Sadie-In-Waiting Read Online Free PDF

cold shoulders to manipulate you into letting her have her way.”
    “The getting-your-own-way gene is strong in that girl, I have to admit.”
    “She’s taking advantage, Sadie. And you let her do it because you’re scared to death that if you dare to yank her in line, she might not like you very much.”
    Despite the caring touch of a hand on her arm, Sadie stiffened.
    That did not dissuade Mary Tate, who only inched closer and lowered her voice to a raw, emotion-filled whisper. “And I know you, honey. If you thought anyone that you loved with all of your heart had stopped liking you, it would break your world in two.”
    Tears sprang to Sadie’s eyes. She couldn’t help it. Since she’d lost the baby, she had cried too easily…and much, much too often.
    “And right now you think your world is too fragile to take that kind of chance.” Mary Tate reached over and gave her a sideways hug. “But I’m telling you, for your daughter’s sake, you ought to risk it. She might not like you, but trust her enough to know she won’t stop loving you. Never, ever.”
    Glib advice coming from the childless-by-choice contingent . Sadie thought it, but she didn’t even come close to voicing it. She loved this woman she’d befriended on the first day of junior-high gym class when Sadie couldn’t even make it around the track without Mary Tate’s encouragement and support. She would never say a thing to hurt her. Besides, Mary Tate had a valid point, and if Sadie weren’t such a dunderheaded fool, she’d admit it right now, right here, right out loud.
    Instead, she folded her arms and sniffled, her chin high. “That all? You don’t want to tell me about how to do things differently with Ryan while you’re at it?”
    “No, but if I were to say anything, it might contain a few choice words about Ed treating you more and more like a loyal workhorse and less and less like a loving helpmate. And I might ask how you hope to grow your son up into the kind of husband and father his future wife deserves with that as an example.”
    “Ed doesn’t treat me like a workhorse.” Though she didn’t suppose she’d call herself his helpmate, either. “That’s just his way. After all, he’s only a—”
    “I know. I know.” She shook her head. “A Yankee.”
    “I was going to say he’s only a man .”
    “Oh, yeah. One of those , too.” She rolled her big blue eyes. “You’re preaching to the choir on that one, sister.”
    Sadie laughed. “Besides, Ed’s no more a Yankee than I am a bona fide southern belle.”
    “Yeah, sure, I know. Not every woman born south of the Mason-Dixon is a belle.” She was repeating the admonition Mrs. Cummins used as the launching point for her infamous “God may separate the wheat from the chaff, but it’s manners that set the ladies apart from the riffraff” speech.
    “Mrs. McCrackin?” a girl called above the clack of heels on the hardwood floors inside. “The music stopped. Should we keep walking in circles?”
    Mary Tate shut her eyes and answered, “Why don’t you just keep walking?”
    “What do we do for music?”
    “Hum!”
    Mary Tate paused to collect her thoughts. “No, we are not all born belles.” Mary Tate peered, squinty-eyed, over her shoulder at the young ladies tottering around her studio with all the grace of geese dancing on sawed-off stilts. “In fact, some of us are downright ding-a-lings.”
    Whether she intended that jab at herself for taking on this project year after year, or the girls for refusing to concentrate and get it right, or even Mrs. Cummins for her steadfast embrace of the most awful shoes in existence, Sadie didn’t know.
    “Ding-dong belles,” Mary Tate singsonged under her breath. Her head shaking, she turned to Sadie andshrugged. “Well, guess I’d better get back to chime school. So where are you off to this fine afternoon?”
    “No place special. Just thought I’d pop in and surprise Ed.”
    “Hold on a minute there.” Her