“Yes, very handsome.”
“More than just handsome,” she corrected. “He has an air about him, a demeanor that suggests self-confidence. He doesn’t come off as arrogant. He’s very much like Daddy. You can actually feel his strength. A man like Porter Andrew Hall is rare today. He has that Old World elegance. Simply put, he could easily slip into the shoes of any prince and be treated with the same adulation his subjects express.”
She paused, but I didn’t know what to say. I had never heard Cassie speak so well of anyone, certainly not of any man.
“Did you see how understated his style was, his clothing, his hair? I like someone who doesn’t feel the need to announce himself through ostentatious clothing or some outlandish new fad. He doesn’t have to be the center of attention, simply because he already knows he will be. Understand?”
“I think so.”
“Well, when you get to know him better, you will definitely understand,” she said. “I’ve decided to invite him to dinner.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really, Semantha. I haven’t decided the exact night yet. I’m waiting on Daddy’s decision about some events and meetings he might or should attend over the next few weeks and then I’ll schedule it. But, I’ll give you plenty of warning so you can think about your own hair and clothes. It will be a special night, a very special night. Is that okay?”
“Oh, yes, Cassie,” I said quickly. Surely, she must know how I craved some company, some social activity of any kind, even if it was just to entertain her prospective new boyfriend. Someday, I thought, she would be doing the same for me.
“Good. Well, let’s go up and look at Daddy’s new room again,” she suggested.
It was still painful to hear her refer to Mother and Daddy’s bedroom as Daddy’s solely, but I nodded and went up with her. We stood in the doorway to take it all in. Cassie walked in and ran her hand lovingly over the headboard of the new bed. It was quite different from the canopy bed Mother had chosen just a few years ago.
“This is a Victorian Eastern king,” Cassie began, speaking as if she was selling it to me. “It’s done in a terra brun finish and made of solid hardwood. Isn’t it beautiful?”
I nodded but still wondered if Daddy would like it.
“I made sure to have one of those newly engineered mattresses, too, the kind that keeps someone from developing aches and pains. You probably don’t recall Daddy asking Mother if she would like him to get one and replace the mattress they had. He was always complaining about it.”
“No, I don’t remember.” I really didn’t, and I thought that was odd, especially if Daddy had frequently complained. In fact, I never saw or heard him complain about any aches and pains in the morning.
“Well, take my word for it, he did. He asked her, and she hesitated. You remember how reluctant she was to do anything different, change anything. It was like pulling teeth to get her to allow him to put in that new dining-room table four years ago. You were probably too young to see or remember all that,” she concluded, flipping her hand, “but I wasn’t. I can recall silly little arguments between them when I was barely four. Anyway, now he has the mattress.”
“You replaced all the pictures of Daddy and Mother,” I realized aloud. “Their wedding picture is gone, too.”
“They’re put away for now,” she said. “It’s still brutally painful for him to look at them, Semantha.”
“But he’ll be upset.”
“Let me worry about it. He’ll be upset only because he’ll feel guilty for not being upset.”
I felt the folds deepen in my forehead as I squinted my skepticism. It annoyed her.
“You’ll just have to trust me about this. I know what I’m doing. I think I know him better than anyone now.”
I knew him just as well, I thought.
“I don’t mean you don’t, too. It’s just that because I’m older and more acquainted with these problems, I’ll make better decisions. As you see,” she continued, “I have all of his personal things out and arranged just the way he likes them. Go look in the bathroom.”
I glanced in and saw how neatly everything had been arranged and how anything remotely reminiscent of Mother was gone. Suddenly, seeing the room this way, seeing how thoroughly and completely she had removed our mother from our father, I felt sick. I actually had a wave of nausea. For a moment, all of the blood drained from my face, and then a surge of heat rose up the back of my neck.
“What’s wrong with you?” Cassie demanded.
“I don’t know. I’m just … feeling terrible about Mother, I guess.”
“Well, maybe you should go to bed, then, Semantha. Get yourself together, stronger. I want you to be at my side when Daddy sees all this. I want him to think you were part of it, too, that you cared just as much about him.”
“I do, but … I miss Mother.”
“As you should, but as I also told you repeatedly, if you show your sorrow and pain so emphatically, you’ll make him feel his own sorrow and pain more deeply, and sorrow, as we know from what our triple great-grandfather did, can kill. Do you want to kill him, drive him further and further into his dark places, drive him away from us?”