Mary Tate groaned. “Putting you in the most dreaded of all marital situations.”
“Right. In the
wrong
.”
“But you’re not.”
“I know. I
know
. He just doesn’t get it.”
“If he were my husband, he
wouldn’t
be getting it—not for a long time, I’ll tell you that.”
“I’m going to get
you
, Mary Tate. Get you some help.”
“Oh, please do, sugar. I’ve needed help a very long time now—hopefully in the form of a couple of buff, beautiful cabana boys from a culture where they venerate older women.”
“What for? You’re married.”
“Yeah, but I’m not
dead
.”
They stopped at the light.
Sadie shot Mary Tate the finely honed “Don’t make me climb out of my comfort zone to drag you back to the straight and narrow because I’m the mama and you
will
not prevail with me” look that only a mother of teenagers could rightfully pull off.
“Oh, sugar, I’m teasing. You know no man alive holds a candle to my Royal.”
“Holding a candle to Royal?” They hurried across the quiet street. “Isn’t that your job?”
“You bet. Something needs doing, I just hold that man’s feet to the flame and it gets done ASAP.” Mary Tate laughed, gave the wagon a jerk, and struggled to try to hoist it over the curb.
“Sap being the operative word?” Sadie muttered under her breath, bending down to lift the back of the wagon and help out her friend.
“What?”
“Nothing.” In fifteen years she couldn’t recall ever having seen Royal do anything for his wife that his wife could do for herself. And since Mary Tate could do practically anything…“Can you get the wagon from here on out?”
“Got it. Let’s go. Looks like Lollie and Waynetta beat us here.” She waved to the women standing in the shade of the park’s lone surviving oak tree.
Though the official roster listed nearly twenty members of the council mission statement: To unite churches and community through fellowship and service—Sadie had never attended a meeting with more than a dozen women present.
She expected far fewer than that tonight, and had not really planned a highly organized or particularly coherent agenda.
So it stood to reason that the first two to arrive would be the town’s self-appointed social maven and the best-intentioned busybody in the county.
“Hi, Mrs. Muldoon, Mrs. Cummins! Hope y’all haven’t waited long.” Sadie gritted her teeth and prayed she had not just said “y’all” in front of Waynetta Cummins. She had, of course, and a lecture on “People judge us by our words” surely would follow.
To avoid that and the inevitable looking like a child in front of people she had come to preside over, Sadie slapped on her biggest slopping-sugar expression and settled the cookies on the picnic table. “Please do excuse me a minute, won’t you? I have to run into my office and sign the group in as using the park this evening.”
Sadie bowed. She
bowed
. Or maybe it was more of a curtsy. Anyway, her body bobbed up and down, she flung her hands out and stepped backward, all with her teeth bared in a smile that had to have resembled something between the maniacal grimace of a black-and-white movie
vamp and the glaring high-beam smile of a game-show spokesmodel.
“Isn’t she too cute?” Mary Tate hugged Lollie and nodded to Waynetta. “
My
office. Two whole weeks on the job, and already she talks like a bona fide career woman.”
If the other women had an opinion about anything from her cuteness to her career, Sadie missed it. She’d already hightailed it away from there, as fast as her stubby little middle-aged legs could carry her.
“Y
ou’d better get back out there, sugar.” Mary Tate bounded into Sadie’s office with a cookie in one hand and a can of soda in the other. “Deborah Danes just swooped down on the group with an idea for our fall service project. She outlined it, made color computer printouts and stuffed them in little plastic page protectors for each of us. ’Course, you know how that went over with Waynetta and Lollie! We may have on our hands the very first all-female ultimate-fighting wrasslin’ match in the history of the Council of Christian Women.”
Sadie looked up from her desk and put one hand to her suddenly throbbing temple. “And how is running in here to tell me that going to stop it?”
“Stop it? Honey, I think you owe it to yourself to get out there and
watch!
”
“I’ll be there in a minute.” She flipped up one corner of the calendar that all but covered the top of her battered old desk.
“In a minute you might have missed it all. What’s taking so long in here, anyway?”
“I can’t find the paperwork.”
“Look for it later, girl. You have three queen bees circling the hive out there and the end result will not be sweetness and honey.”
“You don’t understand. I thought for sure I’d left the Private Use of Public Property form right here.” Paper whispered over paper in her in-box. She stepped back and opened her top drawer. “And now it’s nowhere to be found. Tell me I’m not that careless, Mary Tate, or worse, so distracted or so…so…so old that I’ve become completely unaware of where I’m putting things.”
“Old? Take that back! You’re younger than I am.”
“Two months.”
“My December to your February, honey, it gives us entirely different birth years.”
“Can we deal with your vanity crisis later? This really troubles me.”
“Okay, calm down. I’ll help you look.” Mary Tate set her drink down, then held the cookie by one edge in her teeth and stood on tiptoe to peer over the bookcase on the far side of the tiny, dark-paneled office. Muffled by the cookie in her mouth, she asked, “What’s it look like?”
“Nothing fancy. White paper, lots of blank lines to write names and times, on a brown clipboard with a red pencil on a string tied to the clasp.”
Mary Tate rested her cookie on top of the old metal file cabinet in the corner. “Did you check in here?”
Before Sadie could tell her not to bother, she yanked at the handle of the top drawer. The squeaky wheels clattered along their runners and then clanked to a stop.
Sadie’s pulse picked up. ”How did you unlock that?”
“Unlock? It wasn’t locked in the first place.”
“It most certainly was. I double-checked it before I left
this afternoon because…” She held her breath, glanced around the room, then exhaled and shut her eyes. “Okay, this may sound nuts, but at least three times since my first day on the job I’ve found things not quite right around here.”
“Not quite right?”
“Amiss.”
“A Miss what?”
She massaged her temple again even though it didn’t produce any more of a satisfying response than talking to Mary Tate. “Messed up. Vanished. Out of place.”
“Ooo-wee-oo. Strange happenings at the graveyard.” She nibbled her cookie again, probably to hide the mischief in her grin as she teased, “Think it’s the work of restless spirits?”
“I don’t believe in ghosts, Mary Tate.”
“What about some other kind of restless spirit? You believe in your daddy, don’t you?”
“Why would Daddy—” She stopped herself, knowing that with Moonie involved one never asked “Why?” Instead, she shook her head and said simply, “‘Why seek ye the living among the dead?’”
“You trying to ask why someone as full of life as Moonie would do mischief in a graveyard?”
“No. It wouldn’t hurt you to open a Bible a little more often, you know that, girl? That’s what the angel said when they came to look for the body of Jesus in the empty tomb. ‘Why seek ye the living among the dead?’ It’s what Daddy always says about going to funerals and visiting grave sites.”
“Funerals and grave sites are
for
the living, to help us deal with our grief.” Mary Tate folded her arms, clearly not getting all the pieces to fit in her mind.
“I’m just saying, that for once in my life, the things gone totally wacko around me absolutely cannot be the
work of Moonie Shelnutt. He doesn’t do cemeteries, and he doesn’t have any plans to until he’s brought to one feet-first.”
“Okay, if you’ve ruled out the occult and the obvious, what’s left?”
“Overactive imagination, according to the chief of police.” She picked up the phone and stared at the black bulky thing.
“Is that who you’re calling?”
“No.” Her fingers hovered for a moment over the numbers before she began to slowly punch them in. “I think maybe this time I’ll try Kurt Muldoon.”
“Breaking and entering on city property? That’s police business, not the sheriff’s.”
“Yeah, but…” She chewed her lower lip, and aware of the quiet ringing in her ear, met her friend’s gaze and whispered, “I can’t call the police.”
Mary Tate’s eyes grew wide, her tone went hushed as one suddenly sucked into a potentially sinister mystery. “Why not?”
“Because…” Sadie straightened up and held the mouthpiece down so when the night dispatcher picked up he wouldn’t hear her. “Because I’ve called them three times in two weeks, and every time they’ve come up with a perfectly logical explanation for whatever I reported. The chief of police has taken great pains to remind me that they do not have a large staff and time spent making like Scooby Doo out at the graveyard means time away from serious police work.”
“Serious police work? Yes, Wileyville is a regular hotbed of crime. I’d wager that man has had to cut his coffee drinking time at Owt’s down to only two hours a day.”
The dispatcher in the sheriff’s office answered. Sadie held one finger up to signal to Mary Tate to wait. In as few words as possible she explained who and where she was and why she needed to get in touch with Kurt. When the dispatcher put her on hold to see if the sheriff had left for the day, Sadie picked up the conversation where she and Mary Tate had left it. “It’s his tone, you know, that pat-you-on-the-head, ‘there, there, little lady don’t worry your pretty self’ way of his that made me want to just get right in his smug old face and say…Eeep!”
Sadie slammed the receiver into its cradle and practically leaped backward.
“Sadie, honey, what is it?” Mary Tate reached her side in two steps.
Just that fast the phone began to ring.
Sadie groaned and dug her fingers into her aching scalp.
“Are you going to answer that?”
“No!” She waved her friend away. “When the dispatcher couldn’t find Kurt, he said it didn’t sound like their jurisdiction, so he put me through to the police. That’s got to be them calling me now just to give me grief.”
“Okay, if you don’t want to answer
that
, how about going outside, where your
other
duty calls?”
Sadie groaned, letting her head fall back. In doing so she caught a glimpse of the clock. “We have a full five more minutes before the meeting officially starts.”
“But Deborah, not to mention Waynetta…”
“Circle this day on your calendar, pal. A new day has dawned for the council. As of today, that meeting will begin not when the bossiest woman shows up but when the president,
me
, calls the assembly to order.”
“That
will
be different. And good for you for initiating it.” Mary Tate gave her friend a hug.
Sadie patted her friend’s hand and wondered how long she could keep up the brave face when what she really wanted to do was go home and hide under the covers. Aside from the odd and the unexplained incidents around her office, these two weeks had certainly taken their toll.
She was tired. But for once it was a good tired.
She was stressed. But at least she knew the source of that stress.
She was resolute. Though she did not have all the answers she needed to carry out her mission, for the first time in a long while, she had a mission to focus her energy on, if only…
She took a moment, thinking at long last the time might have come for her to utter a brief but heartfelt prayer for help. But before she could even begin to think of what to say, a gentle tapping on the office door demanded her attention.
“Yes?” she called out, already moving around Mary Tate toward the door.
It swung open. A man dressed in the familiar uniform of the Wileyville police poked his head in the office. Though she didn’t recognize him, he obviously knew her by reputation.
“’Lo, Mrs. Pickett, I knocked because I know how skittish you can get.”
“If you came over to tease me, Officer—”
“No. No, ma’am. No such thing.” He stood fully in the open door and extended his burly arm outward. “I came by to confirm your qualms about all them suspicious goings-on ’round here.”
She did not like the sound of that. Not one bit.
And when she edged carefully around the desk, over to the threshold and peeked out at the once-serene park, she did not like the
sight
of it any better.
“Oh, Daddy,” she murmured.
“I thought you said he didn’t ‘do’ cemeteries.” Mary Tate raised her fist in the air. “Wooo! Go, Moonie, go!”
The officer laughed.
The phone rang again, and Sadie figured it was someone calling to tell her what they had just witnessed.
“Looks like we may have got straight to the root of all that monkey business around here that you keep phoning the station about, Mrs. Pickett.”
Sadie covered her eyes with one hand. However, that could not blot the scene from her mind.
With the council members Sadie had just promised she would take in hand looking on, mouths agape, her father made his entrance. Foam Statue of Liberty hat flopping proudly on his silvery head, he grinned and waved, then pointed to the pile of luggage strapped behind him as he turned into the vivid green grass of the park, sitting astride April’s shiny red riding lawn mower.
“R
an away from home.” Sadie picked up the foil pan from tonight’s frozen lasagna.
Instinctively, she started to immerse it in the hot sudsy water she’d run in the sink to presoak the dishes. But she stopped just in time. The very reason she’d stocked her kitchen with convenience foods was to save herself the trouble of washing pots and pans. She should just throw the thing out.
Really.
Just chuck it in the trash.
Instead, she stood there at the counter contemplating it along with her father’s latest exploit. “Can you imagine that? Just up and running away from home at his age?”
Seated at the kitchen table, Ed rustled the pages of the
Wileyville Guardian News
. “Where Moonie is concerned, I can imagine just about anything.”
“Mom, tell me again what they call you down at the police station.” Ryan, with the cordless phone trapped between his cocked head and upraised shoulder, carried a precarious stack of dinner dishes to the sink.
“And on a lawn mower!” Sadie banged the used tinfoil pan down on the counter with a very disappointing
thwonk
.
Ed didn’t even look up. “You should have seen that coming when you took away his car.”
“Mom…Mom…what’s the thing the cops call you?” From his vantage point, towering almost a foot taller than her, Ryan easily capped his mother’s head with one splayed hand to hold her in place. “What’s the name that officer said they gave you? I want to tell Amy.”
“What you should tell Amy is goodbye.” Olivia gathered the salad bowl and bread tray from the table and headed for the breakfast bar. “Your turn to load the dishwasher tonight and I don’t want to get stuck with it.”
Ryan waggled his head, then pretended to flip a strand of long hair over his shoulder in a dead-on impersonation of his sister in full snit-fit mode.
“I saw what you did.” Olivia thunked the leftovers down. “Mo-o-om.”
“That’s ’Fraidy Sadie the Cemetery Lady to you, Miss Smart Mouth.” Sadie slipped away from her son, who repeated the loathsome nickname to the girl on the other end of the line and shared a big belly laugh with her.
Ed uncrossed his legs, then recrossed them the other way. He exchanged one section of the paper for another, then sipped down the last of his iced tea. All without a single upward glance.
Sadie snatched up the disposable pan again.
Ryan then told Amy he had to go and hung up. He was still grinning from ear to ear when he popped open the dishwasher and yanked the bottom rack out to begin loading. “’Fraidy Sadie the Cemetery Lady. I like it, Mom. Very cool.”
“I’m glad you approve. Here.” She slung the crusty foil casserole container into his midsection with a wicked but
harmless
whack
, and smiled far too sweetly. “Wash this pan. And I mean
really
wash it, by hand.”
“But you’re supposed to throw these away,” he protested.
“Then I’ll throw it away clean.”
He opened his mouth to argue.
She narrowed her eyes and frowned.
He thrust the pan in the sink, turned his back on her and went to work scrubbing.
Olivia gave a minor wiggle of teenage triumph to see her brother taken to task and tackled her own chore with renewed cheerfulness, singing, “’Fraidy Sadie the…”
Sadie tensed. “Don’t finish that, please, Olivia.”
“If the nickname bothers you that much, honey, quit the job,” Ed muttered so low she wasn’t sure he’d meant her to hear him.
“If the…what?” She came around the table and stood, commanding his attention. “Isn’t that a bit like saying if your house is blue and you want it brown, burn it to the ground?”
“Just trying to be supportive.”
“Supportive?” She pulled her shoulders up. “By implying I’m not strong enough to stand up to the good old boys’ network, and at the first sign of them mocking me I should turn tail and run home?”
“Careful around those good old boys, Sadie.” Another page turned. “We’re going to need their good graces when the time comes to sell the pharmacy.”
Sell the pharmacy. Ed had talked about doing that for the last five years. All the while he steadfastly turned down even the chance to
talk
to any of the prospective buyers who came to town every six months or so.
“Ed, all I’m saying is…Ed?” Sadie clenched her teeth in frustration. “Ed, would you please look at me when I talk to you?”
“Can’t. Got these glasses perched just so on my nose. If I so much as hiccup, I won’t be able to read another word.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it again. Though the man couldn’t act more irritating if he tried, the plain truth was that he wasn’t trying. He just wanted to take a few minutes before he went down to close the store to leaf through the paper. And he looked so darling doing it, too, with his hair mussed up and those banged-up black reading glasses balanced on the end of his nose. How could she stay mad at him?
Sadie exhaled, leaned her forearms on the back of the nearest kitchen chair and shook her head. “I give up.”
“What? What’s wrong now?” He looked up at last, and true to his prediction, the glasses listed drunkenly to one side. “You want me to paint the house brown?”
“No, sweetheart.” She laughed. “I want…”
Well, that was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? It had gone unanswered since that day when Mayor Furst had shown up on her doorstep and she started on this new, unknown path. What
did
she want? Until she could define it clearly, how could she ever hope to achieve it?
She ruffled her fingers through her hair, then folded her arms over her chest and gave it a stab. “I want everyone I love to just be happy.”
She smiled because she thought she should after saying something so trite, it had an empty ring even to her own ears.
No one in the room said anything.
“Except maybe Daddy,” she added, needing to fill the crackling quiet. “Maybe, just maybe, Daddy could stand to make himself a teeny bit less happy, especially if it meant the rest of us could have a day’s worth of peace.”
“I, for one, completely understand what Grandpa did.” Olivia tore off a piece of plastic wrap big enough to mummify the half a loaf of garlic bread left over from the meal. “In fact, I’d go so far as to call it a noble act of rebellion, the powerless individual struggling against his controllers to reclaim his legally recognized and totally fundamental right to drive.”
Sadie resisted the urge to take the bread from her child’s hands and do the job for her. “Thus spoke the girl who earned her license but lacked the foresight to earn any money to pay for a car or for the added expense to our insurance, which we told her we would
not
pay if she let her grades slip below a B average.”
“It’s not fair.” Olivia stared down at the wrap and the loaf.
Here we go. Hot-and-cold-running hissy fits or however Mary Tate had described it. For a second Sadie thought the girl would break into tears. And if she did, could Sadie hang tough and not rush to her and try to make it all better? She hoped so, but…
Luckily, or perhaps blessedly, Sadie never had to face that test.
Ed stood, cast his cattywampus glasses aside, then went to his daughter, putting a hand on Olivia’s back. “You knew the rules years ago. Don’t try crying foul to us now and hoping things will change.”
Her slender shoulders rose and fell, then her strawberry-blond hair shimmied as she raised up her chin and said, “I meant it’s unfair to Grandpa, taking away
his
car.”
“Yeah, well, your grandpa violated a few rules himself.” Ed glanced at Sadie and winked. “Like refusing to yield the right-of-way…to a four-story building.”
“Following too closely—” Sadie crossed her arms “—behind a four-story building.”
“And don’t forget the worst one of all.” Ryan swung around to face them, one sudsy finger thrust up in the air. “Denting up a classic, mint-condition Caddie.”
The room went so still, Sadie could hear the soap bubbles drip from her son’s hand onto the creased leather of his athletic shoes.
“On a four-story building,” Ryan rushed to add.
Sadie laughed at her son’s pathetic joke and shook her head.
Olivia took the leftovers to the refrigerator.
“Shame about that car, though,” Ryan grumbled, turning back to his work.
“No kidding.” Even with her head in the refrigerator, the pout came out loud and clear in Olivia’s voice. “You know, he promised me I could have it someday.”
“No way!” Ryan flicked bubbles in his sister’s general direction. “That baby is mine. You wouldn’t have a clue how to take care of it.”
“That’s what mechanics are for.” She batted her eyes above the open fridge door. “All I have to do is drive it around and look great.”
“You are not insured to drive that car, young lady.” Ed labored to get his reading glasses balanced back in place again.
“
Someday
. I said someday.”
Without moving his head an inch, Ed delicately picked up the paper again as he said, “Let’s hope it’s
someday
in the far, far future.”
“Oh, Daddy, you have to stop thinking of me as a child.” Olivia slammed the refrigerator door.
The sound made Ed startle, which sent the glasses tumbling into his lap. “I say someday in the far future because neither of you will get that car until Grandpa Moonie dies.”
Die?
Her daddy? Sadie blinked. Why had Ed brought up such a ridiculous notion?
Olivia huffed out of the room.
“I give up.” Ed snatched up the glasses and tossed them onto the table along with the remnants of the unread paper. “Think I’ll head back down to the store.”
Sadie swallowed hard, and suddenly, without even realizing she’d intended to say anything at all, she blurted out, “I wish I knew how Daddy was doing at Hannah’s.”
Ed stood, his iced-tea glass in hand, and stretched. “Then go over and see.”
“And have her think I’m spying on her?” Sadie’s hand went to her throat. “Never!”
Ed went to the sink. “You wouldn’t be spying on her.”
“Yes, she would,” Ryan said, taking his father’s empty glass and dousing it in the sink.
“She would be checking in on him.” Ed spoke slowly, distinctly, the way they used to spell words around the kids when they were trying to keep a secret. “It’s not the same thing.”
“Speaking for those of us who have had Mom—” Ryan pulled his hands from the water, suds flying as he made quotation marks in the air “—‘check in’ on us when we weren’t doing anything but practicing a guitar piece with Amy, I say it stinks of spying.”
“Since you were ‘practicing’—” Ed’s large blunt fingers mimicked his son’s gesture “—with Amy on the front porch, with the light off, it’s fair to say that when your Mom checked on you, she had a good reason.”
“And if I checked on Daddy, I would have a reason,” Sadie told her son. Then she turned to Ed, her forehead scrunched down tight. “What would be my reason?”
“Well…you could…or maybe…” He stroked his chin, the lines around his eyes creasing deeply before his whole face lit and he said, “You know how your daddy loves chocolate-covered cherries?”
“Yes.”
“And how Hannah never has any sweets around because she’s always on a diet?”
“That’s true, she is. Ever since she married Payt, she’s always on a diet. In fact, she’s completely banned all candy from her home.
Banned
it. That skinny little—” Sadie wrangled to find the right description “—candy banner.”
“Well, we just got a fresh shipment in at the store today.”
“Pretty lame, Mom.” Ryan pulled the plug, and the water rushed down the drain in big gulps.
“Lame is in the eye of the beholder, son. My daddy likes chocolate-covered cherries, and there he is, stuck in a house with a woman who hasn’t let sugar-laden fatty snacks cross her lips or her threshold for five years.” She tried to look sincere, though not overmuch, as she didn’t want to give her son the impression she didn’t understand how thin a justification she’d chosen. “Can you imagine how that makes him feel?”
Ryan used the wad-the-tea-towel-up-in-a-ball method of drying his hands. Using that same level of attentiveness, he deadpanned, “If I say yes, can I go to my room?”
“Go.” Ed waved his son off. “And speaking of that, I think it’s time I headed out, as well.”
“Yes, you should go. I have to go, too. I’m a woman on a mission.”
“A spy mission,” Ryan called out from the hallway.
“A family mission,” Ed corrected, taking Sadie by the shoulders. “That is, it will be a family mission if you stop by and get April.”
Sadie winced. As if things hadn’t already been stretched to the limits between the sisters, to then have two of them show up on the third’s doorstep armed with nothing more than a box of chocolate-covered flimsy excuses? “I don’t think April and Daddy are talking yet.”
“All the more reason to do it.”
Sadie wanted to see her father. She wanted to see how Hannah and he were getting along. She wanted to know just what exactly happened between April and Moonie.
In the distance Ryan’s bedroom door slammed shut.
She wanted to keep the channels of communication open between her sisters and father.
Ed already had his lab coat in his hand, ready to go back to the store.
But most of all she wanted not to have to spend yet another night feeling lost and alone in her own home.
“Okay, I’ll do it. But don’t lock up the store until you hear from me, you got that, Ed?”
“Okay, but why?” he asked as he ushered her out their front door.
“Because if I drag April over to Hannah’s house to see Daddy unannounced, we may need emergency medical supplies before the evening is through.”