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.And yet that same man had admonished her to start something.Someone has to start, Sadie.Whatever you’re doing isn’t working—surely you can see that? If you won’t do it for yourself, someone has to start—start talking the truth, start looking at things in a new light, start reaching out.Someone had to start to change things between the three of them, and it might as well be her and it might as well be now.“Because as Daddy was fading in and out of coherence, he talked about doing anything for me.”“No surprise there,” Hannah muttered.“No, you don’t understand.Then he said, ‘I’d do anything for you…Teresa.’”At the mention of their mother’s name, April and Hannah exchanged wary glances.“Did he…” Hannah finally ventured.“Did he say any more?”Sadie shook her head.“But clearly he spoke like a man filled with regrets.He loved her, y’all.After all these years, I think he still does.It must have nearly killed him when she ran away.”Sadie braced herself for an outburst from Hannah about what their mother’s leaving had done to them, but it did not come.Only silence and sorrow filled the space between them.April sniffled, raised the back of her hand to brush the tip of her nose, then froze midgesture.She opened her hand to show the streaks of dirt on her knuckles.“Look at me, I’m a mess.”“No more than the rest of us,” Hannah joked as she pulled a tissue from her purse and handed it to her sister.“Sadie and I just wear our mess in different ways.”“When did you get so wise?” Sadie asked, venturing a tiny smile.“Well I should be wise.” Hannah held her head high.“As should you.It’s our birthright, isn’t it?”“What birthright?” April blew her nose.“As Solomon’s daughters!” Hannah laughed, a warm though not hearty laugh.“That experience alone should make us wise beyond our years.”“You’d think, but so far all it’s made me is old beyond my years,” Sadie muttered.Then she managed a half smile and added, “Can you imagine how young we’d all look if we’d had a regulation, standard-issue, no-nonsense father?”Hannah scoffed.“We might have looked younger, but it would have bored us to death.”“I tell you, Hannah, this wisdom thing you’ve got going all of a sudden, it’s starting to scare me.” Sadie laughed.“Maybe I’ll put it and my three years as a journalism major to good use and start an advice column in the paper.” Hannah struck a regal pose that might do for a publicity photo, her hand sweeping out as if she were reading a headline.“Dear Hannah.”“You should.” Sadie nudged her sister’s knee.“You should do more with your writing.”Hannah shook her head.“With work and now trying to start a family one way or another…I wouldn’t have the time.”“You never know,” Sadie said, softly but with all the authority of a person who understood that sometimes opportunities to do a life’s work found you, not the other way around.They fell into silence for a time.Finally April looked around and asked, “Where are my brothers-in-law?”“Payt had to stay at work.He’ll be here as soon as he can.”“Same with Ed?” April asked.“No.Actually, Ed…Ed was taking a golf lesson.”“You’re kidding? Why?”Should she tell them the long, convoluted story about Carmen Gomez coming back from her trip full of ideas that she’d gotten from other sales reps from around the country? About how the girl they called “Go-Go” had gone and mentioned Downtown Drug to someone in acquisitions for a national chain of pharmacies and they wanted to fly Ed out to a resort to talk? Did her sisters really need to know that when Sadie had needed her husband, he was out on the eleventh hole of the golf course taking lessons so he wouldn’t look like a country bumpkin when he met with the big boys who might just offer to buy his business?Sadie looked up at the white acoustical tiles in the ceiling, folded her arms and said, “Ed had a…meeting.He won’t be long.”Her sisters nodded.No one said anything more for a few minutes until April tossed the tissue she’d used to tidy up with into the trash can and said, “Well one good thing will come of all this.”“What’s that?” Sadie asked a bit too brightly.“The doctors will probably take away Dad’s driver’s license for us.”Hannah shook her head.“Give me one reason how that would stop him if he really wanted to get behind the wheel.”“No license, no insurance,” April said.“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.” Sadie clapped a couple of times, then dropped her hands to her sides.“It doesn’t feel much like winning, does it?”“It feels like a dirty rotten trick for age to have pulled on someone who’s still so young at heart,” Hannah muttered.This time Sadie and April nodded their agreement, and again the room went still.After a few minutes, Hannah picked up a magazine, flipped through a few pages, then slapped it back onto the table.“It’s the quiet that gets on my nerves.”Sadie couldn’t have agreed more with Hannah on that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]