Heavenstone 01 - The Heavenstone Secrets

sure she thought that if she went to see him and gave him this story, which would result in her losing income, he would be so impressed he’d want to see her again or maybe even beg her to stay on, and then pay more attention to her. I could hear her thoughts, but I smothered them quickly. You can be sure of that,” she said.
    “What did you do?”
    “I agreed with her. She’s not the right tutor for you right now. I explained to Daddy right in front of her that you have not grown as a student, that your work is about as mediocre as it ever was, if not worse, and that she wasn’t moving you forward at a fast enough pace. If we continued with Mrs. Underwood, you’d be behind when you finally attended a good private school, and you’d have to go to remedial classes.”
    “What did she say?”
    “She sputtered and protested and tried to argue, but I was too much for her. Daddy saw the light. He thanked her and paid her an additional month’s salary. While he wrote the check, I stood at his side and stared her down. She couldn’t leave quickly enough.Starting tomorrow,” she said, “I’ll take over the tutoring until we find someone else who’s qualified.”
    “When will that be?”
    “The school year’s almost over, Semantha. There’s no reason to panic.”
    I didn’t know what to say. With Mrs. Underwood gone, I would see no one else but Daddy and Cassie. At least, Mrs. Underwood had been some company.
    “How are you feeling?” Cassie asked, suddenly changing the subject. “Have you been taking the vitamins I brought?”
    “Yes. Why were they in a medicine bottle? Didn’t you buy them in a store?”
    “No. These are special, Semantha. The average person doesn’t get these. They can’t afford them. What’s the point of having all this money if we don’t use it to our advantage?” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go. Enjoy your day off.”
    “Day off? Except for the hours I spent with Mrs. Underwood, there’s nothing different about it.”
    “I promise. We’ll do more now. I don’t have to be at the office as much. Things are under control, and changes are up and running.” She smiled. “A good executive, a really good one, knows whom to assign the work to and whom to depend upon. Take out the pork loin roast for tonight. You know how to prepare it now,” she ordered, as if to illustrate her point. Then she smiled and left.
    During the weeks that followed, Cassie kept her promise. What I thought at first would be a dreadful situation actually became something wonderful. We were finally behaving like two sisters. She was withme from morning until bedtime. We went shopping together, ate lunches out, and, of course, worked on my school material. Rarely had I seen her so patient with my difficulties in understanding various problems in math or my mistakes on the questions in science and social studies. Cassie enjoyed tutoring me in English the best. She loved grammar and made a game of it by illustrating the lessons when we were out. She would turn to me after a waitress or waiter said something and ask me when they were gone, “Okay, what was the grammatical error?”
    Our work in the kitchen preparing dinner was more enjoyable, too. Usually, if I made a mistake, even as small a mistake as cutting the bread unevenly or putting too much of one vegetable on the plate and not enough of another, she was all over me, claiming I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. Now, though, she seemed truly to enjoy teaching me a new recipe or a new technique for making something we always ate.
    Every day, I expected her to tell me she was going out again with Porter, but that wasn’t happening. I was afraid to ask, afraid she would get angry and it would all go back to the way it had been between us. She never mentioned him to me, but I did hear her talk about him with Daddy, and when she did, she was always very flattering. It was clear that she was pushing Daddy to promote him and get rid of the man who was the store manager now. If she liked him that much, why didn’t she want to go out with him again? Finally, I took the chance of asking.
    We were at lunch again at a small Italianrestaurant near our store in Lexington. I had wanted to ask Uncle Perry to join us, but again, I was afraid that would upset Cassie, even though we always went to nice places and never fast-food stops. Our lunches usually ran an hour or so. I hadn’t realized how much I had been eating during the