Sweet Mercy Read Online Free PDF Page A

nevertheless willing to make an honest woman out of her. I could never understand that, except that Cassandra was uncommonly beautiful and perhaps her beauty knocked all the sense out of otherwise sensible men.
    I leaned closer to the mirror and gazed judgmentally at what I considered my own plain face. My lips were too thin, my forehead too high. My nose was narrow and perhaps a bit too long, leaving it looking pinched and pretentious. Ilonged for cheekbones but they hadn’t yet appeared. The only good feature was my eyes. They were blue and bright, just like Mother’s. And Cassandra’s. But that was the only family resemblance I shared with my sister. As I studied myself in the mirror, I wondered briefly whether I would ever turn sensible men into fools, and decided it was unlikely.
    But the beautiful Cassandra had her choice of men, and she chose Warren Lemming, which all in all was a wise decision, since Warren’s father had made his fortune in the railroad and had barely felt the aftershocks of the recent stock market crash. Warren was set to inherit an enviable estate and in the meantime was doing quite well as a junior partner in his father’s business. On top of that he was genuinely nice, always even-tempered, and not bad looking either, if you didn’t mind a receding chin and an unfortunate mole or two. He gave Cassandra’s baby his name and immediately afterward gave Cassandra another baby. Effie and Grace were four and three now and lucky to have Warren as a father.
    While I think Cassandra loved Warren in her own way, she resented having to settle down into marriage and motherhood before she was ready. I didn’t feel sorry for her, though. In fact, her quiet misery filled me with no end of secret delight; I figured she’d got what she deserved. She had drunk and danced her way toward what she herself called drudgery. Like Daddy was known to say, she’d made her bed.
    I for one wasn’t going to be making any beds. I was going to make something of myself. Not just for me but, more importantly, for the two people in the room next to mine. I was going to do something important, something that made a difference. Mother and Daddy didn’t have anyone else to do good in the world and to make them proud. Certainly notCassandra. And not the son who’d been stillborn between Cassandra and me. I was the only one they had and I wasn’t going to let them down.
    Laying down the brush and turning away from the dresser, I didn’t know what to do next. Sleep was out of the question; I was far too excited for that. I thought about reading or writing a letter to my best friend Ariel back in St. Paul, but I had too much pent-up energy for sitting. I needed to move, to walk somewhere, or I’d end up pacing the room.
    I tied my hair back with a ribbon and stepped out into the hall, quietly tiptoeing past Mother and Daddy’s room and descending the stairs to the front hall below. A man I didn’t know was behind the front desk; Uncle Cy must have still been talking oats and chickens with the members of the town council. The dining room was dark and empty, but the spacious sitting room was well lighted and cheery with the presence of guests. I walked through, smiling and nodding at a few people, but my feet, as though by their own will, carried me on through the sitting room and down the short narrow hallway that led to the ballroom.
    As wide as the lodge itself, the ballroom was a cavernous place, with a high ceiling and a glossy hardwood floor that even now shimmered faintly in the dim electric lighting. On the far side was a stage where surprisingly big-name bands came to play, bringing in the crowds from Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and even Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky. The air seemed to reverberate with the music that had bounced off these walls for years, and as I stood there staring, I could sense the presence of carefree couples dancing the