Her eyes were open, and she was looking up. They seemed to glaze over as I watched. Her mouth opened just a little more, and I thought I heard her whisper, “He loves me.”
In a panic, I hurried to my room to call Daddy. He was out of the office, but his secretary located him quickly for me and transferred me to his cell phone.
“What is it, Semantha?” he asked. The tone of his voice had not softened when he spoke to me all these weeks, and it had that sharpness in it now as well.
“It’s Cassie,” I said. “She’s fallen down the attic steps, and she’s hurt badly.”
“What? Did you call for an ambulance?”
“No, not yet.”
“Okay. I’ll call,” he said, and hung up before I could tell him anything else.
I returned to Cassie’s side. First, I picked up as many of the emptied pill capsules as I could find, and then I found the bottle itself. I put the capsules back into it and sat beside her, holding her hand. It grew cooler and cooler in mine. I don’t know how long I was sitting there with her until Daddy arrived. He came right behind the ambulance. The paramedics flew up the stairs behind him, and one of them lifted me out of the way gently.
Daddy waited while the other checked Cassie and then looked up and shook his head.
“Oh, my God, no! No!” Daddy screamed. “Not my Cassie! She can’t be dead! Give her CPR! Do something!”
Whether they did it to calm him or they really believed it would help, I do not know, but they tried. The one who had helped me told Daddy they had to call the police. He barely nodded. Then he grabbed my left arm and pulled me toward my bedroom.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” he said. “How could she fall down this stairway?”
From the tone of his voice, I understood he was blaming me even before he heard anything. The day he had learned I was pregnant, he had swept me off the pedestal on which every father sees his daughter. I was the fallen angel who had cracked his shattered heart even more, and nothing I could do would ever mend it. Because of that, he would never have any trouble seeing me as being at fault or believing I was the cause of more trouble, more pain. Yes, I could be evil. I could lie. I could do illegal things. He wasn’t an objective parent. He had been moved from one who could never see or believe his child was evil to one who could see little else. Forever and ever, I would be guilty until proven innocent, and not the vice versa it was for almost all parents and their children.
I sat at the foot of my bed and looked at the floor. He stood over me, breathing so hard I thought he was going to have a heart attack. I was almost too frightened to speak, and I was still crying.
“Semantha,” he said.
“It all started when I told her to stop wearing Mother’s things.”
“What?”
“She was always acting more like my mother than my sister.”
“You’re not making any sense, Semantha. What’s that have to do with the stairway, the attic?”
“I made her change her clothes, and then she went to your office, and I went to her room and began gathering up Mother’s things. I thought I would put them in the attic, in that armoire you said belonged to Grandmother Heavenstone. I put all the clothes in there.”
We heard someone running up the stairway and turned toward the doorway.
Uncle Perry appeared.
“What happened, Teddy?” he asked, and looked down the hall where the paramedics remained beside Cassie’s body. We could hear one on his cell phone talking to the police.
“I’m trying to find out.”
I began crying harder.
Daddy grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard. “Stop this and talk. Talk!”
“Take it easy with her. This is a huge shock for her, too, Teddy,” Uncle Perry said.
Daddy took his hands away. “You said you put your mother’s clothing into Grandmother Heavenstone’s armoire in the attic. So?”
“Then I went back to Cassie’s room and got all of Mother’s jewelry to put in there as well. I opened the first drawer and I found this,” I said, opening my fist.
Daddy hadn’t noticed that my fist had been closed the whole time.
Uncle Perry moved closer to look.
Daddy took the pill bottle out of my hand, looked at it and then at me.“What is this?”
“That’s Mother’s sleeping pills,” I said.
“So?”
“Why were they up there?” Uncle Perry asked.
Daddy looked at him. “Yes, what is this?”
I took the pill bottle from him and opened it.“Hold your hand out, Daddy,” I said, and he did. I emptied some of the capsules into his palm.
He looked them and then examined one.
“They’re empty,” Uncle Perry said.
Daddy nodded. “Well?”
“Cassie … Cassie emptied them into Mother’s drink.”
“What?” Daddy grabbed the pill bottle and emptied all of the capsules into his palm. Some fell off.
“They’re all empty,” Uncle Perry said.
“Why would she do that?”
“She said Mother was in too much pain having lost your Asa and wanted to sleep forever.”
“My God,” Uncle Perry said.
“She said that?”
“Yes. She came up to the attic just after I found those, and then she told me, and then she tried to get the pill bottle from me, and we struggled … and …” I started to cry again. “And she … fell backward … when I let go.”
We could hear a police siren in the distance.
“Excuse me, Mr. Heavenstone,” one of the paramedics said, coming to the doorway. “We can’t move your daughter until the police arrive. Your younger daughter will have to speak to them.”
Daddy said nothing. He barely nodded. The paramedic returned to Cassie’s body.
“Are you pregnant, Semantha?” Uncle Perry asked, just realizing.
“Yes, Uncle Perry.”
“She got herself in trouble,” Daddy told him. “Cassie was helping to keep it quiet.”
“That’s not what happened, Daddy,” I said. “I never got myself in trouble.”
“What? What are you saying now?”
I began to tell him, but before I could finish the whole story, the police arrived. However, what I had told him of it so far was enough to drain all the blood from his face and weaken his knees so much that Uncle Perry had to hold him up to face the police. They told me to stay in my room while they went to talk to the paramedics.
In the end, it was Uncle Perry who was more concerned about the Heavenstone reputation. He came back to me before the police did.
“Don’t tell them about the pills and your mother,” he said. “That will turn this into a circus. The tabloids will have a field day with us. Just tell them you were both bringing things up for storage, and she lost her footing and fell backward.”
“I’m not good at not telling the truth, Uncle Perry. Cassie will tell you that—” I stopped myself. The realization that Cassie was gone forever still hadn’t set in.
“Do the best you can,” Uncle Perry said. “Your father and I will handle it from then on. Don’t worry.”
When the police came in to speak with me, I told them Cassie and I had been taking things up to the attic, and when I had taken some clothes from her arms too quickly, she had lost her footing and fallen backward. I thought I saw doubt in their faces, but Uncle Perry stepped in quickly and told them I was too upset to talk too much, and as they could readily see, I was pregnant. Maybe because of who we were or maybe because they really didn’t see any reason to continue, they left me alone and continued to work on getting Cassie’s body out to the ambulance.
I literally fell over on my side on the bed and closed my eyes. Sleep was truly an escape. Later that day, Daddy and Uncle Perry came into my room and sat beside my bed to hear the rest of the story. They barely spoke or asked a question. Daddy told Uncle Perry to call Porter Andrew Hall and tell him to come directly to our house immediately. I re
mained in my room. Uncle Perry brought me something to drink and a little to eat and told me to rest. He said he and Daddy would be back up to see me as soon as they had met with Porter.
When they did return, it was apparent that Porter had confessed to everything. Daddy was devastated, but he was finally more concerned about me than himself. Despite all that had happened and all he had learned, he was able to hold himself together and get busy on what had to be done about Cassie. Since there was no longer a reason to try to keep my pregnancy hidden, Daddy had his secretary, Mrs. Hingen, come stay with me while he and Uncle Perry went off to speak to the police. Uncle Perry said he would get started on the funeral arrangements.
For the first time in a long time, my father and my uncle were behaving like real brothers. Later, Daddy would tell me that nothing cements a family tighter than family tragedy. That’s when they are reminded that their blood shares mortality and lives only as long as they do and their children do.
Late in the evening, Daddy came into my room. I was in bed but hadn’t been able to fall asleep for very long. I’d doze off and then wake up and be awake for long periods of time until I dozed off again. Anyone who’s been through so traumatic an event would say he or she wondered if it had all been a dream. Every once in a while, I’d listen hard for Cassie’s footsteps to confirm it had been a nightmare and nothing more, but those footsteps never came.
When I woke after one of my short dozes, I saw Daddy sitting in the shadows carved by the moonlight flowing through my sheer cotton curtains. The sight of him sitting so still startled me. I sat up slowly.
“Daddy?”
“How are you?” he asked softly.
“I’m okay. I have trouble sleeping.”
“I don’t expect to sleep at all,” he said. “I’m sitting here wondering how I let all this get by me, wondering why I was so blind, deaf, and dumb. She always seemed so perfect to me, or maybe I wanted her to be perfect. I suppose most parents are blind to their children’s faults or want to be. It’s just that I always thought of myself as … wiser, I guess. I believed my own publicity.”
“I should have told you more, talked to you more. It’s mostly my fault.”
“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.
Some parents and students from my public school attended, but I felt they were there to gawk at me more than they were to pay respects to Daddy and Cassie. I was happy that Daddy kept the visitors afterward to a very close group of business associates. I kept thinking that Cassie would like this, at least. She had hated it when we’d had all those curiosity seekers at Mother’s funeral.
Afterward, the house had never felt as empty. Sometimes, I would pause to listen, because I thought I heard Cassie’s familiar footsteps on the stairway or in the hallway. For days and weeks, whenever I entered the kitchen, I half expected to see her working on a meat loaf or making a pasta. I
did the best I could in my condition, but Daddy now talked about hiring a cook and some maids. Uncle Perry practically moved in. He was here so often. I saw he was just as concerned about my father as he was about me. It brought me continuously back to that idea that tragedy cements a family.
In fact, it was Uncle Perry who rushed me to the hospital the day my water broke. He had gotten to the house before Daddy, and just turned around with me in his car. Dr. Moffet was there to greet us. Daddy arrived before I went into the delivery room. He held my hand as they wheeled the gurney, but he turned down Dr. Moffet’s invitation to be in the room. I didn’t blame him. I wished I could turn down the invitation.
The last shock came when my baby was born.
It would have killed Cassie again. She had been so confident.
I gave birth to a girl, not a boy.
Daddy and I hadn’t discussed what would be done with the baby. Without Cassie around to shove reality and decisions in our faces, we both ignored the question for as long as we could. We did discuss my going to a private school as soon as I could, but the baby’s destiny was left hanging in the air just outside our lives.
Daddy came to see me as soon as I could have any visitors after the delivery. He hadn’t gone to see my baby yet. After he was sure I was fine, he grew silent. We both did. The words hung like apples ready to be plucked.
“Neither of us is equipped to be a mother right now,” he began. “The circumstances that have brought the child to us will always be a stain on our minds, Semantha. It’s unfortunate, and it’s not the child’s fault, but it’s there nevertheless.”
I couldn’t disagree.
“Obviously, although we haven’t spoken about this, I have been working on a solution. I couldn’t see us just giving the child up for adoption to total strangers, so I’ve been in contact with your mother’s cousin Royce. You might remember that she and her husband, Shane, lost their daughter, Vera, in an auto accident five years ago. There’s an older boy in college, but Royce is only in her early forties. They’ve agreed to take the baby. Is that all right with you?”
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