I put my hand on the door handle.
“Do it!”
I tried, but I was too frightened. All I could see was Daddy’s red face of rage. Finally, I did start the engine again and started away, hoping they wouldn’t look in my direction.
“You’re a coward!” Cassie screamed. “You’re an embarrassment to the Heaven-stone family. I won’t help you anymore. I’ll let you fail miserably. Everything in your life is going to go wrong. You’re a walking tragedy.”
I drove on, my body shaking so hard I thought I might run off the road. After a while, I calmed, and Cassie was no longer sitting beside me.
She was fuming in her grave.
But her words and threats still echoed in the car. I had no doubt they would echo in my mind and in my dreams until the day I buried her deeply enough to shut her up forever.
Maybe, though, she was right. Maybe by then it would be too late.
Rehearsal
AS DADDY WOULD say, the days remaining before the grand wedding and Ethan’s return went like molasses running up a hill. Ethan called me as soon as he reached home and then called every day thereafter, each time talking for nearly a half hour. He even called me periodically from the road when he had begun his journey back to Kentucky so I could be aware of his progress, always ending with something like, “Twelve more hours until touchdown.”
At breakfast, two days after Ethan had left the Heaven-stone estate, Daddy had finally revealed to me what I already knew: Ethan was coming to work for us.
“I’m quite taken with this young man you’ve found, Semantha. I think he has great potential.” He looked at Lucille, who nodded. It bothered me that he needed her stamp of approval for almost anything he said to me these days. “For now,” he continued, still looking at Lucille, “at Lucille’s suggestion, we’re going to permit him to stay in the guest suite here. I know how difficult it is financially these days for young people to start jobs away from home, and we don’t want him wasting time looking for lodging he can afford.”
Both looked at me and waited for my response.
“That’s very nice,” I said in a flat tone of voice, causing Lucille’s eyebrows to lift into two quarter-moons. I was suddenly aware that whenever she did that, everything on her face lifted. Her nostrils widened, and her upper lip rose, quivering her chin. Was that a consequence of plastic surgery?
“Nice?” Lucille looked at Daddy and smiled. “You don’t have to disguise or contain your excitement about it with us, Semantha. Your father and I agree that you’re a young woman now. It’s not like we’re letting some teenagers run loose or something. Both of you have proven to be very responsible people.”
“Everything’s happening so fast,” I said, by way of explaining my controlled reaction.
“Yes. Well,” she said, “when things are right, it’s good that they happen fast. However, I assure you that both your father and I have given it all considerable thought. It’s in no way an impulsive decision on our part. Are you upset about it? Would you rather we rescinded our offer to Ethan and waited?”
“No, no, of course not. I think it’s a wonderful thing you’re doing for him,” I replied, this time with a great deal of enthusiasm.
“Good. Well, then, that’s that.”
I said nothing more, and she was eager to get off the topic and return to discussing the wedding and honeymoon plans, barely looking at me and never asking my opinion about anything now. What had happened to her invitation to me to be an integral part of it all as a way of drawing us closer? Had it all been for show, or, as the date drew closer, was she simply far too excited to notice anything else?
Whatever the reason, I soon felt invisible and, in fact, didn’t really feel that I existed again in this house until the day Ethan drove through the gate and onto the Heaven-stone estate. Work had already begun on construction of the dance floor and the creation and arrangement of the lighting and decorations Lucille had envisioned. Along with the usual grounds workers, dozens more temporary employees were on the property. Sound systems were being tested and refined, and the large tent and smaller tents for specific purposes were being designed and set up. The cabana and some of the other buildings were repainted. More flowers were brought in until there didn’t seem to be any area visible to the guests that wasn’t brightened. Not a chip, not a crack in any walkway, was left unrepaired.
It seemed there were artisans, caterers, and service people meeting, planning, and rehearsing daily. Lucille assigned one of the Heaven-stone Corporation’s best secretaries to be her assistant. Along with her wedding planner, the two marched about the house and property with Lucille rattling off thoughts, complaints, and new ideas constantly, her hands flying around her like nervous birds. Everyone jumped when she barked a command or merely looked in his or her direction. It was as if the whole thing were a great puppet show, with Lucille pulling the strings. At least that brought a smile to my face, but nothing as big and as deep as the smile I wore when Ethan finally stepped out of his car and looked up at me waiting on the portico. He had phoned when he was ten minutes away, and I had hurried down to watch him drive in and greet him.
“Man, did I miss you,” he said, rushing up the steps. He gathered me up in his arms in a gentle bear hug and kissed me softly. “My parents thought there was something wrong with me, because every once in a while, I would simply drift off and not hear a thing either of them had said. They didn’t know that was because I was thinking of you, envisioning you, dreaming of you. There wasn’t room in my head for anything or anyone else.”
Perhaps there really was a Cassie part of me. What girl wouldn’t be thrilled to hear these words from the man she thought she loved and hoped loved her? Yet I couldn’t smother the thought that these words sounded too perfect, even rehearsed. Then again, I asked myself, what if they were? What if all during his trip back, or at least the last few hours on the road, he had worked on those words because he wanted them to sound perfect? What was wrong with that, with a man trying as hard as he could to please the woman he loved?
“Is everything all right?” he asked when I didn’t burst open like a radiant flower in the sunlight that his smiling face had brought.
“Yes, oh, yes, Ethan. I missed you, too. This place has become so busy with so many people and so much going on that I can’t hear myself think. It really is more like an invasion,” I said, and he laughed.
“Well, it is the wedding of the century, isn’t it?” he asked.
“To Lucille, it is. To me, it’s just a hectic, maddening commotion.”
He nodded. “I bet. But don’t worry. I’m back. I’ll help you get away from it all. Let me get my bags. You know, I have a lot more than last time.”
“I’ll help.” I followed him down to the car. A parade of trucks was coming up the driveway, bringing chairs and tables for eighteen hundred people. We paused to watch them park, the men jumping out to unload quickly. They cracked open doors and began piling chairs on carts, orders being shouted in every direction.