“Leave it for the servants,” he said. He stood and pulled me closer to him. “This is, after all, our first honeymoon night.”
He kissed me and then scooped me up in his arms and carried me up the stairway like Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind. At the top, he turned toward our bedrooms, and I stopped him.
“No,” I said.
“No?”
“Turn left,” I ordered.
He knew what I was thinking and had that frightened look that had flashed on his face when he had first set eyes on me dressed like Lucille, my hair like Lucille’s, and wearing her jewelry and perfume.
“Really?”
“It’s ours, isn’t it? We’re the master and mistress of Heaven-stone.”
He smiled and slowly brought me to Daddy and Lucille’s bedroom. For a long moment, he paused in the doorway with me still in his arms and gazed at their grand king-size bed with the new headboard Lucille had designed. The Heaven-stone corporate logo had been embossed at the center. The four posts nearly touched the ceiling. Surely no king or queen slept in anything more impressive.
I lifted my head to bring my lips to his. We kissed, and then he smiled and without delay carried me into the room and gently placed me on the bed. Never shifting his eyes from mine even for a moment, he began to undress me and then himself. Before he embraced me again, he kissed me on the tip of my nose and whispered, “Welcome to the family, Mrs. Heaven-stone.”
When I looked into the nearly wall-size mirror on my right, I saw Cassie. There were two small flames where her eyes should be. Her lips looked painted in blood, and the strain in her neck brought her veins up against her skin, making them look like exposed tree roots.
Of course, she would be enraged, I thought. I was where she had dreamed of being. It didn’t matter that Ethan wasn’t really Daddy. I was in his bed making love, and she was on a long, invisible leash with the other end firmly tied to her coffin, smothered in darkness.
It’s your punishment, I thought.
She had no answer, but I knew her silence wasn’t any sort of surrender.
Someday, somehow, she would find the key to her revenge and open the door to more pain for the Heaven-stones.
Honeymoon’s Over
ETHAN AND I so enjoyed role-playing mistress and master of Heaven-stone that we continued it on and off during the rest of Daddy and Lucille’s honeymoon. They called twice, more to check on me than anything else. I suspected Lucille spoke often to Ethan at work. He went in every day, even on Sunday, just the way Daddy often would. I kept busy with my reading, exercise, and some shopping. A few times, Mrs. Dobson and Doris caught Ethan and me imitating Daddy and Lucille. I saw them smiling and hiding giggles, but neither said anything.
Almost every evening, Ethan and I went for a swim before dinner. It was that special time of day when the sunlight is still warm but not oppressive, when shadows are as refreshing as cool lemonade, and when everything in nature seems content. More often than not, we drew the curiosity of birds perched so still on branches or the roof of the cabana that they looked stuffed. We swam, embraced, kissed, and dozed off next to each other until either he or I would get hungry. Twice the first week, we went out to dinner, and Uncle Perry kept his word and came to dinner toward the end of that week.
Sometimes in the evening, we watched movies in the entertainment center, curling up like an old married couple, our blood not raging and passionate but quiet. Our hearts were content, and I know that I felt safer than ever. Oh, we did make love everywhere on the property, even out at the pool late at night, and we had what anyone would easily call our own special honeymoon.
On cloudy or rainy days, I would wait for him in the living room like some dutiful wife, anxiously looking forward to the sound of his footsteps and the wave of excitement and energy that entered with him.
“And how was your day?” he would ask playfully. Before I could respond, he would begin to review his own, bringing home stories about the store and some of the employees. I quickly saw that he wasn’t fond of Richard Erickson. He thought the man wasn’t creative enough and wasn’t getting the most out of our employees. I listened politely to all of that, but he could see soon enough that the business talk bored me. In that regard, I could never imitate Lucille. I was much more like my mother.
One night, I woke up, realized he wasn’t in bed or even in the room, and went looking for him. I found him in Daddy’s office, working away on the computer, and asked him what he was doing. I had the sense that this wasn’t the first time he had risen in the middle of the night and gone down to Daddy’s office to work.
“I’m finishing up a report,” he said.
“What report?”
He shifted his eyes as if he was reluctant to tell me and waved away my curiosity. “Just business.”
I wouldn’t be ignored. “What business could possibly cause you to wake up in the middle of the night and come down here, Ethan?”
“Sometimes I remember things when I’m sleeping, and I’m afraid I might forget them, that’s all.”
“Like what? What are you doing?” I persisted.
“It’s a report I promised Lucille,” he finally confessed. “Sort of an efficiency report. All businesses should do it periodically if they are to be well run.”
“So, you’re like Lucille’s spy right now? Is that what you’re telling me?”