Bitter Sweet Read Online Free Page B

Gray. Sorry, I’m not
Carrie. My name is Samantha Sweet.”
    “Oh, silly me. The light is
terrible in these rooms, you know.” She stood up. Although her legs took a
moment to get going, Sadie stood straight at a little over five feet and moved
energetically.
    Martha Preston had backed out of
the room and Sadie urged Sam to take the seat at the dresser. She perched
herself on the edge of her bed.
    “I was just finishing up my
paperwork for the day. So many people in this office will sit around and watch
TV all day but that’s just not the way I do things. I’ve always taken care of
business first.”
    Sam glanced down at the sheet of
paper Sadie had been writing on, lined notebook paper on which she’d listed
neat columns of numbers. The envelopes stacked beside it appeared to be junk
mail.
    “What type of business do you do
here?” Sam asked.
    “Insurance,” Sadie said proudly.
“It’s what I’ve done my whole career.” She lowered her voice. “Of course, my
previous company was a lot better. I loved working with Joe. My husband. We ran
a tight ship. I don’t care for the work ethic in this place.”
    Sam had worked for one of the
local insurance offices for a few years and she tried to recall the agency that
might have been Sadie and Joe’s.
    “Everything changed when Joe
died,” Sadie said with a sigh.
    The conversation could go off in
a dozen directions but Sam reminded herself she had work to do.
    “I’m actually here on a financial
matter,” she said. “There seems to be a problem with the payments on your house
and there’s a danger of foreclosure. I was sent to take care of the property.”
    Sadie’s pale brows pulled
together. “Well, that doesn’t sound right. My husband is already taking care of
it. He’s very good about those things. Why would you need to?”
    Was she still talking about Joe?
    Sam went into the explanation
about the late payments but Sadie’s gaze kept drifting, first to the art prints
on the walls, then to the papers on her ‘desk.’
    “Is there a number where I can
contact your husband and ask him about this?” Sam finally asked.
    “Everything changed when Joe
died,” Sadie repeated.
    Sam tried twice more to get
something concrete but the conversation began to spiral into repetition and
Sadie grew impatient to return to her ‘paperwork.’ Finally, Sam stood up.
    “Well, I better let you get your
work done,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do to straighten out this other
thing.”
    “Yes, that would be better. I’ll
be home next week and we can work out all the details.” Sadie followed Sam to
the bedroom door and closed it gently behind her.
    Home in a week? That didn’t seem
likely. Sam made her way back to the reception desk where she found Martha
Preston talking with a younger woman in colorfully patterned scrubs.
    “Did you learn what you needed
to?” Preston asked Sam.
    “Not really. She thinks she’ll be
home next week and we can just work out the details then.”
    Both women shook their heads. The
young nurse spoke up. “Mrs. Gray is such a sweetheart, but there’s no way she
could manage her own home. Her husband apparently is on the road quite a lot.”
    “On business matters, you would
have better luck talking to Mr. Gray,” Martha Preston said.
    “You must have contact
information for him. Can you share that?”
    Martha flipped open a blue
folder, paged backward through it and ran her finger down some kind of form.
    “Sadie always talks about Joe but
her husband’s name is Marshall Gray. He admitted her. She remembers him when he
visits and they seem very loving toward each other.”
    “Does Mr. Gray still live at the
house on Tapia Lane?” Sam thought of the conflicting evidence—payments in
arrears and food in the refrigerator.
    Martha nodded. “It’s listed as
their residence on the admittance forms.”
    Martha gave her a cell phone
number and the name of Marshall Gray’s employer, a trucking company. “He’s
quite a