The Initiation Page 0,8

his name, how would Cassie ever find him again?

She wouldn't. That was the brutal truth, and she might as well face it right now. Even if she did find out his name, she wasn't the sort to chase after a boy. She wouldn't know how.

"And in one week I'm going home," she whispered. For the first time these words didn't bring a surge of comfort and hope. She put the rough little piece of chalcedony down on the night-stand, with a sort of final clink.

"Cassie? Did you say something?"

Cassie turned quickly to see her mother in the doorway. "Mom! I didn't know you were off the phone." When her mother continued to look at her inquiringly, she added, "I was just thinking out loud. I was saying that we'll be going home next week."

An odd expression crossed her mother's face, like a flash of repressed pain. Her large black eyes had dark circles under them and wandered nervously around the room.

"Mom, what's wrong?" said Cassie.

"I was just talking with your grandmother. You remember how I was planning for us to drive up and see her sometime next week?"

Cassie remembered very well. She'd told Portia she and her mother were going to drive up the coast, and Portia had snapped that it wasn't called the coast here. From Boston down to the Cape it was the south shore, and from Boston up to New Hampshire it was the north shore, and if you were going to Maine it was down east, and anyway, where did her grandmother live? And Cassie hadn't been able to answer because her mother had never told her the name of the town.

"Yes," she said. "I remember."

"I just got off the phone with her. She's old, Cassie, and she's not doing very well. It's worse than I realized."

"Oh, Mom. I'm sorry." Cassie had never met her grandmother, never even seen a picture of her, but she still felt awful. Her mother and grandmother had been estranged for years, since Cassie had been born. It was something about her mother leaving home, but that was all her mother would ever say about it. In the past few years, though, there had been some letters exchanged, and Cassie thought that underneath they still loved each other. She hoped they did, anyway, and she'd been looking forward to seeing her grandmother for the first time. "I'm really sorry, Mom," she said now. "Is she going to be okay?"

"I don't know. She's all by herself in that big house and she's lonely... and now with this phlebitis it's hard for her to get around some days." The sunshine fell in strips of light and shadow across her mother's face. She spoke quietly but almost stiltedly, as if she were holding some strong emotion back with difficulty.

"Cassie, your grandmother and I have had our problems, but we're still family, and she hasn't got anyone else. It's time we buried our differences."

Her mother had never spoken so freely about the estrangement before. "What was it all about, Mom?"

"It doesn't matter now. She wanted me to - follow a path I didn't want to follow. She thought she was doing the right thing... and now she's all alone and she needs help."

Dismay whispered through Cassie. Concern for the grandmother she'd never met - and something else. A trickle of alarm started by the look on her mother's face, which was that of someone about to deliver bad news and having a hard time finding the words.

"Cassie, I've thought a lot about this, and there's only one thing for us to do. And I'm sorry, because it will mean such a disruption of your life, and it will be so hard on you... but you're young. You'll adapt. I know you will."

A twinge of panic shot through Cassie. "Mom, it's all right," she said quickly. "You stay here and do what you need to. I can get ready for school by myself. It'll be easy; Beth and Mrs. Freeman will help me - " Cassie's mother was shaking her head, and suddenly Cassie felt she had to go on, to cover everything in a rush of words. "I don't need that many new school clothes..."

"Cassie, I'm so sorry. I need you to try and understand, sweetheart, and to be adult about this. I know you'll miss your friends. But we've both got to try to make the best of things." Her mother's eyes were fixed on the window, as if she couldn't bear to look