Sadie-In-Waiting (8 page)

“Y
ou’re sure Ed suggested this?” April waited in Hannah’s driveway, her arms folded.

“Yes.” Sadie withdrew from the back seat of her sister’s tiny car the biggest box of chocolate-covered cherries that they stocked at the store. “For the last time, Ed came up with the whole idea.”

“He used to be such a reasonable man.” April shook her head. Her ponytail bobbed like a wagging finger to underscore her disbelief. “What happened?”

The car door fell shut. Sadie headed up the walk without a backward glance. “You didn’t have to come with me, you know.”

April, who had not spoken to Moonie since the day of his great escape, kept at Sadie’s heels. “Like I told you, I only came tonight out of loving compassion for Hannah and the desire to show support for and solidarity with her, as the one now responsible for the care of Daddy.”

“Uh-huh.” Sadie shot a look over her shoulder. “And?”

“And?” April blinked, her face pained like an innocent accused of high treason.

Sadie wasn’t buying it. She prodded again, “And?”

April opened her mouth, closed it, then winced. Then, her eyes alight, she indulged in a delightedly wicked grin. “
And
because, if Daddy has got up to anything untoward or audacious, I want to see it with my own two eyes and not give that baby sister of ours a chance to put her goody-two-shoes spin on things.”

“She can spin until she falls down drunk with dizziness, that won’t change the reality. We know Daddy can make life very difficult. I mean, after what he pulled at your house.”

“Nice try, but you won’t get any information out of me that way.”

“Fine.” With a gentle but well-placed shove, Sadie propelled her older sister onto the long, narrow porch. “Just ring the doorbell.”

“Me?” April’s eyes grew wide. “Uh-uh. I refuse to leave my fingerprints at the scene of a crime.”

“Which crime?” Sadie had to smile. “Us dropping in unannounced or Hannah strangling us for doing it?”

“Oh, she won’t strangle us.”

“No?”

“Too easy to break a nail that way.” April crinkled up her nose. “She might, however, snatch those chocolates from your hands and crack them over your head.”

“The crime then being, what? Assault with a delicious weapon?”

“Don’t laugh.” April wagged one finger. “It could happen. Good thing you didn’t bring Daddy a sub sandwich. They’d have her for assault with a deli weapon.”

Sadie rolled her eyes but recovered from her aversion to the awful pun quickly enough to add, grinning, “Or a crocheted scarf—assault with a doily weapon.”

“Stop! I give up. I’ll ring the bell.” April depressed the lit button beside the wooden door with the leaded-glass panel in the center.

“Or a stuffed bear—assault with a teddy weapon.”

“Quit joking, will you? If Hannah opens the door and finds us snickering together, she’ll immediately assume we’ve cut her out of some family secret.”

“We’ll just tell her to be thankful we didn’t show up with a bicycle.”

April grimaced, then bit her lower lip. “Dare I ask?”

“Assault with a pedally weapon.”

April groaned, but that didn’t hide the fact that she did laugh at the horrible bit of wordplay. “Okay, now stop, I mean it. Someone’s coming, and we have to straighten up and stop—”

“Hello, ladies!” Payt flung the door open.

“—clowning around,” April managed to conclude despite her mouth hanging open in naked awe.

“How lovely of you to pay us a call.” Their brother-in-law stepped out onto the porch and greeted them with effortless and genteel aplomb. Not something one normally finds in a fair-haired, handsome doctor dressed in purple scrubs, green high-top sneakers and sporting a big red rubber ball on his nose.

“We interrupting something, sugar?” Sadie went on tiptoe trying to peer through the quickly closing doorway.

“Just preparing for the next phase of my career.” Payt held his arms wide.

April gave him a slow once-over. “Quitting medicine to go to clown college?”

“Not at all.” He pulled off the bulbous nose, moved to the steps and waved to a passing neighbor, all with a sense of cool so liquid they could have bottled it. “Interviewing
with a practice in Nashville that embraces the latest concept of healing humor.”

“That’s hardly the latest concept, Payton.” April turned and tagged along after him right back down the walk they had just come up not five minutes earlier. “It does say in Proverbs that ‘laughter doeth good like a medicine.’”

“Wait a minute!” Sadie did not budge from the porch. “Did you say Nashville?”

“Yup. Tennessee. Actually, just outside Nashville. Murfreesboro,” he said casually, all Southern accent and subtle slyness. His deepset eyes blinked slowly, and though he did not smile outright, he wore an expression of affable enthusiasm. “Ever hear of it?”

“Well, of course.” Sadie had visited there, in fact. “But—”

“I have a map in the car. Let me show you where it is.” With that he hurried away, and before either April or Sadie could say another word, had stuck his whole upper body into the passenger side of his new—well, new to him—shiny blue Lexus.

“What happened to staying close by?” April leaned in, ducking and weaving to get the best vantage point to continue the conversation.

“Just a…” He whipped around and almost collided skulls with doe-eyed April. Gently, he took her by the shoulders and set her back a couple steps. “Just a four-hour drive. Maybe more if you go scenic.”

“More?” April asked.

He produced a stack of road maps and began shuffling through them. “You should, you know.”

“Should what?” Sadie demanded. Something did not feel right about this whole thing.

“Go scenic. It’s a gorgeous drive. Lots to see. Ever been to Cave City?”

“Payton Bartlett, what are you trying to—”

“Four
hours?
” April accepted each map after Payt examined the front covers then discarded them.

“Okay, you got me. Might be more like five. But that’s still closer than the other group that showed interest in bringing me on—in Chicago.”

“Chicago?” The maps crackled, sliding from April’s hands into her open arms.

“Can’t find the map of Tennessee. I know I had one, because Moonie asked to see it and…Wait!” He interrupted himself a little too abruptly and began an almost frantic search back through the folded rectangles with pictures of states on the cover. “I
do
have a map of Illinois, if you want to see where that other practice is located.”

“We didn’t come to admire your map collection, Payt.” Sadie cradled the candy box over her chest, her own sacred shield of chocolate to fend off whatever distraction her brother-in-law would next fling her way. “We came to see our family.”

April scowled. “If you go to Chicago, we’ll never see Hannah.”

“Hey, hop on a plane.” Payt tossed the maps into the car then clapped his hands together. “There before you know it.”

“B-but I don’t fly well, Payt. And Sadie would have to arrange for four tickets for the family, and then we have to think about Daddy.”

“Oh, don’t give your daddy another thought,” he said, and far too fast for Sadie’s liking moved again to another subject. “In fact, it’s entirely premature to worry about us moving away. All speculation at this point. Nothing set in stone.”

“Are you sure about that?” Sadie narrowed her eyes. “Because this conversation is making me feel like I have rocks in my head.”

“Always the kidder, eh, Sadie? Hey, are those chocolates?”

“Yes, we brought them over for—”

“Terrific.” He slid the box from Sadie’s grasp and planted a quick kiss on her cheek. “Really thoughtful, really.”

“I didn’t bring them for you. I brought them for Daddy.”

“And I’ll see that he gets them.” The words had hardly left his lips before he’d popped open April’s car door, waved to another neighbor, then swept his free hand toward the waiting front seat. “It sure was great to see you two. Come back again when you can stay longer.”

“We haven’t stayed at all.” Sadie shut the door. She grabbed the chocolates from Payt and smacked him lightly across the arm with them, demanding, “What’s going on? Where’s Hannah? Where’s Daddy?”

“I’m right here.” Hannah stood in the doorway, the usually flawless waves of her auburn hair caught up in a slapdash topknot that had already begun to slide to the right side of her head. “Daddy…isn’t.”

April moved slowly to the front of her car. “Daddy isn’t what?”

Sadie didn’t have to ask. She’d sensed it from the moment Payt had gone into his routine.

In two bounding steps Payt reached his wife and, giving her a peck on the cheek, said, “Sorry, sweetie. I tried. I’ll go inside and start making calls to try to track Moonie down and let you and your sisters, um, discuss the situation.”

“Situation?” Sadie plunked the boxed candy onto the
car’s hood, then crooked her finger, motioning Hannah to leave the sanctuary of her front porch. “Why don’t you come closer, little sister, and tell us all about it.”

“I’m fine where I am, thank you very much.”

“Okey-dokey, then we’ll just stand in your driveway and shout the family’s business back and forth at the top of our lungs for all of Wileyville to hear. Lollie Muldoon lives in this neck of the woods, doesn’t she?”

That did the trick. Hannah shot off the front porch and dragged her sisters, each by one arm, under the nearest shade tree faster than someone could say, “What would the neighbors think?” “Before either of you say a word, I want it known that I did everything imaginable to make Daddy comfortable in my home.”

“Nobody suggested otherwise,” Sadie said.

“I made concessions to him, compromises in every single facet of my life—and didn’t mind doing it.”

“Preaching to the choir, little sister.” April held her hands up in surrender. “I slept, ate and scratched my nose on ‘Moonie time’ the whole while he stayed with me.”

“I ran him on a dozen little errands a day.” Hannah’s hand trembled as she fiddled with her hair.

“Did he make you go to the post office and scan the FBI’s ‘Most Wanted’ photos?” April turned to Sadie. “We did that twice a week. I never could get him to say if he expected to apprehend one of those people on the wall or if he thought he might be among them.”

Hannah closed her eyes, sighing. “I changed all the lightbulbs in freestanding lamps to sixty watts because he thought anything higher wasted money and—”

“‘Might well set off a rogue electrical fire that’d spread through the place like that.’” April snapped her fingers. “He quoted all the statistics about every conceivable ca
tastrophe just waiting to happen in the common American household to me, too.”

“‘Old insurance salesmen never die, they just become a pain in the actuary,’” Sadie muttered her father’s favorite lousy joke about his lifelong profession and propensity toward spouting anxiety-inducing statistics.

April’s shapeless shirt bunched up around her shoulders as she laced her arms over her chest and patted her foot on the soft dirt beneath them. “Did he try to make you vacuum out your dryer vent hose, too?”

“Try? I did it!” Hannah stuck the tip of her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and mimed poking the vacuum attachment into whatever dangerous nook or cranny her father pointed out. “Gladly. Whatever it took to please him.”

“Pleasing Daddy?” Sadie rolled her eyes. “Who in her right mind would even attempt it? Placating him, maybe. Or perplexing him long enough that he forgets whatever had him on a tear to begin with, but what could any of us do to really please the old man?”

“Sadie.” Hannah clamped her hands on her slender hips, her expression positively grim. “I
cooked
for him.”

Sadie feigned a tiny gasp, then nudged her younger sister’s bent arm with her elbow. “I don’t know who to feel more sorry for over that, sugar, you or Daddy.”

“Pity poor Payt on that score. He had to eat the outcome
and
pretend it wasn’t absolutely awful.”

“From what I saw of his performing skills a few minutes ago, he’s slick enough to pull that off without straining any major muscle groups.” Sadie smiled.

“We’re all agreed, Payt’s a regular dreamboat.” April raised her head, her gaze on the lovely home Hannah shared with her adorable doctor hubby. She twisted one
finger in her long, straight ponytail and heaved a sigh. “But let’s not forget about Daddy.”

“I refuse to accept the blame for his erratic behavior.”

“Blame? Who said anything about blame?”

“I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not my fault. Let’s get that clear from the start.”

“Fine. You didn’t do anything wrong, Hannah. I think we can all concede
that
from the onset. Nothing you did could possibly be construed as at fault in any way. You are one hundred percent beyond reproach. Without culpability.” Sadie really had to work on her tendency to go a bit overboard on the old sarcasm. But she didn’t want to spend the next ten minutes dancing around trying to reassure her sister that they understood that she had done nothing to cause their father to pull another silly stunt. “Now, just tell us what happened.”

“I scared Daddy off.”

April’s jaw set. She shifted her feet in the dirt. “You didn’t do anything, but you scared Daddy off?”

“Maybe it was her cooking,” Sadie said out of the corner of her mouth.

“Ha-ha, you two. Maybe you should borrow Payt’s clown nose and take your comedy act on the road.” Hannah’s eyes narrowed to slits. “This is not funny. I’m telling you, I scared Daddy away.”

“Oh, honey, I think maybe you’re being too hard on yourself.” Being too hard on yourself—and on those you loved—was an infamous Shelnutt trait, after all. Sadie stroked her sister’s tensed-up back. “What on earth could any of us mere mortals do to scare away the likes of Moonie Shelnutt?”

Hannah took a deep breath, like someone about to bungee jump off a ten-story platform with eleven stories
worth of rope, then said, quite softly, “I asked him about Mom.”

“You
what?
” Sadie’s hand clenched instantly into a fist against her sister’s spine.

“Oh, no.” April stepped backward. “No.”