“Yes, your father told me. Hi, Sam. How are you doing?” he asked as soon as he saw me.
“Sam,” Cassie said, turning to look at me before I could respond, “was very lucky last night. She was in a bad car accident.”
“What? Teddy didn’t say anything about any car accident.”
“As you can see, Semantha is all right, and my father has his mind on many important things today, Uncle Perry,” Cassie said.
Uncle Perry turned to me. “Are you all right?” he asked, clearly implying that he didn’t trust Cassie.
“Yes, Uncle Perry. Cassie’s right. I was lucky. One of the boys, however, hit his head on the dashboard and has a concussion. He should be all right, though.”
“Wow. So, what happened?”
“Yes, why don’t you amuse Uncle Perry with that story while I look in on Mother?” Cassie said. “I’ll see how she is and let you know if you can visit when I come down,” she told Uncle Perry.
“Why couldn’t I visit her?” he asked or, rather, demanded. I saw he was losing patience with Cassie. “I didn’t drive out here just to chat with you two. I promised your father I’d visit your mother.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t visit, Uncle Perry. Chill out. All I m
eant was I’d see if she was awake. She drifts in and out with this medicine Dr. Moffet has prescribed. You don’t want to stand there looking at a woman asleep, do you?”
“I’ll wait until she wakes up, even if it takes the rest of the day,” he replied firmly.
Cassie smiled and nodded. “We appreciate that, Uncle Perry. Honestly, we do,” she said, and walked off to the stairway.
He looked at me, the anger in his face receding. “What happened to you, then, Sam? What’s this about a car accident?”
I walked him into the living room. He sat on the sofa, and I described the accident. With him, I told the truth.
“There’s probably no doubt your friend Eddie could have prevented the accident if he had been paying attention. All of us, but teenagers especially, should be trained in defensive driving. I don’t know all that much about insurance companies, but I can’t see how the elderly man won’t be held accountable anyway, Sam. If he couldn’t back out and drive off without any car hitting him, he should have waited. He was probably not looking enough. But from the way you describe your friend who drove, I don’t think this is the end of his getting into trouble.”
“I feel so terrible with all that’s happening to my mother and Daddy right in the middle of so much.”
“It will be all right. Don’t worry,” he said, and stood up to give me a hug just as Cassie entered.
“How loving,” she said. “An uncle and his favorite niece caught in a tender embrace. My mother is awake, Uncle Perry. I told her you were here. She had no reaction, but don’t mind that. It’s the medicine.”
He looked at me with skepticism, then started out and stopped. “Why don’t you come up with me, Sam,” he said.
“I’ll wait here for Daddy,” Cassie said, as if he had asked her and not me.
I joined him, and we went upstairs. Mother was in a robe and sitting in the oversized chair in the bedroom. I made a mental note to work on her hair as soon as Uncle Perry left. Right now, it looked like a rat’s nest. She wore no makeup, and sitting in the afternoon sunshine pouring through the windows, she looked quite pale. When she saw Uncle Perry, she began to cry.
“Arianna, please, don’t,” Uncle Perry said, rushing to her. He knelt beside her and took her hand in his. “You can’t blame yourself.”
“I came home without my baby. Teddy’s male heir,” she said. “His Asa. I know how much he dreamed of him.”
“He’s got heirs.”
“The Heavenstone name, Perry. It’s so important to him.”
“Not more important than you are to him, Arianna. Besides, I’ve always told him that this Heavenstone thing is over the top. We’re just people who happen to have a thriving big business. Everyone has a history. This isn’t some kind of royal dynasty, and Teddy isn’t Henry the Eighth.”
If Cassie were there and heard him say that, she would pounce on him and scratch him from ear to ear, I thought. He glanced back at me as if he heard what I was thinking.
Mother nodded slightly but without any enthusiasm. “I know it’s just my imagination,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper, “but sometimes … sometimes I hear a baby’s cry, and I think maybe he was born. You know what I mean?” she asked Uncle Perry, her face brightening with some hope.
It was as if she really did expect him to say she was right. She had heard her baby. What did she think he would tell her? That all of this was just a bad dream, or she had suffered so much difficulty giving birth that she had lost her memory?