Saturday Morning Read Online Free PDF

What was happening with her little chick now?
    “I don’t know. I just feel like I’d rather be home. I should have gone to school in Medford.”
    “But you always dreamed of PLU.” She pronounced it as one word. Sometimes Andy felt like they were paying for a new sciencewing, what with all the money they’d sent north to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, over the years.
    “You know, Mom, all my life I’ve been the third Taylor, behind an overachiever and a Mensa candidate. Then there is me-of-little-brains.”
    “Sorry, can’t do much about the birth order now,” Andy joked as she clicked Check Mail to see if there was a message from her husband. Nothing. Before this weekend, he had always e-mailed her last thing before heading for bed. And bed was earlier back in St. Louis. She signed off the computer. “What brought on this, um, attack?” she asked into the phone.
    “The profs expect me to do as well as B and C.” Morgan called her sister and brother B and C whenever speaking of the two of them. At one time she’d gone on a short-term revolt to make sure that she wasn’t known as a goody two shoes like they had been. “So?”
    “So, Mother, I want to have a life.”
    “Far as I can tell, you are still breathing.” Andy knew she would receive the long, sighed-out “Mother!” but couldn’t resist. Morgan did not like to be teased. A silence grew louder for its length. “All right, I’m sorry for the smart remarks. What is it?”
    The answer came stiffly. “I’m just warning you in advance not to expect straight As.”
    She’d heard this before, like at the beginning of every school year, with this youngest child. But having said that, Morgan would dig in and work herself into a frenzy to make sure she measured up.
    “I mean it.”
    “Sweetie, I’m sure you do, but now you have to listen to me. I have never required straight As from you. I know what you are capable of, but I also know how hard you work. I want you to enjoy college,to get a great education, but that doesn’t mean you have to be on the dean’s list every semester.”
    “What if I’m never on the dean’s list? What if I am the only Taylor sibling to never make the list?”
    “So?” Andy knew her shrug wouldn’t be heard, but this child always worried needlessly.
    “So what will Dad say?”
    “Perhaps you should ask him.”
    “I can’t wait until Thanksgiving.” Morgan ignored her mother’s remark. “I want to come home so bad. How’re Henny and Chai Lai?”
    Andy glanced over to the rocking chair. “Chai Lai is sound asleep in her chair as usual, and Henny is out on her roost with her head tucked under her wing.” She chanted the latter like an old camp song they used to sing, about some ghoul with his head tucked underneath his arm.
    Morgan didn’t acknowledge her mother’s attempt at humor. “Mom, what if I don’t want to come back here next semester?”
    “I’d say it’s too early to make a judgment call like that yet. Did you know that Bria felt the same as you for the first couple of months she was at college?”
    “No way!” she said, obviously surprised by the news.
    “Yes, she did. All she could think about was missing home and Comet and her family and Comet … ” There, she’d brought a slight giggle to her daughter’s voice. “It’ll be okay, Morgan, really it will.”
    “Thanks, Mom. I gotta go.”
    Andy could now hear what sounded like relief in her daughter’s voice. “God loves you, and so do I.”
    “I know, just you both feel so far away right now.”
    “Good night, little one.” Andy clung to the phone after Morgan hung up until the buzz came on the line. Lord, please go to her in a real way. This is breaking my heart, and yet I know she is where You want her to be. Father, she is the prettiest one, the one who looks most like her father, so why does she have the problem with … with being shy, with not being sure of herself? Is it because the other two are