Sadie-In-Waiting Read Online Free Page B

over her cheek. “You should smile more, honey, it really suits you.”
    She didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth, so she obliged him with a nod, then pinched the fabric of his plaid sleeve between her thumb and forefinger. “Now, Daddy, please, ple-e-ase promise me you won’t get into more trouble today.”
    “I’ll go you one better than that. How’s about you won’t hear a peep out of me for a good…oh, three or four days?”
    “Why? What do you plan to get up to?”
    “Get up to? Me?” His dentures made a soft whistling sound as he grinned and chuckled at the same time. “I can’t win for losing with you, girl. One minute you warn me to stay out of mischief for a while, and when I promise to do just that, you accuse me of ulterior motives.”
    “Well?”
    “Don’t you worry none. For the next few days you won’t even know I’m in town.”
    She studied his expression for any hint of monkey business, but when her eyes met his, she saw there such love, such compassion, that she felt a twinge of guilt for having even considered doubting his good intentions.
    She kissed his cheek and with a gentle shove sent her father off for his home in the section of Wileyville lined with tidy little tract houses built in the sixties that people still referred to as New Town. After that she inhaled deeply and held her breath. What to do now? Should she head back to her house, back to the soft old chair where she had intended to spend her day?
    She chewed her lip and gazed at the pharmacy down the way.
    … someone has to start—start talking the truth, start looking at things in a new light, start reaching out .
    More than a few people considered her daddy a crackpot, but sometimes he did say some awfully wise things.
    Her hard-earned, perfectly awful day had already gotten off track. Maybe…
    Why not, Sadie-girl?
    Why not, indeed. It wasn’t a big deal, no giant leap for lonely-wifekind, but somehow Sadie’s stride took on awhole new air of importance as she headed off to surprise her husband and maybe, just maybe, do as her daddy suggested—and start something!

Chapter Three
    S adie rapped on the huge glass window of the Royal Academy, then motioned for her best friend to meet her at the open door.
    “Right foot step, feet together, pause. Heads high. Slowly, smoothly, glide, ladies, glide! No peeking at the ground and, remember, if you move too fast, you’re going to wobble!” Mary Tate demonstrated the modified waltz step all the way over to Sadie’s side, then slipped through the door, calling back, “Keep it up, maidens. Dogwood Blossom Queen gets crowned in five days, and I will not have my name associated with a bunch of peekers and wobblers.”
    Sadie gave her friend a quick hug, jerking her head toward the goings-on behind them. “Processional practice?”
    “What else?”
    “Got started on it kind of late, didn’t you?”
    Mary Tate blew a tuft of pale blond hair off her damp forehead with a puff from her cotton-candy-colored lips. “Bunch of the girls got the idea they didn’t need to practice walking this year.”
    “What changed their minds?”
    Mary Tate folded her arms and leaned back against the doorframe, smirking. “The shoes arrived.”
    “Don’t even mention them.” Sadie rolled her eyes. “I still have nightmares about those vile things.”
    The shoes—pointed-toe satin pumps that had gone out of style the same time as pillbox hats and bouffant hairdos—came ready to dye the exact color of each girl’s frothy pastel dress. They had 3¼ inch heels, because anything less would look downright dowdy, and anything higher…well, as Mrs. Cummins, the high school principal put it, “High heels and hoop skirts, can you imagine anything more common than that? We’re feting our girls here, not throwing some Hollywood version of a trashy yee-haw Dixie teenage wedding!”
    Waynetta Cummins was Wileyville’s equivalent of Miss Manners. When she decreed something “too tacky to