Clive had done the best he could to raise Sadie up a lady. He’d sent her to Ms. Naomi’s Charm School to learn the things he didn’t have the time or ability to teach her, but charm school could not take the place of a woman in the home. While other girls went home and practiced their etiquette lessons, Sadie shucked her dress and ran wild. As a result of her mashed education, Sadie knew how to waltz, set a table, and converse with governors. She could also swear like a cowboy and spit like a ranch hand.
Shortly after graduating from Lovett High, she’d packed up her Chevy and headed out for some fancy university in California, leaving her father and soiled cotillion gloves far behind. No one saw much of Sadie after that. Not even her poor daddy, and as far as anyone knew, she’d never married. Which was just plain sad and incomprehensible because really, how hard was it to get a man? Even Sarah Louise Baynard-Conseco, who had the misfortune to be born built like her daddy, Big Buddy Baynard, had managed to find a husband. Of course, Sarah Louise had met her man through prisoner.com. Mr. Conseco currently resided fourteen hundred miles away in San Quentin, but Sarah Louise was convinced he was totally innocent of the offenses for which he’d been unjustly incarcerated, and planned to start her family with him after his hoped-for parole in ten years.
Bless her heart.
Sure, sometimes in a small town it was slim pickings, but that’s why a girl went away to college. Everyone knew that a single girl’s number one reason for college wasn’t higher education, although that was important, too. Knowing how to calculate the price of great-grandmother’s silver on any given day was always crucial, but a single gal’s first priority was to find herself a husband.