Sadie-In-Waiting Read Online Free PDF Page A

abide,” you could pretty much count that that dog didn’t hunt in any event over which she held sway around town. There existed, of course, one glaring exception to that rule.
    “You’ll never believe this, but my daddy wants to walk with your troop in the Memorial Day parade.”
    “Okay.”
    Sadie blinked. “Easy as that?”
    “Sure? Why not?”
    There was that question again. “You aren’t mortified at the prospect of crazy Moonie Shelnutt walking along with your group?”
    “Naw, I’ll just dress him up as something vaguely military and let him loose. Maybe I can round up a costume for Uncle Sam or General Lee. Or…if all else fails…Colonel Sanders.” She laughed. “The kids will love it.”
    “Of course they will. All kids love Daddy. I think they recognize him as one of their own kind.”
    “You’re too hard on the old man, sugar. Too hard on your sisters as well, but then why would you treat them any different than you do yourself?”
    “Ha! The last thing I am is hard on myself. In fact, if anything, I totally overindulge my moods and bad habits, and you know it.” Sadie tugged at the side of her dress in hopes of making her figure look a little less like a saggy old sack of potatoes. “But at least I finally broke that hypercritical cycle with my own kids.”
    “Sweetie, how many times do I have to point out that you can’t call what you have going on a cycle? You are not repeating the mistakes of parents. You couldn’t if you wanted to.”
    Sadie gazed down the tree-lined street in the welcoming town where her father had raised her in the best way he knew how. The place she had also chosen to bring up her children to the best of her own ability.
    “I’d describe this whole hard-on-yourself-versus-not-so-hard-on-your-kids deal more as a pendulum.” Mary Tate let her arm dangle limp from her raised elbow, then set it swaying in illustration. “And sending it swinging as far as possible in the opposite direction from your natural inclinations does not amount to the same thing as dealing with the problem.”
    Mary Tate had sung a variation on that tune so many times these last few months that Sadie had no problem jumping right in with the well-worn refrain. “Yes, yes. Olivia’s seventeen. I don’t have a lot of time left to make sure that she’s prepared for the world beyond Wileyville. The clock is ticking, and so on and so on and so on.”
    “The clock is ticking, Sadie, ticktock, ticktock. But you don’t seem the least bit inclined to hear it or to take a hardlook at what’s going on around you.” Mary Tate paused and stared pointedly at a shiny red car with a white top that pulled up in front of the pharmacy.
    Sadie glanced over her shoulder just long enough to see the poised and polished regional sales representative for a line of cosmetics Ed carried in the store.
    “Ticktock, ticktock.” Stepping out to the side for a better vantage point, Mary Tate watched the sales rep’s clipped stride take her into the front of the building. When she turned to Sadie again, her eyes shone with concern, her usual smile set into a grim line. “Honey, listen to me, I know you feel bad right now, but you can’t go on letting the world pass you by.”
    “Me? I thought the topic for today’s sermon was Olivia.”
    Her friend shut her eyes and let out a long, weary breath. “Okay, you want to talk Olivia? Fine. How’s this? You can’t keep letting Olivia hold your entire household hostage to her whims.”
    “She doesn’t hold the household hostage.” Just me . Sadie didn’t have the nerve to face her friend’s response to that kind of admission. So she focused her attention on the girls at practice through the large window and pretended to check out her reflection by ruffling her raggedy hairdo. “Olivia is a good kid who’s at that awkward age when she thinks she’s grown up and no one else does. She just runs hot and cold, that’s all.”
    “She runs white-hot hissy fits and