The Last Cadillac Read Online Free PDF

was doing to them. I had too much to do that day, and the next, and the next. I would think about the consequences later.
    When my daughter, Little Sunshine, was at the dollhouse, she liked to curl up in the window seat of the spare bedroom with the pillows and her doll, Suzie Frugnut. I found her there one afternoon reading a chapter book to Suzie. My daughter was proud of herself that at the age of nine, she was working her way through the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. She was deep into
Little House in the Big Woods
. She looked up at me when I walked into the bedroom, and her blue-gray eyes followed me around the room.
    â€œThis is my favorite book.”
    â€œWhy?
    â€œBecause they’re all happy and they get maple syrup out of the trees and make quilts and stuff.”
    That sounded very un-Florida-like to me.
    â€œThat’s one way to be happy,” I said. I sat down and squeezed her foot in the red sock with black polka dots. She had red bows in her braids, and wisps fell on her forehead. She blew them out of her eyes. “Suzy looks happy,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to ask her if she was happy, afraid of the answer.
    Little Sunshine patted the doll and looked out the window. She stuck out her lower lip, and I had a terrible feeling she wasn’t a baby anymore, that she was drifting off to a place I couldn’t quite reach. I wanted more than anything for her to be happy, always and ever. I hoped I was doing the right thing for all of them. And Suzy Frugnut.
    I grabbed both my daughter’s feet and clapped her polka dots together. “We’re going on an adventure! You know that? Want to know something else? I think Gampers might come and stay with us in Florida!”
    Her eyes opened wide. “Really?”
    â€œWould you like that?”
    â€œI’d love it,” she said. “I think I can really help Gampers a lot.”
    I kissed the top of her big toe and then hugged her. “I know you can.”
    Post-divorce, number one on the checklist had been to pack up my old house. Even if I’d wanted to stay in the lovely brick-and-timber Tudor house in Hammond, Indiana, I couldn’t afford to keep it up at $900 a month for gas and electric in the winter. Northern Indiana Public ServiceCompany—an odd name for people who were averse to “service”—had loved us. We shoveled money at them. The seventy-year-old house was nearly impossible to insulate in summer, or in winter.
    It all had to go, inside and out, and I was in charge of the disposal, because it was all mine in the divorce. I put up most of the furniture for auction, but before it was all gone, I went into each room and picked out one piece that I would keep—the new eight-drawer walnut chest with brass fittings from the bedroom. The eight-foot oak trestle table from the family room. The white pine bookcase with glass doors purchased from an antique shop in Gay, Georgia. The Sheraton sofa with the down cushion, and the two chairs that matched—upholstered in crewel. I kept several Moroccan rugs my mother gave me, and my grandfather’s cedar chest. These were my treasures, and these would follow me out of storage and take up residence, I hoped, in a little dream house in Florida someday.
    While I walked slowly from room to room, marking this for storage, that for auction, Little Sunshine was stuck to me like Velcro.
    â€œWhat about my stuff, Mom?” she said. “Do I have to throw everything away?”
    I’d almost forgotten she was there, she was such a natural attachment. “No, of course not!” I said, knowing full well we were getting rid of almost everything. I smoothed the top of her head and tugged lightly at one of her braids, where a hair ribbon was missing.
    She shrugged away and put her hands on her hips. “Well, I don’t need that, or that.” She pointed to the pink Barbie playhouse and tiny set of table and chairs.