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I said nothing and continued leading them to my room.
“How nice,” Lucille said. “I can tell you this is head and shoulders above what I had at my finishing school.”
“We paid enough for it,” Daddy told her. “One year here is equivalent to my whole college education, and that’s not just because of inflation.”
“She deserves it,” Lucille said, smiling at me.
“Oh, brother, give me a break,” Cassie whispered. “She probably slides instead of walks half the time.”
I put a few more things into my carry-on bag. Uncle Perry went for my two suitcases, and I took one last look through the closets and dresser drawers. When I looked into the bathroom cabinet, I saw the birthday candle. I stared at it a moment and then closed the cabinet.
Lucille came up behind me. It was as if she didn’t want to miss a thing I did.
“Have everything?”
“Yes,” I said quickly. Had she seen the candle?
“Despite how cozy and well furnished this is,” she said, “if you’re anything like me, I’m sure you don’t regret leaving.”
“I’m looking forward to going home.”
“Have you thought about what you want to do next?” she asked as we walked down the corridor to the lobby.
“No,” I told her.
“If you had, you wouldn’t tell her before you told Daddy and Uncle Perry anyway,” Cassie whispered. “What nerve!”
Lucille slipped her arm through my father’s and said, “Young people today take so much longer to settle down than we did.”
“That’s because we were always in a rush,” Uncle Perry offered.
“I wouldn’t call it a rush, Perry. I’d call it a sense of responsibility, ambition.”
“Semantha is one of the most responsible young women I know,” he said. “I’d trust her with the keys to the kingdom any day, hey, Sam?”
I simply smiled. If I were Cassie, I thought, the keys to the kingdom would fit neatly in my hands, but I doubted I knew more about our business than the average customer.
“How sweet,” Lucille said. “You have quite a cheerleader in your uncle.”
“And her father,” Uncle Perry said. “Right, Teddy?”
“Absolutely. She’s my girl,” Daddy said.
I hope so, I thought. How I hoped so.
I anticipated some complaint about the restaurant because it wasn’t anything special, but even Lucille thought it was “delightfully quaint,” whatever that meant. I was surprised at how much control she had over what Daddy wanted to eat. She seemed already to know what agreed with him and what didn’t, what was good for him and what wasn’t.
“She’s after me to lose the ten pounds Dr. Moffet wants me to lose,” Daddy told me when she advised him not to have the heavy garlic-bread club sandwich and fries. He ended up eating the same salad she
ordered. Uncle Perry and I had the hamburgers I told him the restaurant was well known for. When I explained that I had been there with Ethan Hunter, Lucille began to ask questions about him. She wanted to know where he came from, what his family was like, what he was going to do after graduation, and what sort of student he had been.
“She’s acting like your mother already,” Cassie whispered angrily.
I could see that my answers were quite vague and unsatisfactory to her.
“It doesn’t sound like you were all that involved with him,” she said.
“I was involved with him more than I’ve been with any other boy,” I snapped.
