The Heavenstone Secrets Read online

  A tall, stout man, Mr. Hastings had been a college football star. He was as big and as robust as Daddy and held a commanding presence behind his desk. To me, it looked as if he could press a button and drop me into some dark pit for punishment. His thick, dark brown hair was almost military short. He had a nearly square jaw, two piercing hazel eyes, and firm, straight lips, pressing on each other so hard they formed tiny white spots in the corners.

  “Sit,” he said, nodding at the chair in front of his desk. I went to it quickly. He looked at the referral again, as if he had to read it many times to believe what it said.

  Before he could speak, his secretary knocked on the door and poked her head in.

  “What is it, Mrs. Whitman?”

  “The nurse says Roxanne Peters has a nasty bruise on her right elbow. She is advising her mother to take her for an X-ray.”

  He didn’t speak immediately. He looked at Mrs. Whitman and then at me and nodded.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Whitman. Please have Mrs. Mills inform me about the follow-up ASAP.”

  “Yes, Mr. Hastings,” Mrs. Whitman said. She backed out, closing the door.

  “You’ve been here long enough to know I have a no-excuse, no-defense policy when it comes to anyone being physically violent with anyone in my school,” he began.

  I didn’t sob aloud, but I could feel the tears escaping my lids and starting to zigzag their way down my cheeks. I quickly wiped them off.

  “However, considering your history here, I would like to know why you did such a thing, Semantha.” He sat back again and waited.

  I took a deep breath. “My mother had a miscarriage a few days ago. She is still seriously ill because of it.”

  “More reason for you to behave yourself,” he quickly interjected.

  I nodded. “As soon as I sat down, Roxanne began to say nasty things about my mother, and I just wanted to shut her up. I’m sorry I hurt her.”

  “What should you have done instead?” he asked softly.

  “Ignored her. I tried to do that!” I cried. “But she wouldn’t stop.”

  “What else could you have done?”

  I knew what he wanted me to say, but few girls or boys I knew in school would have done it.

  “Raise my hand and tell the teacher what she was doing.”

  “Exactly. Then she’d be the one sitting here in front of me, and not you.”

  Yes, I thought, but afterward, every student who still liked me would hate me for being a rat. They would even begin to tease me more every chance they had, especially all of Kent’s friends. Why didn’t Mr. Hastings know this himself? He was a student once, and I was sure he had been harassed by someone and hadn’t just turned them in to the teacher.

  “As I said, no matter how good the reason for what you did seems to you or even to someone else in the classroom watching it all unfold, it was still absolutely forbidden in my school. Small acts of violence have a way of becoming bigger and bigger acts, until someone gets seriously hurt or killed. We see it happening everywhere these days.”

  He leaned forward, glaring at me.

  “It won’t happen here. Not on my watch,” he said. He sat back again, pausing to calm himself. “Is your father at the hospital with your mother?”

  “No, he’s in Lexington. We’re opening a new store there. Then he’ll go to the hospital.”

  “What is his cell-phone number?” Mr. Hastings asked. “Or the number at the store?”

  “I don’t know the store number. His cell phone is 555-5454.”

  Mr. Hastings jotted it down. “Your sister’s name is Cassie, correct?”

  “Yes,” I said. I couldn’t help looking more frightened of her than of my father, and I saw how that surprised Mr. Hastings.

  “Is there anyone, another adult, at your home now?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Not even a housemaid?”

  “We don’t have a housemaid.”

  He raised his eyebrows, then opened one of his drawers and took out a file. He flipped through it and nodded. “She has permission to drive to school and park in the lot. Did she do that this morning? Drive here with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Unfortunately, then, your sister will have to take you home and remain with you until your father makes other arrangements. I don’t send students to an empty home or one where there is absolutely no supervision. I’m suspending you for one week, and you will not be permitted back until your father brings you back and we have a meeting with you in my office.

  “I’m sorry for your family’s trouble, but if anything, that should have given you more reason to behave yourself. There are no mitigating circumstances when it comes to violence in my school, and no one is treated any differently from anyone else when it comes to that.”

  My tears came again, but this time, I didn’t bother to wipe them away. I let them drip from my chin.

  “Go back to the outer office, and take a seat until your sister comes for you.”

  I rose slowly, or it seemed I did. I was in such a daze, so terrified, I wasn’t sure of anything. It also felt as if I were floating across his office to the doorway. I returned to the seat I’d had in the outer office to wait for Cassie. I knew exactly what she would say.

  “See, see, I told you it would turn our world topsy-turvy!”

  Topsy-Turvy

  CASSIE SAID NOTHING to me when she came to the office. She glanced at me and then went directly to the counter to get the letter for Daddy that Mrs. Whitman had already typed up, copied, and put in an envelope. It was as if Cassie had done this many times. I watched how cool and unemotional she was. Anyone else who didn’t know us would surely think she worked for the school and had no special interest or relationship with this particular student being punished.

  “I’m Cassie Heavenstone,” she told Mrs. Whitman.

  Mrs. Whitman explained what was in the letter and that it was very important that our father read it.

  “Keeping it from him won’t help your sister,” she added.

  Cassie pulled her shoulders and head back as though Mrs. Whitman had tried to slap her. “Why would I do that? I don’t appreciate your insinuation.”

  “I’m … just … giving you good advice.”

  Cassie took the envelope and put it in her purse. “Is that all? Are we finished here?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Whitman said.

  Cassie nodded at me, and I stood up, glanced at Mrs. Whitman, who looked a little shocked, and followed Cassie out. She was walking quickly toward the exit, so I had to hurry to catch up.

  “I really dislike that woman,” she muttered as if nothing else had occurred. “As Daddy would say, she thinks her poop doesn’t smell.” She paused at the door and looked at me. “You don’t have to tell me anything. What you did in homeroom shot through this school so fast it might as well have been a breaking news bulletin on CNN.”

  Before I could respond, she threw the door open and charged out to the parking lot. Again, I had to run to keep up.

  “I’m sorry they called you out of class, Cassie.”

  “I don’t mind missing classes,” she muttered. “Most of the time, I’m so ahead of everyone else, I have to sit there thinking of things to do for Daddy and the stores. I actually welcome being called out, even for something like this. Get in,” she ordered when we reached the car.

  I moved quickly. She sat for a moment, thinking.

  “I’m not returning to school today. It’s my responsibility to remain with you. I’m the only adult available,” she said. Only adult? I thought. She’s not old enough to be called that. “All right,” she said, starting the engine. “Let’s hear about it.”

  I began to describe what Roxanne Peters had said and how she was persistent and mean. Cassie listened without commenting. In fact, she was silent for quite a while after I had finished telling her why I had done what I had done and how Mr. Hastings had spoken to me. I feared she was too angry at me to speak.

  “It’s not your
fault,” she finally began. I breathed a sigh of relief about that, until she added, “It’s Mother’s fault.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s what I call an echo.” She kept her face forward, talking as if she was dictating to someone. “When you do something wrong, terribly wrong, it has consequences that sometimes don’t roll out for a while but nevertheless are directly caused by what you have done. This is, I’m afraid, only the beginning for us, at least for a while.”

  “Only the beginning? Why?”

  “Daddy will have to suffer through all the condolences from his business associates. It will spread rapidly through our employee population, and every time he enters one of our stores, they will look at him with pity. No one will try that with me in my classes, but I know they’ll be whispering behind my back. I don’t pay attention to any of them as it is, so it will be like nothing’s happening, but it’s different for poor Daddy. He has to face these people daily, and it will be painful.”

  She finally turned to me.

  “A man like Daddy doesn’t ever want pity. It’s degrading, especially when it comes from people so inferior. The Heavenstones have always been strong, proud people, even when they lost so much after the Civil War. They didn’t grovel or beg for mercy. They grew stronger and stronger, until we became who we are today.

  “I’m not saying what you did was okay, Semantha. It was … childish. There are so many more sophisticated ways to get back at someone, ways in which you can make that person look like the guilty one, in fact. I hope that when you’re older, you’ll be more creative. Throwing someone’s desk over on them, although satisfying for the moment, is not very effective. You should have bitten down on your lip, waited, and come to me later. I’m sure I could have helped you do something far more effective.”

  “Daddy will be so upset with me when he hears about all this,” I moaned.

  “Yes, he will, but I’ll handle it much better than whatever Mr. Hastings wrote in his dumb letter. I’m sure it’s something standard, a boilerplate discipline letter in which he might just fill in your name. He never struck me as being much of a brain.”

  I still didn’t know whether Cassie was angry at me or simply not in the least concerned about how it would all affect my school life.

  “What do you mean, it was an echo? I still don’t understand, Cassie.”

  “Christmas trees, am I talking to myself? The foolish pregnancy, Semantha. That’s what’s led to this today and who knows what tomorrow.”

  “Oh. Then Mother will feel even worse now.”

  “She surely will. That’s why you had better listen to me and not go visiting her in the hospital. Even in the state she’s in, she’ll be able to read your obvious face easily, and you will have no choice but to blurt out everything, which might nail her to that hospital bed for weeks more.”

  I started to sob softly.

  “There’s no reason to cry now, Semantha. It’s over and done with. Can’t you try to act like a Heavenstone, at least make an effort? I told you I would handle this.”

  I held my breath and nodded. She drove on in silence but wearing a strange smile all the way home.

  When we arrived, I went directly up to my room. The fear and tension exhausted me, and I fell asleep for a while. I didn’t come out until I was hungry for lunch. I didn’t hear Cassie and thought that she might have changed her mind and returned to school after all, but when I was in the kitchen making a sandwich, I heard her come out of Daddy’s office.

  I poked my head out of the kitchen doorway.

  “I’m having a turkey and cheese sandwich. Do you want me to make you one?”

  “Yes,” she said, surprising me. She usually wanted to do things for herself. “Do it on toast and cut it in fours like I do for Daddy.”

  I saw that she was carrying some documents.

  “What’s that?”

  “Store business, things for the gala, that sort of thing. I’ve been studying it. Uncle Perry isn’t as successful for us as he makes out to be and Daddy pretends. He’s lucky I’m not the CEO. He’d be gone. I’ll be in the dining room. Bring a cranberry juice with the sandwich, and don’t forget napkins.”

  Making something like a turkey and cheese sandwich isn’t a big, involved project, but because I was doing it for Cassie and knew how she could be, I made it as perfectly as possible. Not a piece of turkey or cheese stuck out, and I actually measured the quarters with a ruler. She had her face in a folder when I brought it to her and set it down. She glanced at it and nodded. Then I got my sandwich and sat across from her.

  “Should we call Daddy and tell him anything?”

  She lowered the file, picked up one of the sandwich quarters, and began eating without replying.

  “I mean, I don’t think he can find out beforehand, but maybe I—”

  “What did I tell you in the car, Semantha? Didn’t I tell you I would handle this?”

  “I know. I just thought—”

  “Don’t think right now. Just do what I say, and we’ll get through this … this incident.”

  She continued reading and eating. I finished my sandwich, and when she was finished, I took her plate and glass into the kitchen. I heard her return to Daddy’s office. No one could keep herself busy the way Cassie could. On the contrary, despite how unpleasant school had become for me these past days, I realized I was going to be quite bored for a week. I didn’t know if my schoolwork would be sent home. I supposed the letter to Daddy said something about it. For now, all I could do was go up to my room to watch television.

  Later in the afternoon, I heard our doorbell ringing and hurried out to see who it could be. Cassie was at the door greeting someone. I stood at the top of the stairs, waiting and listening. Moments later, she and a man wearing a cap that said “The Lock Jaw Company” came to the stairway. I stood back as they ascended.

  Cassie said nothing to me as she showed him where to go. I followed.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  She ignored me and brought him to the door of what was to have been Asa’s nursery.

  He looked at the doorknob and nodded. “I’ll have to replace all this.”

  “Can you do it now?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Then do it,” she said. “I’ll have a check ready for you when you’re finished.”

  “Okay,” he said, and went to get his tools and equipment.

  Cassie finally turned to me to explain. “We’re locking this door and keeping it locked for a while. Only I will have a key.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because it’s a constant reminder of the foolish pregnancy, Semantha. When Mother comes home, she’ll be bound to go in there and cry and moan. I’m replacing the lock, and we won’t give her a key until she is stronger and over it.”

  “Did Daddy tell you to do this?”

  “He didn’t have to tell me. I knew it was the right thing to do. Believe me, he’ll be very pleased about it. Right now, neither he nor Mother should dwell on this nursery.”

  I was amazed at how confident Cassie was about the things she decided and did. Why was she so sure Daddy wouldn’t be upset and would actually praise her for this?

  “I was going to have it done later in the week, but since you presented me with this opportunity today, I thought, why not take advantage of it? You see, Semantha, you have to find something good and positive in everything that happens to you, even the bad things. That’s what we’re going to do now. While I’m with the locksmith, you start preparing the table for dinner. I’m going to give you more things to do. I have decided that your problem comes from the fact that we all do too much for you.”

  “Why? That’s not true. I do my chores, help out, don’t I?”

  “Like a little girl might, yes, but you need more and more responsibility. You’ve got to be seized by the heels and dragged into maturity. Eighty years ago, a Heavenstone your age would have been engaged, married soon after, and pregnant soon after that. Do yo
u think any of your little girlfriends could manage such responsibility now?”

  “But they shouldn’t have to. We shouldn’t have to. It’s not eighty years ago. Things are different.”

  “Never mind. I don’t know why I’m wasting my time talking about it. Put up some potatoes. I want to make Daddy’s favorite mashed. We’re having veal chops. You’ll find them in the refrigerator, and there’s a bowl in which I have prepared the sauce to marinate them. Daddy has to eat earlier tonight. He’s going to the hospital to meet with the therapist.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I spoke to him an hour ago.”

  “Did you tell him about me, about what happened?”

  “Of course.”

  “What did he say? Is he very angry?”

  “Yes, but thanks to me, not as much at you. Relax. I told you I would handle it. Don’t I always take care of you? Well?”

  “Yes, Cassie.”

  “So, why are you still standing here? Go down and get to work.”

  “Okay,” I said, and hurried downstairs, passing the locksmith, who had started up.

  Afterward, I was in the kitchen with Cassie when Daddy came home. He paused to look in at us. I had to look down.

  “I am really surprised at all this, Semantha.”

  “The letter is on your desk,” Cassie told him. He nodded and walked to his office. I felt my heart thumping. Cassie looked at me and shook her head.

  “Don’t start wailing like a baby, Semantha. Wait here. Keep everything warm. We’ll call you,” she said, and went out to follow Daddy.

  A little while later, she returned.

  “Okay, go to his office. He wants to talk to you now. I’ll finish here. We’re eating in ten minutes, so don’t keep him.”