She raised her head quickly, her eyes brighter.“No, Semantha,” she said. “Mother’s name was not on his lips as he sank into what will surely be a night of dark dreams.”
“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.”