“No, hardly. I’m sure I would have found some excuses or ways to disregard whatever you said. When I lost your mother, I lost my clear eyes. But there’s something that frightens me even more as I sit here beside you and think, Semantha. I wonder if you know anything about it.”
“What, Daddy?”
“Cassie was so in charge, especially after your mother became pregnant. I remember how upset she was to learn it when we announced it at dinner. It comes back to me now. A lot comes back to me now. It’s as if I had videotaped this past year or so and can play back troubling moments, so I can’t help wondering …”
“Wondering what?”
He leaned toward me.“Did Cassie do anything to cause your mother to have the miscarriage?”
His question didn’t surprise me, because somewhere deep inside myself, I had the same fear. I recalled how just recently, Cassie had warned me against taking anything for a headache or a backache, especially aspirin. She made the point of saying it causes bleeding, and she was, as Daddy said, taking care of Mother so often when Mother was pregnant.
“I don’t know, Daddy. I know she very much wanted you to have your Asa. She talked about it all the time.”
He nodded, but I knew that, like me, he didn’t really want to know.
“I guess that’s something we’re not going to know and shouldn’t think about anymore. Not now, not after all this,” he said.
“No.”
“We both have a lot to forget.”
He rose and stood there a moment. Then he leaned over to kiss me.
“Try to get some sleep.”
“You, too.”
“Okay. We’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.” He paused near the door. “As soon as I can, I’ll take you to see Dr. Moffet. Let’s do something right.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“It’s just you and me now,” he said. “But don’t be afraid, Semantha. I’ll be here for you. I promise. What happens to you happens to me.”
He left, his words hanging in the air.
And I thought, those were almost Cassie’s exact words, too.
Only she would have added, “After all, we’re the Heavenstone sisters.”
Epilogue
THERE IS SOMETHING about the nature of unwitnessed accidents in homes that stirs suspicious minds. Perhaps it’s because the things that cause the accidents and deaths are apparently so common, so shared with everyone, that everyone hopes there’s another explanation. No one wants to know that the everyday things he or she does can be fatal if some mistake is made. We’re not on battlefields when we’re in our own homes.
Or are we?
Not every war has to have bullets and guns and bombs. The war that raged in our house was practically invisible. There were constant explosions in the air, in our minds, and in our very souls, but we didn’t see them or feel them or want to see them and feel them. After all, we had so much camouflage to rely on, such as our wealth, our fame, and our well-guarded privacy. Ironically, it was Mother who enabled all this by refusing to have servants—witnesses, in fact. And it was both Mother and Daddy who built an image of Cassie that put her so high up, making it impossible to see not only her weaknesses and faults but, most of all, perhaps, her desperation.
She was so desperate for love that she would harm those she loved to put herself at the front of the line when affection was to be expressed. No wonder she was so fond of whispering. It enabled her to live just under the radar. She moved freely in and out of her own world, always shutting the door behind her so no one could enter that world or even see into it.
I did finally. I think I always did, but, like my parents, I refused to believe in what I saw and what I heard. So, when I told Daddy that much of this was my fault, I meant it. I understood why it was, why I should have tried harder to get my parents to see as well. I was young, yes, and afraid, but as I have come to believe, we are all in a war in our own homes in one way or another, and wars cause you to lose your youthful innocence faster.
I guess I lost mine completely the day Cassie fell on the stairs. I buried it with Cassie.
Cassie was always so proud of how big and elaborate the Heavenstone tombstones were. They did dwarf the monuments around them in the cemetery. There was no doubt in any mourner’s mind where the Heavenstone plots were located. They could be seen practically on entering the cemetery.
I kept thinking Cassie would have been so pleased with it all: the large crowd, the tons of flowers, the parade of limousines. The only thing that would have displeased her was where her plot was located. It was to the left of Mother’s. Daddy’s would be to the right, so that Mother separated her from him. It almost made me smile that day to see her coffin lowered into that plot. I imagined her screaming and complaining, insisting it was a mistake, and demanding that a new grave had to be dug immediately.
I think there were just as many eyes on me being pregnant as there were on Daddy and on Cassie’s coffin. I could feel the questions buzzing around us just as clearly as I could have felt a hive of bees circling. Uncle Perry was right beside me, holding my arm the whole time. In the church, he held my hand, and he did so in the limousine as well.