Sadie-In-Waiting (13 page)

Both sisters started to chatter at once, only allowing snippets of their message to get through.

“Charm school? That’s the last place…”

“The police aren’t involved…yet.”

“We’ll never live it down, you know.”

“What’s with the hat?” April asked at last without missing a step or taking a breath.

“Forget the hat, April, this is no time to be nitpicking about—” Hannah stopped, studied her older sister, then scrunched up her whole face in distaste. “Please tell me you weren’t planning on wearing that thing around town today, Sadie.”

Sadie’s hand automatically went to the front of her son’s creation. Her fingers whisked upward over the rough surface of the five sparklers sticking up from the folded bandanna. She probably looked like a perfect nut.

But then, she was in her own home. If that’s how she wanted to look, who were her sisters to come over and tell her to knock it off?

“I like my hat,” she said a bit too loudly. “And since I’m guessing you didn’t come over here because you both just earned your badges as Wileyville’s foremost fashion police and heard I’d violated some holiday-headwear ordinance, I don’t want to hear any more about it.”

“Oh, don’t you get snippy with us.” April jerked her head up so hard her braid bounced against her back. “We didn’t
want
to come over here on a holiday morning. We
had
to come over, you know.”

“Yeah,” Hannah added. “And that hat looks silly.”

“Enough!” Ed sighed.

The sisters hushed instantly.

“Thank you, Ed.” Sadie gave him a regal nod of her head. “For stepping in and defending my sense of style…and my hat.”

He blinked, and from the look in his eyes Sadie
realized this was the first time he’d actually given the thing a good long look.

“Okay.” Ed cleared his throat. He looked at Hannah and April, then stole another glance at Sadie’s sparklers before he shook his head and met the other women’s gazes full on. “So tell us, what has your father done now? Hijacked the fireworks for tonight’s celebration? Exerted his own independence by renting a horse and riding through town crying ‘The Shelnutts are coming, the Shelnutts are coming?’ What?”

The two sisters started to speak at once again, but before one of their stories emerged in full, Mary Tate roared up in her car.

“This is not good,” Sadie whispered to her husband.

“Not good at all,” Ed agreed.

And to confirm their worst fears, Mary Tate leaped out of her car waving a piece of notepaper in one hand and shouted, “At least he left a note this time!”

“‘M
y Precious Daughters,’” Ed read the note aloud because Sadie, Hannah and April couldn’t agree which one of them should get their hands on it first. “‘I hope you will forgive me when you find out what I’ve done.’”

April put her hand to her mouth.

Hannah covered her eyes.

“Well, speak-no-evil and see-no-evil have reported in, what say you, hear-no-evil?” Mary Tate, who’d taken a comfy seat on the hood of Moonie’s yellow Caddie, whispered as she swung her foot out to prod Sadie with the toe of her silver-spangled tennis shoe.

“I say I wish I
could
stick my fingers in my ears and not have to listen to another word. If Daddy has done something that he feels calls for an apology, in advance, in
writing
, the last thing I expect to hear is a joyful noise.”

“‘It may not seem so, but I’ve always acted with the best interests of you girls in mind,’” Ed read on. “‘I understand now that maybe I wasn’t the best judge of what was in your best interests versus what served my broken heart.’”

April twisted her hand so that she could chew the tip of her nail.

Hannah separated her fingers to peer between them.

Sadie hung her head. As a parent, she understood more than her sisters that fine line that sometimes had to be drawn between what was right for your children and what was all you could afford to give of yourself. Daddy had always done his best, and they should have recognized that whatever pain they carried from their mother’s leaving, he had carried twofold—for himself
and
for his children.

“‘Please remember I love you,’” Ed continued softly. “‘And for strength, may you draw on the Bible verses I chose for each of you when you were small.’”

“‘Gird your loins.’” April laced her arms over her chest and squared her shoulders.

Sadie half smiled and looked up into the blue, blue sky. “‘Wait on the Lord.’”

“‘Peace, be strong.’” Hannah dropped her hand from her eyes. She raised her head.

“When you string them together like that, they actually do give good advice.” Mary Tate held up her hands to frame the unseen phrases as she said, “‘Gird your loins.’ ‘Wait on the Lord.’ ‘Peace, be strong.’”

“He signs it ‘Love, Daddy,’” Ed concluded. He started to fold the letter in half.

“There’s more.” Mary Tate pointed to the bottom of the page.

Ed glanced down, then flipped the paper over, following the direction of the arrow on the bottom right-hand corner of the note.

“‘P.S.’” Ed stopped and read on silently, then he lifted his gaze to Mary Tate.

She spoke with soothing confidence, her gaze remain
ing on the sisters as she pointed again to Ed. “I think that note will make a little more sense when you hear this part.”

“‘What I go to do, I should have done a long time ago.’” Ed stared at the page in his hand as if he wasn’t quite sure if he should read on or not. Finally he fixed his gaze on Sadie and spoke the rest as he folded the paper and offered it to his sisters-in-law. “‘I’ll be gone a few days, but when I come back I will have whatever answers I can provide about your mother.’”

April’s tightly crossed arms slid apart.

Hannah seized the note, read it for herself, then leaned on the fender of Moonie’s convertible for support.

Without a moment more of hesitation, Sadie charged headlong toward her house to gather what she’d need. “I’m going after him.”

“After your big speech to the kids about this being a day for the family?” Ed grabbed her by the arm. “Besides, you wouldn’t even know where to go.”

“It
is
a day for the family, Ed. For the family to pull together and support each other, to support me in this thing I have to do.” It wasn’t as if any of them had been all-fired anxious to cooperate with her plans, anyway. She imagined it wouldn’t take any of them more than fifteen minutes to find alternative activities. “And I
do
have a pretty good idea where Daddy is headed.”

“Where?” he asked.

“Tennessee.”

“How’d you know that?” Hannah hurried up to stand beside her sister.

Sadie eased her arm from her husband’s light hold. “The map Daddy took from Payt’s car.”

“Yes, the map!” Hannah spun around, heading for the
passenger side of their father’s car. “He took off from my house in his own car, remember?”

“So?” Mary Tate’s gaze swerved from one Shelnutt sister to the next.

“So I’m going to check the glove compartment and see if he left the map in there. He might even have highlighted a route.” Hannah scrambled into the passenger-side front seat and in moments had the not-so-neatly refolded map in hand. “Okay, he’s marked 65 South ending in…”

“Alphina,” April said solemnly.

“How’d you know that?” Mary Tate wore the expression of someone who’d come in late to a mystery movie and was trying desperately to catch up.

“It’s where Hannah and Sadie were born. The last place we know Mama lived.”

“But there is no Teresa Shelnutt residing in Alphina, Tennessee.” The map collapsed in Hannah’s hands. “I checked on the Internet years ago.”

“Maybe she remarried?” Mary Tate suggested eagerly.

Sadie slashed one hand through the air. “Whatever happened, Daddy is heading for Alphina. And so am I.”

“Well if you’re going, I’m going.” Hannah clutched the map to her chest.

April clucked her tongue and shook her head. “There’s no sense in
two
of you going on what’s probably a wild-goose chase.”

“I’ve heard Moonie called a lot of things, but that’s about the most apt ever—a wild goose.” Ed laughed. When no one joined in his joke, he tapped his hand on the car trunk like a judge calling for order and said, “The note says he’ll be back in a few days. Now why not wait and—”

“No.” Sadie sounded surprisingly firm, even to her own ears. But calm. Collected. And…and…queenly. She lifted
her head with her hand on her hat, and careful not to sound scolding or overwrought, stated her case. “We can’t wait. Who knows what kind of mischief he’s already gotten into? He’s had a head start, too. Mary Tate, do you have any idea how long he’s been gone?”

“I noticed the Academy van was missing first thing this morning, but I figured Royal had taken it to get something for your daddy—has anyone told you your daddy is a might particular about what he wants and when he wants it?”

Sadie snapped her fingers to keep anyone from going off on the tangent of things Moonie demanded as a houseguest and when all eyes turned to her, she asked her friend, “When did you find the note?”

“I tried to call you, maybe a half hour ago, then called your sisters instead and asked them to meet me here.” Mary Tate tapped her temple as if that somehow helped her access the needed information. “Royal said he hadn’t heard a peep from your daddy’s room all morning, but the van was in the driveway at sunup when he—”

Sadie took her friend by the wrist in hopes of making the machinery of her mind slow down. “So Daddy left sometime after sunup and before a half hour ago?”

“He could be three hours down the road then.” Hannah waved the map in her hand as though offering incriminating evidence in a trial.

“Three hours. That’s not too long.” Ed rested his hand on his wife’s back.

“When it comes to getting up to something, it doesn’t take that man long.” Mary Tate slid off the hood of the car.

“Granted,” Sadie pressed on. “But there’s more to worry about than that. What if he has another stroke?”

“I never thought of that,” April murmured.

“We can’t risk him having another TIA and getting stranded, having a wreck or worse.” Fear rose from the pit of Sadie’s stomach, but she didn’t let it overtake her. “How would we live with ourselves if we waited until something happened and he was out there for who knows how long?”

“Sadie’s right.” Hannah narrowed her eyes. “He could get into a lot of trouble alone. And even if he doesn’t, I, personally, don’t want to think he might get to Mama before we do and maybe scare her off. This can’t wait.”

“Right.” Sadie nodded, already thinking ahead to how she could grab the picnic food, a few clothes and get on the road shortly. “I’m done waiting. I am ready to take action.”

“Not without me.” Hannah stepped up-front and center.

“Or me,” April chimed in.

Sadie turned to her older sister. “You said this didn’t make any sense.”

“I said the two of
you
going didn’t make sense. Now, me?” She pointed to her chest, which had a picture of Uncle Sam pointing outward on it. “That makes all the sense in the world.”

Hannah, dressed in an apron-front summer dress that looked like a red-and-white tablecloth with watermelons embroidered here and there, tapped her high-heeled sandal on the concrete driveway. “How so?”

“Because I actually have some recollections of the town we lived in. Something I see might stir a memory. I say if two of us go, it should be Sadie and me.”

The tapping stopped. Hannah’s auburn hair shimmied with the tightly controlled shake of her head. “Oh, no. You two are not leaving me out of this.”

“Sadie?” April turned to the middle sister to play the role she routinely played among all members of the family—the middleman and moderator.

Sadie threw her hands up. They’d lost enough time already. She didn’t want to waste any more arguing. “I don’t care who goes or why they go or what they expect to get out of it. I only have one question for the two of you.”

“What?” Hannah’s eyes grew somber.

April inched closer, her expression grave.

“How fast can you two pack?”

Mary Tate laughed. “When you decide not to wait around anymore, you get serious.”

“Why not?” Hannah flew into her role as organizer. Where Sadie just seemed to have the one hat—and a rather silly one at that—the youngest Shelnutt sister seemed most comfortable when she was wearing many and orchestrating a dozen things at once. “Today is Friday and a holiday. That means Mary Tate will be around to man the phones in case Daddy calls to check in.”

“Sure thing.” Mary Tate nodded.

“Ed has extra holiday help on at the store, so he can handle any emergency that happens here at home.” Hannah motioned to the man on the cell phone canceling his golf plans. “Payt’s office is closed today. So if we go now, that gives tomorrow to deal with whatever we find, and then we can drive back Sunday and I won’t miss a single day of work.”

“What about me?” The hurt shone clearly on April’s fresh-scrubbed face. “My store is covered for today, but I have to open it tomorrow. Saturday is my biggest day, salewise, and I don’t have a husband or kids to cover it for me.”

Hannah’s foot went to tapping again. “You have two employees—”

“Who don’t work weekends,” April filled in.

Sadie didn’t know why, but it seemed important that she make physical contact with her oldest sister, to prove to
her that she was not alone. So she touched her elbow as she said, “Olivia can do it.”

“Olivia?” Mary Tate flicked her wrist as though to flip her hair off her shoulder.

Ed shifted his weight. “She’s helped April out at the store before.”

“Yeah, before she become the princess of teenage hormones,” Mary Tate grumbled. “Face it, Ed, honey, Olivia is—”

“Family,” Sadie finished. “And family helps family.”

April’s eyes softened with hopeful light. “You think she’ll do it?

“If the queen decrees it, you bet she will.” Sadie adjusted her hat from the back.

“What?” It was unclear whether Hannah was actually confused or if she was just challenging Sadie’s right to call herself the queen. A title that, in her own little world, Hannah would certainly feel belonged to her and her alone.

Foolish girl
.

“Never mind.” Sadie smiled to have her own personal joke. “I’ll get Olivia to do it.”

Mary Tate clapped her hands once decisively. “And I’ll look in on her and help if she needs me. I owe you that much.”

“Then it’s settled.” Sadie whisked the cowboy hat from her head and sent it sailing into the back seat of Moonie’s beloved old Caddie. “This car is pulling out of here in one hour. If either of you want in on the goose chase, I suggest you be back here in fifty-nine minutes or less.”

A little more than an hour later, after squalling, squabbling and squishing all their necessities into every available square inch of the classic car, they were off. Well, Ed told them they were “off” before that—when they had
resorted to drawing straws to see who would take the first, second and third shift driving.

Sadie settled into the back seat with her long straw between her teeth and stewed.

Hannah, in the passenger’s seat, played navigator.

And April, looking a bit too pleased with her short-straw-drawing self for Sadie’s liking, took the wheel.

“Turn right here,” Hannah shouted when they had almost reached Wileyville Road.

“If I turn right, I’ll run into the back of the bank. What do you want me to do, create another crack to match the one Daddy made?”

“Not right as in
right
, right as in immediately.” She stretched her arm out to point to the street they had just passed, on their left.

“Why would I do that? It’s just a short jog through town to pick up the old highway that leads to 65.” April took a right turn at the next street. “Your way sends us in the complete opposite direction of where we need to—”

The car rolled to a stop at the end of the block where streamers of red, white and blue crepe paper hung low across the intersection with the main road April had wanted to take.

“Let that be a lesson to you both. Listen to your navigator.”

The booming cadence of a marching band carried from down the street where the judges’ grandstand stood decorated to the hilt with banners and flags.

“The way I see it, we have two choices. You can try to back up the entire length of this block.” Hannah glanced back over her shoulder. “Or we can sit here and wait until the parade passes by.”

Wait until the parade passes by
. On the very day when she had gone to such trouble to announce to everyone she
loved that she was done waiting, Sadie could hardly sit there and let that choice be made on her behalf.