Rescue Me

her sudden mood, but felt very single and alone. Even Rusty was on loan to her. His girlfriend was in the crowd somewhere. As far as she knew, she and newly single Becca were the only solo girls at the Sweetheart Palace. Even her cougar aunt Charlotte had managed to find herself a date.

Sadie took her place in line for pictures. She smiled for the photographer and pretended that her mood hadn’t flatlined. She was happy for her cousin. Truly. But she couldn’t wait to get back to her real life where she didn’t feel like quite the manless loser.

After the pictures were taken, they all moved to the dining room swathed in pink and gold and white. Tally Lynn grabbed Sadie in a tight hug against her white meringue of a dress. “I’m so glad you could come.” Her face all lit up with love and plans of a happy future ahead of her, she added, “Gosh, Sadie, I just know you’re next.”

Her cousin meant it as a kindness, a reassurance, and Sadie pushed up the corners of her lips and managed a cheery “Maybe.”

“I had you seated at a table with a couple of the aunts.” She pointed to one of the round tables tricked out with roses and pink tea light centerpieces. “They’re just so happy you’re here and it will give y’all a chance to catch up.”

“Fabulous.” The aunts. Sadie walked between the tables covered in white linen and crystal, Caesar salad on each china plate. She moved slow and steady toward the inquisitioners with white cotton candy hair and red rouge on their octogenarian cheeks. “Hi, Aunt Nelma and Ivella.” She placed a hand over her cleavage and bent forward to kiss each of them on their thin skin. “It’s wonderful to see you two again.”

“Lord, you look like your mama. Nelma, doesn’t she look just like Johanna Mae when she won Miss Texas?”

“What?”

“I said,” Ivella shouted, “doesn’t Sadie look just like Johanna Mae!”

“Just like,” Nelma agreed.

“It’s the hair.” She sat across from her aunts and next to a bigger girl who looked a little familiar.

“Such a sad thing,” Ivella said with a shake of her head.

What was a sad thing? Her hair?

“Poor Johanna Mae.”

Oh that sad thing. Sadie placed her linen napkin on her lap.

“Her heart was just too big,” Nelma yelled. She might have problems with her hearing, but there was nothing wrong with her voice.

The older Sadie got, the more her memories of her mother faded. And that was a very “sad thing.”

“Too big,” Ivella agreed.

Sadie turned her attention to the woman on her right and offered her left hand. “Hi, I’m Sadie Hallowell.”

“Sarah Louise Baynard-Conseco.”

“Oh, Big Buddy’s daughter?”

“Yes.”

“I went to school with Little Buddy. What’s he up to these days?” She picked up her fork and took a bite of lettuce.

“He’s working in San Antonio for Mercury Oil.” Like all the people around Sadie, Sarah Louise’s voice was thick, and words like “oil” came out sounding like “ole.” Sadie used to sound like that, too, but not so much these days. “He’s married and has three kids.”

Three? He was a year younger than Sadie. She signaled a server, who poured her a glass of merlot. She took a long drink before she set the glass back on the table.

“How’s your daddy?” Nelma loudly asked.

“Good!” She took a few more bites of her salad, then added, “He went to Laredo this morning to breed a horse.”

Ivella put her fork down, a frown pulling her thin white eyebrows together. “Why on earth would he leave while you’re in town?”

She shrugged, remembered her neckline, and pulled up the top of the dress. He’d left before sunup and she hadn’t even told him good-bye. She knew him well enough to know that he intended to tell her good-bye before she left Texas, but he’d put her on the back burner until he got back.

While they ate, everyone chitchatted about the wedding. The dress and vows each had written and that kiss at the end.

“Very romantic,” Sarah Louise said as the salad plates were taken away and the entree was placed on the table.

“When I married Charles Ray, we had our first kiss in front of the preacher,” Nelma confessed loud enough to be heard in Dalhart. “Daddy didn’t let us girls go around with the boys.”

“That’s true,” Ivella agreed.

Sadie took a close look at the dinner plate. Steak, whipped potatoes, and asparagus tips.

“There was none of this sleeping around before the marriage!”

If not for sleeping around before the marriage, she’d still be a virgin. She took a bite of her steak. Although lately, she’d seen so little action, she might as well be a virgin. She’d reached the point in her life when quality mattered most. Not that it hadn’t always mattered, but these days she’d just gotten less tolerant of lousy lays.

“Are you married?” Sarah Louise asked.

She shook her head and swallowed. “Are you?”

“Yes, but my husband lives out of town. When he gets out, we’re going to start our family.”

Out? “Is he in the military?”

“San Quentin.”

Sadie took another bite instead of asking the obvious question. Sarah Louise provided the answer anyway.

“He’s in for murder.”

Sadie’s shock must have shown on her face.

“He’s totally innocent, of course.”

Of course. “Did you know him before he . . . he . . . left?”

“No. I met him through a prison pen pal site. He’s been in for ten years and has ten more to go before he’s up for parole.”

Good God. Sadie was always amazed that, one: any woman would marry a man in prison, and, two: she’d talk about it like it was no big deal. “That’s a long time to wait for a man.”

“I’ll only be thirty-five, but even if it’s longer, I’ll wait for Ramon forever.”

“What’d she say!” Nelma asked, and pointed a fork at Sarah Louise.

“She’s tellin’ Sadie about that murderin’ man she hooked up with!”

“Well bless her heart.”

Sadie kind of felt sorry for Sarah Louise. It had to be rough living in a small town and being known for marrying “that murderin’ man.”

Aunt Nelma leaned forward and yelled, “Do you have a boyfriend, Sadie Jo?”

“No.” She raised a glass of red wine to her lips and took a sip. It was past seven and she’d actually managed to avoid that question until now. “I don’t really have time for a man right now.”

“Are you just being notional? Are you one of those women who thinks you don’t need a man?”

Growing up, whenever her thoughts and ideas had seemed different from the herd, she’d been accused of being notional. “Well, I don’t need a man.” There was a difference between wanting and needing.

“What did she say?” Nelda wanted to know.

“Sadie doesn’t need a man!”

Great. Now the whole room knew, but the aunts weren’t through yet. They were such matchmakers that they looked at each other and nodded. “Gene Tanner is available,” Ivella said. “Bless her heart.”

Gene Tanner? The girl who wore a crew cut and flannel all through high school? “She still lives in Lovett?” Sadie would have bet good money that Gene would have moved and never come back. The girl had fit in even less than Sadie had.

“She lives in Amarillo but still visits her mama just about every weekend.”