THAT EVENING, I thought I was dreaming it, but I soon realized that Cassie was kneeling at my bedside and whispering in my left ear. I opened my eyes and continued to listen before I turned toward her. I wanted to be sure it wasn’t a dream, and I was terrified that it might be a ghost, one of the Heavenstones, of course, maybe even Asa Heavenstone, since his namesake was soon to be born. It wasn’t the first time I had thought I heard voices in this historic house. There were even times I had thought I had seen something ghostlike moving in the shadows.
I turned slowly and saw Cassie in her nightgown.
“She’s doing it again,” she whispered.
“Who?”
“Mother.”
“Doing what?”
“Crying, moaning, complaining. You’d have to be dead not to hear it. She’s walking the hallways, and Daddy is pleading with her to go back to bed.”
I sat up and listened. I didn’t hear anything.
“What do you mean, she’s doing it again? I don’t hear her,” I said.
“She’s not doing it now. He got her to go back to their bedroom,” Cassie said. “I told you, didn’t I? I told you this would happen. She doesn’t have the temperament for all this, for having a new baby. She’s too much into herself, into her own life.”
“How can a mother be too much into herself to have her own baby?”
“You really are so naive, Semantha, especially for someone your age. You ever wonder why our mother hasn’t ever been involved in Daddy’s business? She hardly visits one of our stores. You know why he really never talks about business at dinner? He knows she’s not in the slightest interested. Haven’t you noticed how much of an introvert she’s become?”
“What’s that? I’m not sure,” I admitted.
“Christmas trees, Semantha. You’re in the ninth grade. If you’d read more, you’d have a decent vocabulary.”
“I read.”
“It means she won’t belong to any club or go shopping with friends and always gives Daddy a hard time about going to social events. She’s happy just doing her housework and her jigsaw puzzles. Why do you think she has so few personal phone calls? She’ll never call anyone back. She’d rather be by herself than with anyone else, even Daddy.”
So that’s what it means, I thought. Of all people to call someone else an introvert, Cassie shouldn’t. She could easily be describing herself, not Mother.
“Daddy doesn’t seem unhappy with her,” I offered.
She stood up, towering over me now. In the distorted shadows carved by a half-moon glowing through my curtains, Cassie seemed to rise above her height and expand. Her face looked covered in a silvery-gold mask, with her eyes dark, vacant sockets.
“He would never come right out and tell us something like that, Semantha,” she whispered.
Whenever she whispered like this, I automatically whispered back. “Then how do you know it’s true, Cassie?”
She looked as if she was smiling.
“I know Daddy better than anyone, Semantha. I can tell immediately when he is happy and when he is not. He shoots me certain looks from time to time, looks he won’t permit anyone else to see, not even you, because he doesn’t want to upset you. He knows how fragile you are.”
“I’m not fragile.”
“Of course you are, Semantha. You know it’s because you were a premature baby, born nearly six weeks too early. You were kept in the hospital for almost three weeks. Everyone expected you would die.”
“But I thought the doctor said I would do just fine.”
“Of course, he would say something like that. He didn’t want to frighten and worry our parents. But think, Cassie. Haven’t you been ill with all the childhood diseases? You have much thinner bones than I do. When you’re naked, I can practically look right through you. The smallest, most insignificant little things get you upset or nervous. I know you’re afraid of almost everything, including your own shadow. That’s why I try to look after you as much as I do.”
I didn’t say anything for fear she would think I sounded ungrateful, and I did feel more secure knowing she was keeping an eye on me.
She leaned down again, kneeling slightly. Now I could see her eyes clearly because of the way they glittered in the moonlight. She looked very excited and, in an odd way, happy.
“Mark my words. This is only the beginning. Prepare yourself for a great deal more difficulty to come,” she said, then rose and slipped out of my room as quietly as she had slipped in. It was almost as if I had dreamed the entire thing. My heart was thumping. I had to take deep breaths. Cassie was always saying I probably had asthma, but Dr. Moffet said it wasn’t so.