Heavenstone 02 - Secret Whispers

exact situation, a situation in which a married couple adopt a teenage girl’s child. Most of the adoptive mothers voiced the same fear, that someday, somehow, the biological mother would lay some claim to her child and they would be in somejeopardy of losing the child they had brought up as their own. No matter how much or how well their attorneys reassured them that their written agreements were ironclad, they lived with the nightmare. Some court, some judge, something, would negate it all in favor of the biological mother. What was stronger than blood, after all?
    It didn’t matter that it wasn’t my intention to go there to ask for my daughter back. My presence would surely bring a firestorm of hysterics to my father’s doorstep. Right now, the ranch house looked so peaceful, idyllic. My knocking on that door was surely the farthest thing from their minds. And what did I expect would happen when my four-year-old daughter set eyes on me? Did I really believe that there would be some recognition, that she would somehow sense that I was her mother?
    “I don’t know what I’m doing here, why I came,” I muttered.
    “Of course you do. There’s a Heaven-stone in that house,” Cassie reminded me. “And she doesn’t even know she is.”
    “I can’t do this. Daddy will hate me.” I spun on her. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want Daddy to hate me. You’re jealous of our new relationship.”
    She laughed. “What new relationship? Lucille Bennet shines so brightly in his eyes that he can’t see anyone or anything else. You have no one but the child in that house.”
    “I have Ethan,” I said
    She gave me that condescending Cassie smile.
    “I do!”
    She shook her head.
    “Damn you!”
    I had gone to start the car again when I suddenly saw Shane and Royce step out of the house. Royce was holding my daughter’s left hand, and Shane was holding her right. I was too far away to see much detail in my daughter’s face, but I saw that she had my golden brown hair and it was nearly down to her shoulders. I remembered Daddy telling me that they were naming her Anna.
    “That’s your flesh and blood. That’s a Heaven-stone,” Cassie whispered.
    I watched them walk off to show my daughter a new colt.
    “Get out. Go up there. Pretend you’re just visiting. Let her see you. Go on,” Cassie urged.
    I put my hand on the door handle.
    “Do it!”
    I tried, but I was too frightened. All I could see was Daddy’s red face of rage. Finally, I did start the engine again and started away, hoping they wouldn’t look in my direction.
    “You’re a coward!” Cassie screamed. “You’re an embarrassment to the Heaven-stone family. I won’t help you anymore. I’ll let you fail miserably. Everything in your life is going to go wrong. You’re a walking tragedy.”
    I drove on, my body shaking so hard I thought I might run off the road. After a while, I calmed, and Cassie was no longer sitting beside me.
    She was fuming in her grave.
    But her words and threats still echoed in the car.I had no doubt they would echo in my mind and in my dreams until the day I buried her deeply enough to shut her up forever.
    Maybe, though, she was right. Maybe by then it would be too late.

Rehearsal
    A S D ADDY WOULD say, the days remaining before the grand wedding and Ethan’s return went like molasses running up a hill. Ethan called me as soon as he reached home and then called every day thereafter, each time talking for nearly a half hour. He even called me periodically from the road when he had begun his journey back to Kentucky so I could be aware of his progress, always ending with something like, “Twelve more hours until touchdown.”
    At breakfast, two days after Ethan had left the Heaven-stone estate, Daddy had finally revealed to me what I already knew: Ethan was coming to work for us.
    “I’m quite taken with this young man you’ve found, Semantha. I think he has great potential.” He looked at Lucille, who nodded. It bothered me that he needed her stamp of approval for almost anything he said to me these days. “For now,” he continued, still looking at Lucille, “at Lucille’s suggestion, we’re going to permit him to stay in the guest suite here. I know how difficult it is financially these days for young people to start jobs away from home, and wedon’t want him wasting time looking for lodging he can afford.”
    Both looked at me and waited for my response.
    “That’s very nice,” I said