Lily patted her hand, “Which we’re going to go shopping for soon.”
Joyce smiled. “I’m so glad that you are close with your sisters. Family is important and more than anything we’d like to get to know our nieces. Please say you’ll come visit us so we can be the family.”
Sadie smiled. “I would really like that, but I go by my middle name, Sadie.”
Joyce wiped a tear from her the corner of her eye. “I think the original Sadie would have been very proud of the fine young lady you turned out to be.”
* * *
“Sadie, sweetie. Are you up?” Lily poked her head in the guest bedroom Sadie was given for the night.”
“Yes. Come in. Couldn’t sleep either?”
“No.” Lily slipped into the room, closed the door behind her and eased herself beneath the covers with Sadie. “This was a lot to take in tonight wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. I just wonder what it would have been like to be raised by my real mother instead of Jackie. Daddy covered everything up so well, he even had Jackie’s name put on my birth certificate. Why do you think he never told me about her?”
“Maybe because talking about her hurt too much. Who knows, but I believe he thought he was doing the right thing. But you know what? You’re lucky.”
“How so?”
“You didn’t have to travel through Jackie’s rotten birth canal.”
“Stop it, girl,” Sadie giggled. “I’m kind of relieved that she’s not my mother, but sad I never knew the woman who gave me life at the expense of her own. She sounds like a loving woman.”
“That’s where you got your capacity to love from. It’s what made you so special. She passed her light to you when she died.”
“Maybe. It also explains why Jackie hated me so much. Hated us all. Daddy never loved her. I almost feel sorry for her.”
Lily snorted. “She can go to hell for all I care.”
“Be nice, she has cancer.”
“That woman isthe cancer.”
Sadie was quiet for a moment before asking, “Now that you know we’re only half-sisters does it change how you see me?”
“There is no half in this equation. You’re as much my sister as Rose and Daisy are and nothing will change that. Got it?”
Sadie nodded feeling better. Her sisters meant the world to her.
“Now stop worrying. Get some sleep. You have your baby to think about.”
“Yeah. The baby.”
With everything that was going on with her mother, it was easy to let Rhys slip from her thoughts, but when she returned home, she’d have to deal with him again. And his daughter.