“Well, you know how it is with decorators, Daddy. Once you substitute one thing, they talk you into coordinating it with another and another, until you’ve redone everything.”
Daddy nodded and finally entered his bedroom. We followed but remained in the doorway. He stood at the foot of his new bed and looked around.
“Where are my pictures?”
“They’re all on the shelf in your closet, Daddy.”
“I don’t want them hidden away,” he said. His tone was sharper, even a bit angry.
“Oh, well, I … we just thought … but do whatever you think with anything.”
He looked into the bathroom. “I can’t believe you had all this done in a day, Cassie.”
“I was planning it for a while. I coordinated everyone.”
“No question you could do that,” he said. “Well, let me change and freshen up, and we’ll talk about it at lunch.”
“Okay,” Cassie said, and turned to leave.
I stood there looking at him a little longer. I thought he was visibly shaken, and although he was containing it well, he was disturbed and far from as happy about it as Cassie had anticipated.
“C’mon, Semantha,” she ordered.
I followed her down the hall and the stairway.
At the bottom, she turned to me. “You could have been more supportive, said more, agreed more, so he would know it was something we both thought of doing.”
“But we … I didn’t.”
“We’re the Heavenstone sisters, Semantha. What one does the other does, what one suffers the other suffers, and what makes one happy makes the other happy. We always defend each other and support each other. We’re two parts of the same person.”
I had never heard her put it that way. It suggested that we were equal, but in Cassie’s mind, I was surely not her equal.
“He didn’t look pleased.”
She gazed up the stairway. “He will be pleased after a while. Mark my words, one night he’ll just come out and thank us profusely. But you have to understand, Semantha, his deeper sorrow can’t be cured with the things we do to ease his pain over Mother’s death. His loss of his Asa remains. For now,” she added, and headed for the kitchen. I hesitated, thinking about what she was saying. What did she mean, “for now”? Still confused, I followed her.
Later, at lunch, it was easy to see that despite what Daddy had said upstairs, he wasn’t terribly happy about the changed bedroom. He ate silently. Finally, Cassie leaned toward him and, in a soft tone, asked, “Are you upset with what’s been done, Daddy?”
“No, it’s just too soon,” he said. Then he smiled. “I know you two are just trying to help me get through this. It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. Give me some time.”
Cassie extended her hand, and he took it, and then I extended mine, and he took mine. The three of us sat silently around the table holding hands. I was the first to cry. Daddy took a deep breath and looked down. Cassie held her face firmly and looked at me with annoyance. I pulled back my sob and rubbed off my tears, and then we finished our lunch in silence. For me, it was almost a religious experience, but for Cassie, it was obviously a deep disappointment.
Despite the passage of time, Daddy didn’t express any greater joy at the changed bedroom. In fact, over the next week and a half, he seemed to do everything he could to avoid going there. He came home later and later and stayed up later and later. There were a number of mornings when he was gone before either of us rose and got down to make breakfast. It was as if he couldn’t wait to get out. I was afraid to ask Cassie about it or even make a comment, even though I could see the disappointment deepening in her face. This was, after all, the first thing she had done in a long, long time that hadn’t completely pleased him. It wore on her. She was cranky and short with me. When I told her I had gotten my period, as she had asked me to tell her, and I described how it was, she looked very annoyed.
“You asked me to tell you,” I said, thinking she would be pleased I had followed one of her orders so well.
“Yes, but not to give me a blow-by-blow description, Semantha. It’s a disgusting event as it is without your elaborating on your flow.”
“Sorry,” I said, and made up my mind never to share my period with her again.
She was irritable with Mrs. Underwood as well and continually snapped at her, criticizing her techniques and what subject matter she emphasized while working with me. She implied that Mrs. Underwood hadn’t kept up with what was important in education today and suggested that she visit a public school. The look on Mrs. Underwood’s face by itself could have sunk a battleship. I could see that Mrs. Underwood was losing her patience with Cassie, and I didn’t anticipate her staying on much longer as my tutor.
Finally, one morning, after Daddy had left before Cassie again, she surprised me by greeting me with a much brighter and happier face. She looked more energetic and fresh as well.
“I have a surprise for you,” she began.
“What?”