“Why not?” Sadie’s pulse thudded hard in her ears to say aloud the question that Daddy had asked, the question that had helped launch a series of choices that had brought her to this very moment. “We
are
in Alphina. We have a phone and a phone book.”
April shifted in her chair to open the desk drawer. The seat squeaked. The drawer squawked. The phone book, though thin, hit the bed with a satisfying
thwack
when April tossed it to Sadie, suggesting, “We could start by calling city hall.”
Sadie laid her hand on the tattered cover with its photo of a local landmark. “And ask for what?”
“Records…um, marriage licenses?”
Hannah sank to her knees and placed her hand on the closed book next to Sadie’s, her eyes fixed on the oldest sister of the three. “And even if they could tell us something, how would that help us find her?”
April had no answer.
But Sadie did. “We won’t find the kinds of things we want through official channels.”
“No?” Hannah cocked her head. Hannah liked official channels. They were organized and easy to access without having to rely overmuch on others’ help to do so. If Sadie had let her, she’d have gladly spent the day flitting from
office to office to library files and back again, gathering information, networking and generally making herself the scourge of Alphina paper handlers everywhere.
“The newspaper!” Hannah clapped her hands together. “Or maybe an old established doctor’s office?”
“Chamber of commerce,” April added her best guess.
“Nope. Nope. And no. Unless our mother made herself newsworthy or owned a business, the paper and any civic organizations would be out. A doctor might know something, but how would we find the right one, and if we did, would he or she divulge privileged patient information?”
“Not likely.” Hannah rested her chin on the bed and tucked her robe in around her feet.
“No, ladies, we need to seek out the collective knowledge of the resident population, the whole body of data accumulated through intense survey and interaction with various locally based denizens, the shared wisdom of the generations.”
A slow smile worked over April’s lips. “Town gossip?”
Sadie touched the tip of her nose to let her sister know she’d gotten the right answer. “Yup. We need to find Alphina’s answer to Lollie Muldoon.”
“Well there is a little café across the street. It’s just the kind of place locals might gather.” April stood and held her hand out to help Hannah up, as well. “If there isn’t a good gossip connection there, they could probably point us in the right direction.”
“Good thinking.” Sadie leaped up, suddenly energized again. “In fact, we could take Daddy up on his offer to feed us, and do both at once.”
Hannah rubbed her temple with one hand and clasped her robe closed high at the throat with the other. “Ugh—how can you two think of eating at a time like this?”
“A time like what? Breakfast?” April’s braid swung with a spring in her step as she took Hannah’s shoulders and gave her a shove to prod her to get ready. “I always think of eating then.”
“I always think of eating—period.” Sadie pulled at the hem of her shapeless jersey tunic. “Right now I’m thinking pancakes!”
“Pancakes?” Hannah shuddered. “How could you eat something that sweet and sticky and heavy and…” She covered her mouth.
“Hannah, are you all right?” April was at her sister’s side in a heartbeat.
“I told you, I’m nervous.” She pushed April away, snatched up the outfit she’d laid out and headed into the bathroom, calling through the closing door, “This whole experience is taking its toll.”
April leaned against the bathroom door. “I know you’re not the type to admit you might have a human failing or two, but maybe you’re actually sick.”
“Or maybe…” Sadie jumped up and ran to the door, knocking gently before she said, “Hannah, honey, maybe we should take this money Dad left and head to the nearest drugstore to buy a test.”
April’s face lit up. “Oh, Hannah, you don’t think you could be…?”
Silence answered them for a few seconds, then the door slowly opened and their sister emerged, fully dressed.
“Give me that.” Hannah grabbed the money from Sadie’s hand. “If Downtown Drug is any example, the local drugstore will be just as good a place as any to get some prime gossip—and that test.”
“Y
ou praying about Hannah’s test or sitting there willing the phone to ring?”
“Can’t I do both?” Sadie took her eyes off the tan motel phone long enough to smile at her older sister. “That pharmacist said he’d check around, and if he got in touch with the woman he thought might remember Mama and Daddy living here, he’d get right back to us.”
The raised green letters of the chain pharmacy’s business logo looked stark against the white of the crisp card in April’s palm. She flipped it over to the handwritten name on the back. “What a blessing to find someone who had run a drugstore for so many years and sold to a national chain.”
“Actually it happens all the time now. The private shops just can’t keep pace. This fellow was completely in awe of how long Ed had held out already.” Sadie sighed.
“Do you think Ed will call him to talk about the pros and cons of selling the store?”
“Who knows? I told this guy that Ed had recently taken up golf, and he assured me that was the first step toward
dumping the drugstore but…” Sadie wondered what Ed was up to right now. Was he hard at work, maybe pausing now and then to think of or say a prayer for her and her sisters? Or was he on the golf course? Or maybe getting a facial or manicure or total makeover courtesy of Carmen Gomez? “You may find us terribly predictable, April, but I no longer have any idea what Ed will do next.”
April set the card aside.
“Can you two turn the TV on out there, I can’t…it’s too quiet. It’s making me self-conscious.”
April obliged with the flick of a button.
“Better change the channel.” Sadie pointed to the talk-show host announcing the day’s lineup of guests. “If you think
we
make her nervous, imagine what that crew would do for her.”
After a few more clicks, April settled on an old black-and-white sitcom. “Okay, the TV is on. We are not listening. We won’t hear if you are taking the test or talking to Payt about the results. All better, Hannah?”
“Thanks. I won’t take long, I promise.”
April rubbed her hands together gleefully and tiptoed over to sit on the brown-and-gold bedspread next to Sadie. “Just think—in a few minutes we’ll know if we’re going to be aunts!”
Sadie leaned back to check under the nightstand, making sure the phone was plugged in properly. “You’re already an aunt.”
The laugh track from the old TV show roared.
“Oh, yeah, sure.” April fingered the collar of her staff shirt from her annual work as a church camp counselor. “And I love Olivia and Ryan. I love all kids.”
“You’re good with them. You’re a born nurturer.” Sadie cocked her head and wrinkled her nose. “Is that a word?
Nurturer? Born to nurture? Either way, you do good with growing things, plants, puppies, children.”
“Thanks.” April flicked her braid back, her gaze cast in the general direction of the TV, though she clearly wasn’t paying the show any attention.
Sadie wondered if the compliment had been unkind. Was it wrong to remind her sister that she excelled at loving and caring when her life offered fewer and fewer opportunities for her to do so? Sadie thought of just letting it go, the way they always did when things touched on the uncomfortable. But the trip, the circumstances, the talk they’d had last night, had all worked to open something up in her, and she didn’t want to just leave things alone anymore, not if there was a chance that she had said or done something that had tapped an aching nerve in April.
“But you’re right.” This was not easy for Sadie, either, this topic, so she broached it gingerly. She chose her words with care, kept her tone light and reminded herself that this was her gift to her sister, and that she, Sadie, controlled the circumstances. “Being an aunt to a teenager just doesn’t have the fringe benefits of being an aunt to a brand-new baby.”
“So true.” April twisted her neck to speak to Sadie over her shoulder, her expression cautious but her eyes shining with excitement. “There’s just something about a new baby…”
“You don’t have to tell me.” Sadie put her hand up. “And before you ask the inevitable, I am fine with it.”
“Hannah is going to be a mom, you know.” The mattress dipped and creaked as April situated herself cross-legged in the center of the bed. “Whether you’re fine with it or not.”
“Ouch,” Sadie whispered, more for the hardness of her sister’s tone than her actual words.
“I’m sorry if it hurts you to hear it, Sadie, but if we don’t take anything else away from this trip together, I hope we can at least do this—I hope we can finally stop walking on eggshells around each other.”
Sadie opened her mouth to argue that she never did any such thing, but her heart wouldn’t let her mouth form the feeble protest. She took her sister’s hand. “I think that’s a very good goal, April. I’ve thought for a while now that we—you, me, Hannah—we’re bound as much by what we’re afraid to say as we are by those few things we do manage to talk about.”
“Let’s face it, Sadie, if we get everything about Mama out in the open finally…”
“It will either bring us together finally and forever as sisters…”
“Or tear us irreparably apart.” April slipped her hand from Sadie’s, her eyes somber. “That’s why I feel I had to say what I said. After today I don’t know if I’ll have the chance again. So I am telling you, the way you’ve been since you lost the baby scares me. It scares me a lot.”
Sadie balled her hands into tight fists. She looked at the phone again, then at the heavily curtained window, then at the mirror over the vanity and sink. She looked anywhere but at her sister as she forced the hoarseness from her voice and said, “It’s not like I had a choice, April. It’s not like I could just decide to snap out of it. Most of the time it was forest and trees—I couldn’t separate the simple everyday problems from the immense, life-changing ones. They were all overwhelming.”
“You have to get help, Sadie.”
“B-but I’m better now.” She whipped her head around. Sadie pushed her hair out of her eyes even as she pleaded with her sister to concede what Sadie wanted more than
anything to believe. “Can’t you see how much better I am?”
“Oh, absolutely.” Her sister actually physically backed down. Her shoulders rounded. She folded her hands in her lap and smiled, though none too convincingly, as she said softly, “Sometimes days go by now and I think ‘we have our Sadie back,’ but then…”
April chewed her lower lip and cast her gaze to the quilted bedspread.
“No eggshells, April, remember?”
April searched her sister’s eyes.
Already Sadie regretted having urged her sister to speak freely. But she said nothing more and simply sat there, holding her breath.
“But then I remember it being that way with Mama, Sadie,” April said at last. “Good days and bad. You probably don’t have any memory of it, but that made it hard for us as kids.”
Sadie exhaled slowly; a long, world-weary breath. “I’ve made it hard on my kids. I can see that.”
“Then promise you’ll get help.”
“Claudette Addams said I should see a doctor.”
“Yes. A doctor and maybe even…maybe drive over to Louisville or Lexington once a week to see a Christian counselor.” April recoiled as if she thought Sadie might lash out at her. When Sadie gave no such immediate response, April rubbed her fingers along her braid and rushed to clarify, “You could just see a regular counselor, I suppose, but I was thinking you might want someone who could help you address your spiritual pain.”
Sadie’s face burned. She put her hands to her cheeks. “Has it been that obvious?”
“That you’re a little mad at God? That you’ve stopped speaking your heart to Him?”
Tears stung Sadie’s eyes, but she set her jaw and bid them not to fall. What had seemed a good idea before, now rang hollow in her ears. She did not want a lecture on how she should live her faith. To talk about things that April had observed, their mother, even Sadie’s behavior these last months was one thing. But this…her sister simply had no idea how deep it cut into Sadie’s soul to have been granted a second chance at motherhood only to have the One she loved and relied on, the One in whom she placed all hope, take that chance away. It was like the Heavenly Father had confirmed to Sadie the very worst of her fears—that she was not good enough. That she would be, given another chance, a failure.
What could she say to God after that?
The theme music for the old TV show blared loudly in the silence.
When it faded, they could hear Hannah talking on her cell phone in the bathroom.
“Thank you for caring enough to speak truthfully to me, April, but can we let it go now?” Sadie pulled her shoulders up. “I need to sort of regroup my emotions so I can give Hannah whatever kind of support she needs, you know, whatever the outcome of her test.”
“Sure.” April turned to face the television and began searching again for something suitable to watch.
Sadie fixed her gaze on the phone. She blinked, and though the tears slipped from her eyes, she did everything possible to keep from showing her pain.
After a second and without moving to look at Sadie, April set the channel changer down. “Sadie? About Hannah.”
Sadie cleared her throat before asking, “What about her?”
“She doesn’t really think we are going to find Mama alive and well and living in Alphina, does she?”
“That’s our Hannah. She always wants to believe the best possible outcome.”
“What about you?”
“I know better. That is, I know that whatever the outcome, we have to accept it.”
“I’ve never said this to anyone, Sadie, but I accepted a long time ago that Mama…isn’t here anymore.”
Mama, dead?
That’s what Sadie believed, and had believed for a very long time now but, like April, could never bring herself to say it out loud to anyone. Maybe now that they had vowed to speak frankly to each other—
The phone rang.
Sadie seized it. “Hello?”
“Hello? Is that better, Payt?” Hannah stepped out from the bathroom with the cell phone hidden under the waves of her tousled hair.
Sadie stuck her finger in her ear. “You’ll have to speak up—there’s a lot of interference coming from this end of the line.”
“Don’t worry, I’m taking this outside.” Hannah headed for the door in long, brisk strides. Her hand slipped on the knob at the first try, but when she flung the door open, sunlight came streaming in.
Sadie shaded her already smarting eyes.
Hannah giggled.
The door fell shut.
That didn’t matter. Sadie did not have to see her baby sister’s body language to know the news she was giving Payt was better than the news the local pharmacist had called to give to Sadie.
“No, that’s all right. I understand.” Sadie hung up.
April glanced at the closed door, then back to Sadie. “Well?”
Sadie just shook her head and hung up the phone.
“What does that mean?” April mimicked her sister’s gesture. “That he didn’t find anything out or—”
Sadie held one finger up to ask her sister for a moment. “Just let me make one more call. Maybe two.”
“Why? Can’t you give me an answer?”
“I can give you part of an answer,” she said. “But it’s the part that will only lead to more questions.”
Outside, Hannah squealed in delight.
April stole a quick look in the direction of the door, then glared at Sadie and whispered, “Spare me the soap-opera dramatics. Just tell me what the man said.”
“In a minute.” Sadie had already slid her own cell phone from her purse and punched in an all-too-familiar number. “Hello? This is Sadie Pickett, the cemetery superintendent? Can I please speak to the sheriff?”
“You’re calling Kurt Muldoon?” April’s eyes went wide. She curled her fingers into the hem of her camp shirt. “Why are you calling Kurt Muldoon?”
“I’m going to ask him if he has a girlfriend.” For the first time in a while her natural sarcastic streak buoyed Sadie’s spirits. In this long journey back from whatever darkness had seized her, the presence of mind to crack wise—no matter how much she knew she shouldn’t give in to the impulse—had been one of the first signposts of her old self returning.
From the look on her face, Sadie could tell April did not appreciate that subtle distinction.
“Why are you calling the Wileyville Sheriff’s Department, Sadie?”
“Because…yes, I’ll hold.” Sadie lowered the mouthpiece to better try to keep the two conversations separate. “Because…”
“Guess what, y’all?” Hannah burst into the room looking green around the gills and radiant all at the same time.
“We’re going to have a baby!” April leaped up and rushed to take her youngest sister into a big hug.
“We?” Sadie scoffed, but with a tentative smile. “Remember that commitment around the twelfth hour of labor, Hannah, and see if you can’t get her to do her share of having the baby then.”
“Oh, Sadie, you’re such a…” Hannah kept one arm around April and held the other open to her other sister. “Weren’t you on the motel phone a minute ago?”
“She’s trying to reach Kurt Muldoon in Wileyville,” April said, her eyes narrowed at Sadie.
“Whatever for?”
“She won’t say. She got a call from that pharmacist and won’t tell me what she found out, but apparently has no qualms about calling a stranger to discuss it with
him
.”
“Kurt is hardly a stranger, April.” Sadie strained to listen to the noises on the other end of the line as they transferred her call from the switchboard to Kurt’s office.
“What are you up to?” Hannah put her hand on her hip.
“I am up to getting out of here so I can talk to the man in peace.” Sadie stood, and like her sister before her but with much less enthusiasm, went to the door of their room to step outside.
April snagged her by the elbow. “You can’t walk out of here until you tell us what you know about Mama.”
“I know…Yes, Kurt, I have a favor to ask of you. Can you hang on just one sec?” She pulled her arm free and crossed the threshold to the sunny sidewalk, then turned,
and seeing the sweet expectant glow on Hannah’s face, sighed. “I know where Mama is, and if you give me a few minutes to pull some strings, I hope to be able to tell you how she got there.”