Heavenstone 01 - The Heavenstone Secrets

doing better.”
    “You’ll do better. Stop worrying about that.”
    “I’m not! That’s not what I mean, Cassie. All that business with Porter, making me attractive for him. At the right time, you asked him to rape me, and now you’re rewarding him? How could you trick me like that?”
    “You were too young to understand, and you wouldn’t have agreed.”
    “Why did you do this to me? Why didn’t
you
have a baby if a baby is so important?”
    She didn’t answer. It made me even angrier. I took a step toward her.
    “Don’t worry. You don’t have to explain. I know the answer, Cassie. You’re afraid of being pregnant. You’re afraid of sex. That’s why you’ve never had a boyfriend. You’re right, Cassie. I shouldn’t see a therapist. You should be the one seeing a therapist.”
    She turned again but not with the face of anger and rage I anticipated. She looked quite calm. “I understand your anger, but that will pass, Semantha.”
    “I’m right, aren’t I?” I insisted. “You’re afraidof sex. You’re terrified of getting married and having children.”
    “No. I actually envy you for being able to get pregnant, Semantha. I’ve been trying to get pregnant for some time, and when I was obviously unable to, I went to see a specialist. I have a condition known as endometriosis. That’s a big word for you, I know.”
    “What?” She was right. It was a big word, big enough to choke on. “What is that?”
    “It’s simply misplaced tissue that supposed to be in a woman’s uterus. In my case, it’s growing outside my ovaries.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “I’ll give you a little lesson in female anatomy. Every month, hormones cause the lining of a woman’s uterus to build up with tissue and blood vessels. If a woman does not get pregnant, the uterus sheds this tissue and blood. It comes out of the body through the vagina as her menstrual period.
    “Each month, the growth adds extra tissue and blood, but for me and others who have this problem, there is no place for the built-up tissue and blood to exit the body. As the misplaced tissue grows, it can cover or grow into the ovaries and block the fallopian tubes. This can make it difficult, if not impossible, for women with endometriosis to get pregnant.
    “It’s not that uncommon. It’s uncommon for someone my age, but that’s my burden. Everyone has a burden. For your prurient information, it actually causes me to have pain during sex, but I endured that hoping to bring Asa here. In other words, I was with Porter before he was with you, so you can toss yourtheory out the window. When I began to experience other symptoms, I saw the specialist and was told.”
    “Couldn’t he cure it?”
    “There is no cure. There is only treatment for the pain. Eventually, I’ll probably have an operation, but in the meantime … no babies, no Asa growing in my body.”
    She looked in the mirror at herself again and fiddled with strands of hair around her ears.
    “So, he grows in yours,” she continued. “We’re the Heavenstone sisters,” she added in one of her whispers. “It’s the same thing as if he was growing in me.”
    “I don’t care that we’re the Heavenstone sisters. He’s not growing in you; he’s growing in me!”
    She was silent.
    “How are we … are you going to explain this to Daddy now?” I asked as the next realization struck my brain.
    “Simple. I’ll tell him I didn’t know you were pregnant until very late in your pregnancy, and we decided to hide it from him and everyone so that you could give birth here without anyone knowing you were so promiscuous.”
    “You’ll make me look terrible in his eyes.”
    “For a little while,” she admitted, “but once Asa is born and I convince Daddy to keep him and I agree to take care of him, he’ll change his mind and his feelings about you. You’ll have given him the one thing he wanted most.”
    “No, I won’t, Cassie. I’ll tell him the truth, that I was raped. I’ll tell him what Porter did, what you got him to do.”

    She smiled. “If you do that, “I’ll back up Porter. I’ll tell Daddy you seduced him, and then you’ll be exposed as just another pregnant teenage girl. Good luck in your new school or your old one, because I’ll see to it that you go back there. I won’t help you with anything. And most of all, I’ll hate you forever.”
    She glared at me.
    “Let me tell you something more, Semantha. Men, including Daddy, never look at a