29. Sadie
29
SADIE
T ime has been kind of suspended since I curled up in a ball on the bathroom mat. But of course Gus was eventually going to knock on the door.
“Sadie? You okay, cupcake?”
Sitting up, I lean against the vanity cabinet and hug my knees to my chest. “You can come in. The door is open.”
The brass knob turns and Gus’s concerned face peers inside. She’s wearing a new purple swing dress with skulls all over the skirt but she drops to her knees beside me anyway.
“It’s negative,” I tell her before she freaks out, showing her the stick as proof. “I knew it would be because my period just showed up but I took the test anyway to make sure.”
“Oh.” She squeezes my hand. “That’s good, right?”
“I suppose so. Getting knocked up by my fake husband wasn’t really on the bingo card for this year.”
Gus sighs and leans against the vanity cabinet with me. “Have you heard from him?”
“Barely. In sixteen days I’ve received two extremely brief phone calls and a handful of texts. Then one really weird voicemail where he said nothing. The only way I knew it wasn’t a butt dial was because I heard him clear his throat and sigh before he cut the connection. Maybe he’s just terrified that I’ll tell him I love him again.”
“Is that what you really think?”
“No.” I stretch my legs out. “He didn’t want to leave. I know he didn’t. It just feels like there’s a side of him I can’t reach and every day that goes by he slips further away from me.”
Now I’m sniffling. This is nothing new. I’ve spent too much time moping around since the day Cale dropped me off at the gate of Bright Hearts and returned to Mafia Mystery Land.
Gus withdraws a hankie from the pocket of her dress and hands it over. Gus is possibly the last person in North America who still carries an old fashioned handkerchief. This one has flocks of bats embroidered in the corners.
“I’m becoming a sad sack, aren’t I?” I dab at the corners of my eyes with Gus’s hanky, trying not to mess it up too much.
“You’re not a sad sack.” Gus pats my arm for reassurance. “Whatever that is.”
“It’s somebody who checks her phone seventy times a day in case the pretend husband she didn’t mean to fall in love with tried to call. Look in a dictionary. My picture is next to the definition.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself. Let me tell you a story about Edgar Allen Poe.”
“Your cat? Sure, Edgar and I are good friends. Does he still love the squeaky toy mouse I gave him?”
“He ripped the mouse’s head off so I had to take it away. But what I wanted to point out is that when I adopted Edgar from the shelter, he was an ornery, unsociable menace.”
“Ah, I see where you’re going with this. You’re trying to convince me that Cale is also an ornery, unsociable menace so I’ll stop sobbing over him on the bathroom floor.”
“Hush. This is my story. Edgar hissed ferociously at every living creature. His fur grew so used to standing on end that he started to look like an electrocution victim. I got scratched so many times that whenever I went within ten feet of Edgar I had to wear falcon gloves that came up to my elbows. I was still in veterinary school and my weekly study group had to be relocated to somewhere other than my apartment because everyone was petrified of Edgar.”
“Is this a fictional story? Edgar is a doll.”
“He is now. These days Edgar follows me everywhere and purrs at my feet at night. But getting there was a journey and not an easy one. The most worthwhile journeys never are.”
“I don’t want Cale to purr at my feet. But if he shows up out of the blue and professes his eternal love to me then I’ll stop complaining.”
She elbows my arm. “Don’t you dare settle for less than the world. If Cale is going to become the kind of man who truly deserves you then he’ll work for it. But in the meantime don’t lose your optimism. A Sadie who doesn’t look on the bright side isn’t Sadie at all.”
I know she’s right. Wallowing has never been my habit. After dabbing at my eyes again with the bat handkerchief, I’m ready to stand up and use the day for something more productive than my Cale obsession.
Gus needs to get back to her clinic in town but she makes me promise to call later if I’m feeling the least bit blue. Or even if I’m not.
The forecast has promised rain will fall later today. Judging by the drab clouds meeting in the sky, it’s a safe bet that the day will soon turn wet and dreary. This gives me an excuse to switch to turbo mode in order to get all the chores complete. We’re light on help today with only a single volunteer who soon needs to leave to pick up her kids.
It's after three p.m. and I’m in the middle of leading Wylie around the paddock for some exercise when the first drops fall from the sky.
“Sorry, buddy.” I rub his nose. “We’ve got to head back.”
He snorts an objection and initially stands firm but then follows willingly. He playfully nudges my shoulder when I return him to his stall and I feed him a pair of carrots before moving on. In the months since he arrived at Bright Hearts, Wylie has become far more pleasant. Much like Edgar Allen Poe after Gus adopted him.
This, naturally, leads to thoughts of Cale. The day he showed up at the front gate he was all bloody and full of bad attitude. The matched everything I thought I knew about him already. Yet two weeks later when he left, my opinion had changed and I was quite sorry to see him go.
Maybe the lesson is that everyone has layers. Wylie the horse. Edgar Allen Poe. Cale Connelly.
Even me.
Falling for Cale has made me realize I’m not uncomplicated either. I can be adventurous and daring and sexy.
Outside the barn, lightning flashes amid a not-so-distant bellow of thunder. With a shudder, I rub my arms and stand at the barn’s threshold, looking up at the sky. Apparently I’m not adventurous enough to relish thunderstorms.
“SAY-DEEEE!” Peggy sometimes stands in front of the house and hollers my name like a mother calling her child to dinner.
But I’m happy to have an excuse to run out of the rain and into Peggy’s cozy kitchen. It looks like a colorful witch’s den with clusters of herbs cut from the garden and then hung up to dry. A cast iron stock pot bubbles on the tiny stove. Multiple flickering candles are particularly effective thanks to the grim weather outside the window.
On the table, Peggy’s mismatched dishware contains bowls of clam chowder alongside plates of buttermilk biscuits. The cats have already gathered, their tails twitching, to watch with jealousy as I take my seat at the table.
“What a treat.” I stir my spoon and inhale the aroma of excellent food. “Usually you only make your clam chowder recipe in autumn and winter.”
Peggy uses a crocheted potholder to place the lid back on the pot. “I had to do something to spark your appetite,” she says. “These last few weeks you’ve been wasting away.”
That’s a laugh. No one would look at me and conclude I am in any danger of ‘wasting away’. But I’m not one to be ungrateful for a delicious homecooked meal.
“I’ll eat every bite,” I say to Peggy. “I promise.”
Satisfied, she joins me at the table. I didn’t realize how famished I was. The food can’t get shoveled into my mouth fast enough. Soon I’m in need of another napkin so I swivel to grab a fresh one from the dispenser on the counter.
The sudden move is greeted by a low growl from the corner of the room.
“It’s okay, Tinkerbell,” I assure the dog. “That was my fault. I’ll go slower next time.”
Tinkerbell’s tail wags. She trots over to rub against my ankles. Her puppies have been weaned and are old enough for their own cozy kennel home in The Doghouse. Tinkerbell, however, has some personality quirks and doesn’t get along too well with the other dogs. People are an even bigger problem. She aggressively growls at strangers, especially men. However, she doesn’t have a problem with cats or with Peggy so Peggy has added Tinkerbell to her own household.
I’m a faster eater than Peggy. She frowns when I bus my dishes to the sink and rinse them off but doesn’t feel strongly enough to argue.
As I’m turning off the faucet, I spot an old photo on the counter. The two people inside the silver oval frame are young and smiling. Peggy’s youthful, happy face beams from a long lost decade. The young man at her side is good looking with a dimpled chin and light hair.
Strangely, sitting right beside the photo is a single cupcake with a stick candle in the middle. The wick has been burned and part of the wax has melted.
When I glance at Peggy, she’s diligently eating her chowder and shows no sign that she has noticed the way I’m inspecting the picture.
However, when I return to the table she puts her spoon down and says, “Yesterday was his birthday.”
That explains the cupcake and candle. Peggy never says much about Paul, her lost fiancé.
“I’m sure you still miss him.”
“Yes.” She lifts her eyes to mine and I catch a haunting glimpse of the young woman she was. “Paul wasn’t supposed to go out on the boat that day. He’d already taken another job at the bottle factory and we had plans to meet with the priest at the church to plan for our wedding. But my father was down a crew member and Paul filled in. There was a storm. The ship wreckage was found. The bodies were not.”
This is the most Peggy has ever about her personal history in one sitting. The clipped edges of her faint New England accent have grown stronger, as if summoned by that connection to the past.
Words feel hollow so I stand up and walk over to give her a hug. She allows it, just for a second. Then she orders me to eat a slice of peach cobbler and starts cleaning the kitchen.
Peggy doesn’t seem as if she’d like to talk anymore so I eat my peach cobbler in silence and watch the steady fall of the rain outside the window. Peggy wraps up some leftover biscuits for Zeus and Apollo and bids me good night. The sky has grown darker thanks to the rain but it’s nowhere near bedtime yet.
“Good night,” I tell her, understanding she wants to be alone.
Peggy pauses in the middle of scouring a baking pan and says, “He’ll be back, Sadie.”
She hasn’t asked about Cale and I haven’t spoken of him very much these last couple of weeks. Peggy sees and hears far more than she lets on.
I pat Tinkerbell on her soft head and leave through the connecting interior door. Zeus and Apollo smell food and come running. They’re still hoovering up biscuit crumbs from the floor when I step outside.
The front door has a shallow overhang that serves as an umbrella as long as I don’t venture out more than two feet. New puddles that grow with every raindrop stretch in every direction. I’ll switch to my rain boots when I go out later for the final check of the night.
My phone is in the back pocket of my jeans. When I pull it out, my ring catches on the denim. I really shouldn’t be wearing the ring on my finger while doing hard labor on the ranch all day. Slipping it on every morning has just become a habit. Tomorrow I’ll put it back on the chain and wear it around my neck like I used to.
There are no new messages at all. A wave of menstrual cramps adds to my misery and I lean against the doorframe, staring moodily out at the rain.
Truly, I wasn’t hoping for the pregnancy test to be positive. But I also feel a forceful surge of yearning when I imagine holding Cale’s child in my arms and I can’t quite let the feeling go.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I press the button to call his cell phone. After six rings the generic voicemail answers. I’m not prepared to leave a message. My brain freezes and I hang up before the beep. Then I wish I hadn’t.
Twilight is approaching earlier tonight, thanks to the weather. Thunderclaps echo in the distance. I raise the phone and capture a shot of the rainy landscape. After I press the forward button to send the picture to Cale, my brain stalls over thoughts of a caption.
Finally, I type the words, “Wish you were here” and become horrified by the sheer greeting card corniness. Just when I’ve made up my mind to delete and start over, I accidentally hit send.
Great. Someone needs to take this thing away from me before I do some real damage.
With a sigh, I shove my phone back into my pocket and watch the light slowly disappear from Bright Hearts while the sound of thunder inches closer.
Where are you, Cale?