a moment, all of the blood drained from my face, and then a surge of heat rose up the back of my neck.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Cassie demanded.

  “I don’t know. I’m just … feeling terrible about Mother, I guess.”

  “Well, maybe you should go to bed, then, Semantha. Get yourself together, stronger. I want you to be at my side when Daddy sees all this. I want him to think you were part of it, too, that you cared just as much about him.”

  “I do, but … I miss Mother.”

  “As you should, but as I also told you repeatedly, if you show your sorrow and pain so emphatically, you’ll make him feel his own sorrow and pain more deeply, and sorrow, as we know from what our triple great-grandfather did, can kill. Do you want to kill him, drive him further and further into his dark places, drive him away from us?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then get stronger, and do it quickly,” she commanded. She smiled. “Just look at me when you have those moments, especially in his presence. I’ll help you, okay?”

  I nodded. “Sorry, Cassie.”

  “Just go to sleep. Tomorrow … tomorrow is the beginning of a new day for us. In many, many ways,” she added, and then kissed me on the cheek.

  She held me, too.

  When she let go, I turned and left the room.

  She remained in there long after I had gone to bed, first to do battle with my own twisted thoughts and fears and then to welcome sleep as I would have welcomed my mother’s comforting embrace and kiss.

  “I won’t forget you, Mother,” I whispered to the darkness. “I promise. I won’t.”

  I couldn’t help but be a ball of nervous tension all morning, anticipating Daddy’s midday arrival. On the contrary, Cassie was loose and happy, singing to herself as she moved about the house and put the finishing touches on the bedroom. The moment I heard Daddy enter, my heart began to pound. I was in the living room trying to read, but my gaze continually slid off the page and my mind fell bac
k into anxious thoughts.

  “Hey,” Daddy said, smiling, when I stepped out to greet him. “How are you doing, Semantha?”

  I ran to him, and he hugged me and kissed my forehead. Just as I lifted my eyes to meet his, we heard Cassie call from the top of the stairway.

  “How were your meetings?”

  “They were good. I got them to drop the so-called energy fees.”

  “Wonderful,” Cassie said, coming down the stairs. “I knew you would convince them. If anyone could, you could.”

  I stepped back so she could hug him.

  “I’m tired and hungry,” he said. “I had a crummy breakfast because there was so much talk.”

  “I figured you would be hungry, so I prepared a shrimp salad, and we have those rolls you love.”

  “Great. I’ll just run up, shower, and change. Then you two can fill me in on what you’ve been doing to amuse yourselves while I was gone.”

  “Oh, I think you’ll know pretty quickly,” Cassie said, winking at me.

  “Oh?” He looked at me and then at her. “No hints?”

  “You don’t need any,” Cassie said.

  He kept his look of suspicion and started for the stairway. Cassie glanced at me, and then, when he started up, she seized my hand and pulled me along to follow him as soon as he turned the corner to his bedroom. I looked at her as we hurried up behind him. The excitement in her face was infectious. Maybe this would be a wonderful present for him.

  When we turned the corner to his room, however, we found him standing outside looking in. He looked more stunned than pleased. Cassie paused. He didn’t turn toward us and didn’t enter his bedroom. Finally, he looked our way.

  “What have you done, Cassie?” he asked.

  “I had your bedroom completely redone, Daddy. I wanted it to be fresh and new. I planned it all with Casper Flemming, Mother’s decorator. He had many of the things she had wanted on record. You know how she was torn between that shag carpet and this cut pile plush. How many times did she wonder if she had made the right choice?”