“That's your grandmother, dear,” she said. “Let's not keep her waiting.”
“Mom…” Cassie whispered. It was a despairing entreaty. But her mother's eyes had gone blank, opaque.
“Come on, Cassie,” she said.
Cassie had the wild idea of throwing herself into the car, locking herself in, until someone came to rescue her. But then the same heavy exhaustion that had descended over her mother seemed to wrap around her as well. They were here. There was nothing to be done about it. She pushed the car door shut and silently followed her mother to the house.
The woman standing in the doorway was ancient. Old enough to be her great-grandmother, at least. Cassie tried to detect some resemblance to her mother, but she could find none.
“Cassie, this is your Grandma Howard.”
Cassie managed to mutter something. The old woman with the cane stepped forward, fixing her deep-set eyes on Cassie's face. In that instant a bizarre thought flashed into Cassie's mind: She's going to put me in the oven. But then she felt arms around her, a surprisingly firm hug. Mechanically she lifted her own arms in a gesture of response.
Her grandmother pulled back to look at her. “Cassie! At last. After all these years.” To Cassie's discomfiture she went on looking, staring at Cassie with what seemed like a mixture of fierce worry and anxious hope. “At last,” she whispered again, as if speaking to herself.
“It's good to see you, Mother,” Cassie's mother said then, quiet and formal, and the fierce old eyes turned away from Cassie.
“Alexandra. Oh, my dear, it's been too long.” The two women embraced, but an indefinable air of tension remained between them.
“But we're all standing here outside. Come in, come in, both of you,” her grandmother said, wiping her eyes. “I'm afraid the old place is rather shabby, but I've picked the best of the rooms for you. Let's take Cassie to hers.”
In the fading red light of the sunset the interior seemed cavernous and dark. And everything did look shabby, from the worn upholstery on the chairs to the faded oriental carpet on the pine-board floors.
They went up a flight of stairs-slowly, with Cassie's grandmother leaning on the banister-and down a long passage. The boards creaked under Cassie's Reeboks and the lamps high on the walls flickered uneasily as they passed. One of us ought to be holding a candelabra, Cassie thought. Any minute now she expected to see Lurch or Cousin It coming down the hall toward them.
“These lamps-it's your grandfather's wiring,” her grandmother apologized. “He insisted on doing so much of it himself. Here's your room, Cassie. I hope you like pink.”
Cassie felt her eyes widen as her grandmother opened the door. It was like a bedroom setting in a museum. There was a four-poster bed with hangings cascading from the head and foot and a canopy, all made of the same dusty-rose flowered fabric. There were chairs with high carved backs upholstered in a matching rose damask. On a fireplace with a high mantel rested a pewter candlestick and a china clock, and there were several pieces of massive, richly glowing furniture. The whole thing was beautiful, but so grand…
“You can put your clothes here-this chest is solid mahogany,” Cassie's grandmother was saying. “The design is called bombe, and it was made right here in Massachusetts-this is the only area in all the
colonies that produced it.”
The colonies? Cassie thought wildly, staring at the decorative scroll top of the chest.
“And this is your dressing table and your wardrobe… Have you looked out the windows? I thought you might like a corner room because you can see both south and east.”
Cassie looked. Through one window she could see the road. The other faced the ocean. Just now it was a sullen lead gray under the darkening sky, exactly matching Cassie's mood.
“I'll leave you here to get settled in,” Cassie's grandmother said. “Alexandra, I've given you the green room at the opposite end of the hallway…”
Cassie's mother gave her shoulder a quick, almost timid squeeze. And then Cassie was alone. Alone with the massive ruddy furniture and the cold fireplace and the heavy draperies. She sat gingerly on a chair because she was afraid of the bed.
She thought about her bedroom at home, with her white pressed-wood furniture and her Phantom of the Opera posters and the new CD player she'd bought with her baby-sitting money. She'd painted the bookcase pale blue to show off her unicorn collection. She collected every kind of unicorn there was– stuffed, blown glass, ceramic, pewter. Back home, Clover had said once that Cassie was like a unicorn herself: blue eyed, shy, and different from everyone else. All that seemed to belong to a former life now.
She didn't know how long she sat there, but sometime later she found the piece of chalcedony in her hand. She must have taken it out of her pocket, and now she was clinging to it.
If you're ever in trouble or danger, she thought, and a wave of longing swept over her. It was followed by a wave of fury. Don't be stupid, she told herself sharply. You're not in danger. And no rock is going to help you. She had an impulse to throw it away, but instead she just rubbed it against her cheek, feeling the cool, jagged smoothness of the crystals. It made her remember his touch-how gentle it had been, the way it had pierced her to the soul. Daringly, she rubbed the crystal over her lips and felt a sudden throb from all the places on her skin he had touched. The hand he had held-she could still feel his fingers printed on her palm. Her wrist-she felt the light brush of cool fingertips raising the hairs there. And the back of it… She shut her eyes and her breath caught as she remembered that kiss. What would it have felt like, she wondered, if his lips had touched where the crystal touched now? She let her head fall back, drawing the cool stone from her own lips down her throat to rest in the hollow where her pulse beat. She could almost feel him kissing her, as no boy ever had; she could almost imagine that it really was his lips there. I would let you, she thought, even though I wouldn't let anyone else… I would trust you…
But he'd left her. Suddenly, with a shock, she remembered that. He'd left her and gone away, just as the other most important man in Cassie's life had.
Cassie seldom thought about her father. She seldom allowed herself to. He'd gone away when she was only a little girl, left her mother and her alone to take care of themselves. Cassie's mother told people he had died, but to Cassie she admitted the truth: he'd simply left. Maybe he was dead by now, or maybe he was somewhere else, with another family, another daughter. She and her mother would never know. And although her mother never spoke about him unless someone asked, Cassie knew that he'd broken her mother's heart.
Men always leave, Cassie thought, her throat aching. They both left me. And now I'm alone… here. If only I had somebody else to talk to… a sister, somebody…
Eyes still shut, she let the hand with the crystal trail down and fall into her lap. She was so exhausted with emotion that she couldn't even get up to go to the bed. She simply sat there, drifting in the lonely dimness until her breathing slowed and she fell asleep.
That night Cassie had a dream-or perhaps it wasn't a dream. She dreamed that her mother and grandmother came into the room, moving noiselessly, almost gliding over the floor. In her dream she was aware of them, but she couldn't move as they lifted her from the chair and undressed her and put her to bed. Then they stood over the bed, looking down at her. Her mother's eyes were strange and dark and unfathomable.