“What do you mean?”
“Christmas trees, Semantha. Figure it out. Who will take over the Heavenstone Corporation in years to come? Not me, and certainly not you.”
When I didn’t respond, she raised her voice. “Uncle Perry will never have a son, much less a daughter, unless he adopts one, and that child won’t have any Heavenstone blood in him!”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oooooh.” She flopped on her bed. “Every generation of Heavenstones has always had a male to take control of what had been built by his father and his father’s father. Daddy must have nightmares about it. He’s not happy with the prospect of some other, bigger corporation taking us over, but without a son, what else could happen? You see what Uncle Perry is like. Even if he outlived Daddy by years and years, he couldn’t handle the responsibilities. He knows nothing about real business.”
“But why couldn’t you run the company someday, Cassie? You’re the smartest girl I know.”
“I don’t want to,” she replied sharply and slowly. “I’m mo
re like … like a wife. Goodness knows, I do half of Mother’s work here, don’t I? Well? Don’t I?”
“Yes, but I thought …”
“Don’t think.”
She sighed and then looked at me harder. She nodded to herself.
“What?” I asked.
“I suppose you could, with great care and guidance, someday find the right man to marry, a man who might be able to be work in our corporation. But,” she added, shaking her head, “I have grave doubts about your taste when it comes to the opposite sex. I see how infatuated you are with Kent Pearson. Don’t deny it. He’ll be lucky to attend a state university and probably won’t have a head for business anyway, if he’s anything like his brother. Therefore, even if you have a boy, he might not have the wherewithal to inherit control of our empire.”
“Empire?”
“Don’t you see?” she cried. She actually pounded her own leg for emphasis, so hard it made me wince. “You can’t just go flouting about with anyone who pees standing up.”
“What?” I started to smile.
“Any boy, Semantha. You have to realize your responsibility to our heritage.”
“What about you, Cassie? You might find the right man if I don’t.”
She looked away for a long moment. I thought she might have nothing else to say.
And then she whispered as if she were talking to herself, “I can’t possibly leave Daddy, especially now.”
Before I could ask her what she meant, we heard Mother calling us in the hallway. I went to the door.
“What, Mother?”
“Your uncle Perry’s leaving, girls. I just showed him Asa’s nursery and some of the renovations.”
I looked back at Cassie. “Uncle Perry’s leaving.”
“I’m devastated. Go say good-bye for me,” she told me. Then she rose and went into her bathroom.
Her whispered words seemed stuck in my ears: “I can’t possibly leave Daddy, especially now.”
I would hear them often in my mind.
And I would struggle to understand them as if my life depended on it.
Little did I know that it actually did.
Only the Beginning