Heavenstone 02 - Secret Whispers

hurried up the stairs, chased by Cassie’s laughter. Finally, I was exhausted. It had been my high school graduation day, but I had suffered some very serious disappointments. Ethan was obviously gone from my life, and my father was becoming someone else’s husband.
    Welcome home, I thought. Welcome back to the demons.
    I wasn’t in my bed two minutes before I fell into a deep sleep. I tossed and turned with a mixture of images and memories, sometimes seeing Cassie on that stairway and sometimes seeing Lucille Bennet. I’m sure I groaned and moaned in my sleep, but I didn’t wake until I heard a knock on my door. I rubbed my eyes to drive away the distorted visions and sat up. There was a second, louder knock.
    “Yes?”
    Lucille opened the door and stepped in, smiling. She was in a beautiful emerald-green silk robe and had her hair swept back. What, did she sleep with her makeup on? She continued across the room and pulled the curtains apart on the window to my left to let in the bright sunshine.
    “What’s going on?” I asked.
    “Plenty,” she said with a short laugh. “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. You don’t want to miss a minute of it.”
    She opened the curtains on the second window and turned back to me.
    “I told your father you would sleep late this morning. He was hoping we’d all have breakfast together, but he’s gone off to work. He couldn’t wait any longer. I promised him I would look in on you after another hour or so. How are you feeling after having such a big day?”
    Confused and disappointed, I wanted to say, but I said, “I don’t know. Exhausted, I suppose.”
    “Of course you are. I’ve asked Mrs. Dobson to prepare your breakfast and bring it up to you. She said she knew exactly what to make you, what was your favorite breakfast. We should spoil you for a little while. You deserve it. You had some very nice grades and must have worked hard, harder than most of those girls from what I saw of them, I’m sure.”
    “I didn’t do anything special. I didn’t win any awards.”
    “Nowadays, from what I can see of young people, graduating with decent grades or graduating at all is truly an accomplishment.”
    I shrugged. I wasn’t eager to accept her compliments. Compliments from someone put you in debt to them. That was something Cassie had taught me, and it had stuck. I didn’t want to be in debt to Lucille, not in any way, but she wasn’t easy to refuse. She gazed at me a moment with that studied look, narrowing her eyes and then relaxing her lips, almost smiling.
    “From what I understand, you didn’t really have much of a social life at school, at least until the final weeks. You didn’t belong to any club or team?”
    “No.”
    “Didn’t you do any sort of extracurricular activity at all? That’s the best way to make friends.”
    “Nothing interested me enough.”
    She nodded and sat on my bed. “I know your problem, Semantha. You simply won’t let yourself enjoy anything. You feel guilty when you do, correct? You think because your mother died so young and tragically and your sister . . . your sister did the things she did and died so harshly, it’s wrong for you to be happy.”
    She reached for my hand. I wanted to pull it back, but it was as if Daddy were in the room, too, watching, studying my reactions.
    “I know how difficult it must be for you to forget all that. Maybe it’s impossible to really forget, but what I do with bad memories is pile on good memories, deliberately do things to please myself, to create happy times, and after a while, the weight of all that drives the bad memories farther and farther down until they don’t come back at you so often, and even when they do, they’re easy to push away. Doesn’t that sound like a good plan?”
    “I suppose, but I don’t know if I can do that.”
    “Of course you can.” She patted my hand. “Now, tell me about this young man who didn’t show up for your graduation. I could see at lunch that you didn’t want to say much about him. You gave such vague answers. But from what you had told your father, it sounded like you were developing a nice relationship.”
    Daddy had told her that? What hadn’t he told her other than what he wanted me never to tell herabout Cassie and Mother? He was already sharing my private life with her, even before he had become engaged. It angered and disappointed me, but what was I to do about it now?
    “We were going out for a while, yes,”