“We’re cutting back on the teenage clothing displays, and I’m reducing the store space.”
“Why? I thought Daddy said Uncle Perry’s creations were successful.”
“He said it to make him feel good. They’re not that successful. It doesn’t fit the business model to keep it as it is,” she said. “Don’t worry about it, Semantha. It’s just another little thing annoying Daddy, and he’s still in a very dark, unhappy state of mind.”
“But—”
“Just worry about dinner,” she said, and left before I could ask anything else.
At dinner, when I mentioned to Daddy that Uncle Perry had come for lunch, he seemed totally surprised.
“He said he left you a message, Daddy.”
“He did? I didn’t get any such message. Do you remember such a message, Cassie?”
“No,” she said quickly.
“Well, that’s odd.”
“Maybe he thought he had left a message but actually forgot,” she said. “I showed you how he’s running his accounts.”
Daddy shook his head.“Well, I’m sorry I missed him. We could have put off the trip to another day. I spend so little time with him these days.”
“Semantha entertained him well, I’m sure,” Cassie said.
Daddy nodded. In fact, it brought a little more light into his eyes.“I’m glad, Semantha. We need to hold on to what little family we have.” He went back to eating silently. Cassie threw me a knowing look.
Later, in the kitchen, she hurried over to me.
“You see,” she whispered. “You see how much deeper the Asa hole is? It weighs on his mind.”
“What does?”
“Not having as much family, not having a son,” she said, and left me with the cleanup to join Daddy in the living room. It was the way we finished every night lately: I was in the kitchen; they were relaxing in the living room.
It was just the way it had been for Daddy and Mother, and Cassie’s excuse for it was always, “I’m trying to help him close the hole.”
After I was finally finished with the dining room and the kitchen, I went into the living room to join them. Cassie was sitting on the settee across from Daddy, who was in his favorite chair, the oversized-cushion one in which I would sit sometimes when I was very little and pretend I was on a magic chair that could take me to one wonderland after another.
Cassie was staring at him and didn’t hear me enter the living room. Daddy was apparently asleep. When she realized I was there, she turned in two jerky moves and looked at me. I was surprised, because she looked as if she was about to cry and that was one look that rarely dared plant itself on Cassie Ann Heavenstone’s face.
“No matter what I say … I was in the middle of telling him some wonderful new ideas for the stores. He just … closed his eyes and drifted off.”
“Maybe he drank too much, Cassie.”
“No! No,” she said more calmly. “It’s not the drinking. It’s the pain in his heart.”
I looked at him again. Our voices didn’t stir him, and while he sat there with his face so gray, his eyes closed, his upper body looking limp and weak, I had a terrible foreboding and fear. What if he couldn’t stand all this sorrow and did what Mother had done?
Cassie saw the terror in my face. “Go up to your room, Semantha. Do some homework or watch some television or something. If he takes one look at you, he’ll fall into an even deeper funk. Go on. I’ll stay with him. You did a very nice job with dinner,” she added.
“Thank you,” I said.
She smiled and then held out her arms. “Come here.”
Come here? How odd, I thought. She kept her arms out until I walked over to her. Then she embraced me and kissed me on my cheek.
“Good night, little one,” she said. Those had often been Mother’s good-night words. For a long moment, I couldn’t move. She was wearing Mother’s clothes and Mother’s perfume and makeup and jewelry. She was wearing Mother’s smile.