Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(35)
He looks at her for a long time, then out the window where the sun is, indeed, making a halfhearted effort to banish the gloom.
Brett reaches for the remote. “Let’s see if that rain delay is over. Like you said, Boston isn’t that far away.”
No, Elsa muses. Not that far away at all.
Standing in the middle of her room, Sadie surveys the pile of belongings she just gathered from her bookshelves and toy chest.
There must be something here that she doesn’t want to keep.
Candy Land? The box is ripped at every corner, and the yellow piece and some of the cards are missing.
No.
She puts it back on the shelf.
The plastic grocery cart set, complete with pretend produce items?
The cart lost a wheel, and Sadie doesn’t even like vegetables.
No.
Into the toy chest go the cart and its cargo.
One by one, she considers several dolls, a few more games, and a little suitcase filled with dress-up clothes.
Now the floor is empty, the shelves and chest are full again, and Sadie wants to cry. What is she going to do? She can’t find even one toy she’s willing to part with, and Lucy said—
The moment she spots the pink stuffed dog on top of her dresser, she knows she’s off the hook.
There’s something she doesn’t want. Stupid dog. How could anyone mistake it for Fred?
Sadie climbs onto a chair and plucks it down. The chair teeters and she grabs the edge of the dresser to keep from falling.
If she fell and got hurt, it would be the stupid dog’s fault. And Daddy’s, too.
Scowling, Sadie climbs off the chair and takes one last glance at the dog, just to make sure. Its black button eyes seem to stare sadly at her, and she looks away quickly.
She doesn’t want it. Why would she?
She carries it out into the hall and down to the landing. In the foyer below, she can see a row of boxes Mommy and Lucy have spent the day filling with stuff for the tag sale.
The front door is propped open. She slips down a few more stairs and sees that her mother is out on the porch, stacking a box on top of a couple of others.
Sadie doesn’t feel like talking to her about the pink dog again.
Moving quickly, she goes all the way down and opens the doggy gate. She looks at the nearest box—one Mommy marked with a marker in big black letters. Sadie doesn’t know what they spell, but she recognizes the ABCs: F-R-A-G-I-L-E.
Sadie hurriedly stuffs the pink dog into the box.
As soon as she does it, she feels bad.
Why? It’s just a stupid toy.
Sadie shoves the top of the box closed. She can still see a clump of pink fur in the crack between the flaps.
She reaches out to push it deeper into the box, but instead, her fingers wrap around a fuzzy pink paw.
Maybe…
The phone rings, startling her.
Sadie hurriedly drops the paw and runs back up the stairs, leaving the gate open and the pink dog behind.
Lauren spent most of the day wishing the sun would come out, but now that it has, its rays stream through the living room’s bay windows to cast a greenhouse effect she definitely could do without.
She wipes a trickle of sweat from her cheek with her shoulder as she hangs up the phone at last, hoping it won’t ring again for a while.
She just spent a half hour on a pair of back-to-back calls—one from her mother, the other from her sister. Lauren figures the two of them probably talked to each other first and decided they were worried about her.
“I wish you’d come up and visit,” said her mother, who still lives in the small upstate hometown Lauren gladly left behind years ago.
“I wish you’d come down,” Lauren replied, knowing that was unlikely. Her parents rarely make the two-hundred-mile trip now that her father has had a couple of heart surgeries. Mom’s license is expired at this point; she relies on Dad to cart her everywhere she needs to go. Totally dependent on her husband. She always has been.
I swore I would never let myself become like her, and I’m not. Good thing.
Lauren found herself promising her mother she’d visit soon.
Then she found herself promising Alyssa she’d come into the city tomorrow afternoon for brunch while Nick has the kids.
She really doesn’t want to do either of those things, though.
Maybe I’m not as independent as I think. What happened to learning how to say no? Embracing my postdivorce inner bitch?
God, she misses Trilby. She’s always good for a swift kick in the pants, reminding Lauren not to let anyone push her around.
Then again, who knows? Maybe deep down, Lauren really does need a hometown visit. Maybe it would be nice to be miles and miles away, back in a simpler place where her private business isn’t churning the local gossip mill. And it would certainly be nice to let her nurturing parents take care of her and the kids for a while. So nice not to be in charge, for a change, of the household…
With a grunt, she hoists yet another heavy box of castoffs into her aching arms and hauls it out to the front porch to await transport to the church basement for the tag sale.
Returning to the hall, she notices that the doggy gate is ajar. Closing it, she wonders if she should just get rid of the gate. Chauncey knows he’s not allowed upstairs, and he’s never once snuck past it when it’s open.
She picks up another carton of discarded relics from the dining room. She marked the box “FRAGILE” due to a couple of mismatched teacups and saucers, but nothing else is breakable: stray silverware, fancy candlesticks, elegant linens that are never used because you have to iron them, and who has time to iron a tablecloth if you’re cooking the kind of dinner that would be served on a tablecloth?