Earnest, humble, personal and profound prayer had given way to this thing that was not quite silence and not near noise. Quiet.
Sadie shuddered. “I know. I wish somebody—anybody—would come talk to us.”
Hannah craned her neck to peer past Sadie’s shoulder. “I think you’re about to get your wish, big sister.”
“Mrs. Pickett—Sadie—I came as soon as I heard about your father!”
Only thing that traveled faster than juicy news in a small town was a politician looking for an angle to make that news work for him.
“Mayor Furst! Whatever brings you here?”
Photo op
?
Naw, not a local reporter in sight.
Chance to get a jump on the next election by showing active concern for an elderly citizen?
Not likely. Of all the folks in the seniors crowd, the man a politician would least like to have his name linked to would be a loose cannon like Moonie Shelnutt.
Trying to ingratiate himself to the medical community in order to garner volunteer first-aid workers for the Bass-travaganza?
Possible, but…
“Sadie, Sadie, do you need to even ask? Worry over Moonie brings me here, of course. Word is, he took a tumble in our Memorial Gardens?”
Ah, fear of a lawsuit
.
Always a popular means of prying the powers-that-be out of their ivory towers to mingle with the voter base.
“He had a…” She didn’t have the energy go into details for yet another person who, she realized, wouldn’t fully listen to or care about what she said. “He had a medical thing. It could have happened anywhere. He didn’t fall in a grave or trip on a tombstone or get stung by a bee cruising the flower arrangements—or whatever’s the current gossip.”
“Good. Good to know.” He nodded slowly, then stroked his jawline. “How’s he faring?”
“The doctor hasn’t told us anything for a while, but Daddy was walking and talking just fine—” if “just fine” meant soaking up every last drop of attention from the staff and asking if they thought he’d now qualify for an electric wheelchair to tool around town in “—when they took him off for an EEG.”
“That’s terrific. Just terrific.” The mayor glanced up and down the hallway, all the while giving her what he must have intended as a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.
Sadie pulled her head back to avoid another distracted
whap
to the side of her head and said, “Well, if that’s all you wanted…”
“All? Did I say that was all?”
“I just assumed.”
“Never assume, Sadie Pickett. You’re a public personage now, you don’t have that kind of luxury.”
“I don’t think being the cemetery lady makes me a public personage.”
“You think we can step into one of these empty rooms and have a talk?”
“I really hate to leave…”
“Won’t take a minute.”
“But if the doctor comes back…”
“Your sisters are here, and your wonderful husband and…” He made a quick check of the waiting room, scowled, then blustered, “Your sisters are here, they can come get you if you’re needed.”
“Ed’s coming over as soon as he finishes an important…thing,” Sadie volunteered too eagerly. “Ryan’s manning the phone at home and Olivia is hurrying back from a shopping trip in Lexington.”
“You’re lucky to have them,” he muttered, taking Sadie by the elbow. “Let’s step across the hall.”
Sadie yanked her arm free. “Perhaps you should tell me why first. Am I in some kind of trouble with the city government?”
“Trouble? No, no trouble. If it’s one thing we pride ourselves on in Wileyville, it’s that we have no trouble here. An absolute absence of trouble is how I’d describe the political scene in this town. In fact, some folks find it troubling how very little trouble we tend to have. Makes them wonder what their elected officials are paid to do—since it’s certainly
not
to deal with a bunch of trouble.”
He finally took a deep breath.
Sadie did the same, then asked, “So why do you need to talk to me?”
“Something I heard about your work has me troubled.”
“My work? Has someone complained about the way I do my job?”
“No, no, no. I’ve just had some concerned feedback about the way you are doing your job.”
Sadie rubbed her temple and wondered if there was such a thing as a mayor-to-English translation booklet.
“Walk with me a moment, Sadie, and I’ll tell you what I see.” Before she could ask for a clarification, he had slipped his arm around her shoulders and began steering her down the hallway. “I see a dedicated public servant. A conscientious employee. Someone unafraid to put in long hours, to tackle the thankless jobs, to go the extra mile. I wish everybody on the city payroll had that brand of commitment.”
“And?”
“And I want you to knock it off.”
She halted halfway down the hallway. “But you just said—”
“Sadie.” His arm slid away and he took her by the shoulders. “You’re doing too much. You’ve taken a handful of responsibilities that took your predecessors a couple days a week to keep on top of and turned it into a…well, for want of a better word, a
job
.”
“But I thought—”
“You know what they say, Sadie—when you work for the government, you don’t get paid to think.”
“Who says that?”
“Most people would love to draw your pay for just showing up a few afternoons a week and doing some filing. Maybe sitting at the guest book and donation table on Memorial Day.”
“Full-time pay for part-time work doesn’t seem like the best use of taxpayer money, Mr. Mayor.”
“Who said you don’t work full-time? You’re on call 24/7. That’s why the city supplies you with a cell phone, you know.”
Sadie blinked, wondering if she should tell the mayor
that the sleek little phone with all the tiny buttons and gadgets stayed in a drawer in her office most of the time.
Before she could decide to say anything, Mayor Furst charged on ahead. “Don’t make too big a deal out of all of this. Do your job, sure, but don’t let it get out of hand. Relax. Enjoy. Have fun.”
“Have fun?”
Being the cemetery lady?
“Relax?”
While waiting for news about her father in the hospital?
“Enjoy? Mayor Furst, I don’t think you—”
“Now what did I say about thinking, Sadie?”
She sighed. “Not to do it too much.”
“That’s right. Now I won’t intrude any longer. Your family needs you.”
Right, her family needed her. Well obviously her kids didn’t need her, or they’d be here, and her husband hardly needed her, at least not right now, not unless she could teach him the intricacies of the long putt or act as a caddie. But her sisters…
She peered into the room to find April and Hannah chatting away.
Sadie sighed.
The doors on the elevator behind her whooshed open, and Mayor Furst got on, probably pleased as punch for the small but captive audience. Someone got off the elevator, and the doors rolled to a close again, but before Sadie could turn to see who it was, a commotion from around the corner demanded her attention.
Moments before he actually came into view, Moonie made his presence known. He was all right! He had to be, given the way he was shouting and laughing and giving the nurse directions on how to steer the wheelchair.
He was okay for now, but that didn’t mean he was out of the woods. He would require help. Maybe her employer
didn’t need her. Maybe her family didn’t need her. But one thing Sadie could always count on, her father most definitely needed her.
The nurse wheeled the old man around the corner just as Sadie felt a familiar reassuring hand on her shoulder.
Moonie’s face lit up.
Sadie grinned.
In his most booming voice, her daddy spread his arms wide and shouted to the woman standing at Sadie’s back, “Martha Tatum Fitts McCrackin! Good to see you, girl! Are you ready to take this old man home?”
“A
nd they lived happily ever after.” The back cover of the storybook in Sadie’s lap fell shut. There. Sadie had fulfilled her obligation to share her favorite children’s book as part of the Leaders Are Readers program. She hadn’t left the house since Daddy had gone to live with Mary Tate and Royal. It had been made clear that no one needed her, so why bother? If she hadn’t made the commitment to participate in this program for the library, she’d still be home now in her chair.
A dozen young children leaped up from the blankets spread out by their parents in a shady spot in the park. With mothers and caregivers watching over them, some raced off, calling dibs on the swings or to be first on the slide. Some called out for the others to join them in one game or another.
One towheaded boy in red overalls and sneakers with laces that wouldn’t stay laced chose to unleash his pent-up energy by running in circles with his arms outstretched, making sputtering-engine noises.
Sadie rested her chin in her hand.
You could use these kids as a metaphor for the types of people in this life; achievers who set their sights on their
goals and went after them, leaders who naturally attracted others and seemed to intuit how to keep them working together and…
She turned in time to spot the towheaded boy trip over a tree root, careen out of control, then stumble backward and plop down on his behind. He sat a moment, wearing that stunned expression somewhere between an end-of-the-world wail and an oh-well-let’s-chase-a-bug shrug. Finally, he let out one last engine sputter and flopped backward to lie in the grass looking up at the sky.
If these kids were a metaphor for human archetypes, then Sadie was definitely of the spinning, sputtering, plopping and flopping variety.
In fact, it looked so good, she decided to try it. Not that anyone cared about what she did, anyway.
The grass crunched softly when her head lay back on it. A few wayward blades grazed her neck but did not tickle her. In fact, she felt nothing. Absolutely nothing but…
Blue sky and the mosaic of leaves overhead blurred. She shut her eyes to try to hold the warm moisture back.
It did not work.
“You know, Mrs. Pickett, you keep that up, you’re going to get tears in your ears.”
Air rushed against the back of Sadie’s throat, then into her lungs so suddenly she had to sit up and cough to keep it from overwhelming her. When she could speak at last, she placed her hand on her hot cheek and looked deep into the dark, sensitive eyes of Claudette Addams and said, “And here I clean forgot my earplugs.”
Brilliant. Found sprawled out in the grass, did Sadie come up with some clever reason to explain it away? Had she had the quick-wittedness to point out that from that
position the sun made her eyes sting, thus excusing the tears? No, she’d sat up and babbled something about earplugs to the wife of the town’s newest minister.
Mrs. Addams had arrived last winter with her husband and two sons, and since her husband had taken the pulpit to lead the fourth largest congregation in town, promptly joined the Council for Christian Women.
Sadie knew nothing else about the woman except what her eyes told her.
She wore coral lipstick. So few woman could. But playing against the rich mahogany of Mrs. Addams’s complexion and the flawless white of her teeth, it couldn’t have looked more right. And she always dressed as if she had just come from or was just about to head off to sit in the front row at Sunday service. Today, the sherbet color of her linen suit looked like something fresh out of a watercolor painting. Not a hair on her head was out of place. Down to her pearl earrings, everything about the woman communicated serene dignity.
Sadie sniffled. She swiped her knuckle over her damp cheek. She lifted her chin and mustered a weak smile to show her own depth of poise. She opened her mouth to say something she hoped would come out witty and wise and wonderful, and promptly hiccuped.
Mrs. Addams reached into her purse and pulled out a stark white tissue. The large diamond of her wedding set winked in the sunlight as she held her hand out to Sadie and asked, “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Perfectly all right.” Sadie accepted the tissue, then dragged it under her damp lashes with a casual chuckle meant to show that she did this kind of thing all the time. Well not
all
the time…and not
this
kind of thing. “Of course, I…I…don’t usually lie around in the park like this.”
A light shone from the depths of the other woman’s eyes as she laid her hand on Sadie’s arm and said, “I know.”
“I was just…” The warmth of that touch could have cut through icy bone. Just that fast, in no more than an instant, the tender gesture sank beneath Sadie’s threadbare facade and went straight to the center of her pain. She drew a shuddering breath. “…having a moment.”
A moment? A momentary lapse of all good sense was more like it
. Sadie could only hope that a minister’s wife would simply assume she’d meant a moment of prayer. How could a woman so spiritually advanced, so socially adept, so successful in her home and so outwardly pulled together, understand Sadie choosing the middle of a public park to throw herself a pathetic little pity party?
But when Claudette Addams leaned so close that Sadie could smell the lilac scent of her perfume and whispered, “Trust me, I’ve had
days
like that myself,” Sadie believed her.
“Why don’t we get up off this grass and…are you heading to your office now?”
“Office?” The small building loomed large in her perception, as it had when Sadie had first arrived in the park to participate in the city wide Leaders Are Readers program today. She scrambled to her feet with a little help from Mrs. Addams, and pretended to brush unseen grass from her clothes. “Oh, no. No reason to go into the office today.”
Or any day, according to the man who’d approved her appointment to the job.
“Then are you free for lunch?”
“Lunch?” Someone wanted to have lunch with Sadie? Did the woman not have a clue? Sadie was inept, insignifi
cant, invisible. Did Claudette Addams have any idea how hard it would be to have lunch with an invisible companion?
“Yes, lunch,” the other woman said softly.
“I would love to, but it’s sort of a crazy day.”
And I’m sort of a crazy lady
. “Things to do, places to…do them. You know how it is.”
“Oh, of course. You’re probably on your way to see your husband or your sisters—they all work downtown, don’t they?”
“My…? Um, yes. Actually, Ed, April, Hannah
and
her husband all work within a stone’s throw of here.”
And me fresh out of stones
. “But they’re much too busy for me to bother them right now. I was just…” She made a halfhearted motion in the general direction of the opposite end of town, and without any idea of what else to say, concluded, “…you know.”
“Going down to the dance school to see the woman who cares for your father?”
“The Royal Academy,” Sadie corrected. “It’s more of a multipurpose school of charm and, um, movement.”
Sadie swept her arms out, hoping to look like gracefulness incarnate, lost her balance and almost pitched forward onto her nose. She cleared her throat, shrugged and twisted her fingers together. “You can take a class in pretty much anything from poise to Pilates to pumping iron to preparing for the annual cotillion.”
“The Royal Academy,” the other woman repeated. “That’s run by your friend, then, Mary McCrackin, isn’t it?”
“Mary Tate McCrackin, yes.”
What was this? A setup for This Is Your Life? Would this woman she hardly knew suddenly cry out “And do you recall this voice from grade school?
”
“Charming lady. I recall Mrs. McCrackin from the last meeting of the Council of Christian Women.”
You mean the one where Moonie almost plowed you and the others down with the lawn mower?
“Oh, of course.”
“I had hoped to see her at the next meeting.” She clasped her hands together and cocked her head, her eyes no longer so sympathetic. “But so far, unless I’m wrong, you’ve failed to schedule another meeting.”
“No, you’re not wrong.” I have failed.
I failed as council president just like I fail at everything. So good of you to come all the way over to the park to point it out to me
.
“Then I didn’t miss this new council’s second meeting. Because you haven’t—”
“Scheduled one. Yes, we established that. I have fallen down on the job.” Sadie spread her hands as she glanced down at the spot where Mrs. Addams had found her, and still trying to make light of it all said, “You can see that’s sort of a pattern with me. Falling down.”
Mrs. Addams frowned. “If it’s a pattern with you, then why were you put in a leadership role over the council?”
“Because…” Sadie rubbed her hands together, her shoulders hunched. “I was…the only regular member who didn’t show up the day they nominated officers.” She cleared her throat. “It was a joke…the whole falling down…the pattern…that was a joke because you found me…”
“Then you weren’t elected president by default for not showing up?”
“No, actually, sadly, that is true. That did happen.”
“Well, if they elected you, then surely they trusted you to carry out your duties?”
“Um…” Sadie drew out the single syllable into a soft hum as she nodded, then raised her hands in surrender. “One would think.”
“And do you plan to?”
“Think?”
According to the mayor, that wasn’t part of her job description.
“Carry out your job. What do you plan to do about a second meeting of the council?”
“Well I don’t know. I mean, what could I do to top that first one?” Sadie laughed nervously. “’Course, if I give my daddy enough time, I’m sure he could come up with something. Maybe come riding by on a circus elephant or as a one-man band.”
The woman exhaled, shut her eyes and visibly composed herself before meeting Sadie’s gaze again and asking warmly, “How is your father? Is he feeling better?”
There were no secrets in a small town. Everyone knew about Moonie’s health crisis. They also all knew that while he had only lasted a day in Sadie’s care, the old goat was thriving under Mary Tate and Royal’s ministrations.
Sadie gritted her teeth. “My daddy is just…peachy.”
“Peachy? You sure? It’s none of my business, but that sounds more like sour grapes to me.”
“You’re right.”
“Oh?”
“It is none of your business.”
At last Claudette Addams’s smile blossomed into a full-blown grin. “There. I knew if I asked enough questions, I’d finally get an honest answer out of you.”
“Honest?” Was the women implying that Sadie had been trying to hide something? She was—trying to hide something—but who did Claudette Addams think she was to throw it in Sadie’s face like that? Sadie put her hands on her hips. “You want honest?”
Mrs. Addams did not back down an inch. “Seems a fitting way to go between Christian sisters, wouldn’t you say?”
“Careful what you ask for, Mrs. Addams. I am known to be quite hard on my sisters.”
“Well, bring it on, I can take it as long as it’s honest. And call me Claudette.”
“And I’m Sadie. Now, okay, Claudette, how’s this for honest? My own father has chosen to live with my best friend rather than rely on me or my sisters. Said sisters are at the moment not speaking to me because they think
I
think I’m the only one of us competent enough to look after Daddy, despite the fact that I almost killed him. My husband, who never has a moment of spare time for me or the family, suddenly has all the time in the world to take up golf under the sweet tutelage of a young, pretty, vivacious, go-getter, a young cosmetics sales rep—”
Claudette raised a finger to interject, “You said
young
twice.”
“I know. She’s
that
young.” Sadie drew a deep breath. “And if that weren’t enough, the job I thought would revitalize me has turned out to be a farce, my spiritual life isn’t much better
and
my children are teenagers! And that, Mrs. Addams, is why calling a second meeting of a council that only elected me because they pretty much thought they could boss me around is not the first item on my personal agenda!”
Claudette let out a long, low whistle and laughed. “Just hearing all that makes
me
want to lie down in the grass and weep.”
Sadie managed a wry smile. “Maybe if we both do it, we’ll start a trend.”
“Honey, if every woman who felt overwhelmed by her life joined in, the salt from our tears would kill every blade of grass in the park.”
“Really?” Sadie blinked. “Do you think so? When I look at the women around me, they all seem so competent
and confident and capable of anything. I feel like I’m the only one whose life is a runaway bus that just broke through the guardrail over a rock-strewn embankment.”
“On fire.”
“What?”
“You left out the part about feeling like that bus is on fire. Oh, and children bouncing on the back seat screaming, ‘Faster, Mommy, make it go faster.’”
“You
do
know.”
“Honey, believe it or not, that’s one crowded bus.” She raised her head and looked out toward the street. “In fact, I heard in a sermon once that if you think of everyone you meet as an uncertain, hurting individual, most of the time you’ll be right.”
“So you’ve felt that way?”
She nodded. “And you?”
Goose bumps rose on Sadie’s arms. She clenched her jaw and moved her gaze slowly from the cemetery to the distant point of town where the pharmacy stood. “Sometimes I think I’m going to jump right out of my skin, you know?”
Claudette nodded again. “Uh-huh. Jump right out and run away.”
“Yes! It’s like when I was six and I broke my arm.”
“Trying to jump out of your skin?”
“No, trying to jump off the garage with an umbrella for a parachute.”
The other woman winced.
“It hurt bad at first. Then the pain subsided and I didn’t give it much thought. Then I got this itch deep, real deep inside, way beyond where I could stick my fingers down into that ratty old cast to scratch. Nothing worked. Nothing satisfied that need to get at the itch. I thought it would drive me right out of my mind.”