Written on My Heart Read Free Page B

her as much as it did me.
    The front door downstairs opened just as Bud flushed the toilet. I tried to catch him before he headed downstairs, but I was too late.
    â€œJesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he yelled.
    â€œThat your wedding suit?” I heard Dottie say.
    â€œIf people don’t stop barging in, it might be,” Bud said.
    â€œWhere you going to put the rings?”
    â€œGlen’s supposed to have them.”
    â€œI say, wear what you got on, then. Supposed to be hot this afternoon.”
    â€œCome on up, Dottie,” I called.
    â€œWhy? The entertainment is down here,” she said.
    â€œWait here,” Bud said to Dottie, and he took every other stair to the bedroom. His face was scarlet. “We’re going to start locking the damn door,” he said. “Right after Dottie leaves.”
    I grinned. “What’s done is done. Now she knows why I’m marrying you.”
    Bud pulled on a pair of jeans and hauled a white, holey T-shirt over his head. He was still sputtering when he left the bedroom and bounded down the stairs. “That coffee cake is for us,” I heard him growl at Dottie, who was more than familiar with our kitchen and could smell a baked good from miles away.
    â€œJust testing it out,” she answered him. “I approve. Here, I cut a piece for you.”
    â€œGoing down to the folks’ house,” Bud called up to me. “See you at the wedding,” and he was gone. I hauled myself and the baby out of bed, shuffled to the window, and pulled up the shade. Dust motes sifted through shafts of sunlight.
    â€œComing up,” Dottie said from the bottom of the stairs.
    â€œBring me some coffee cake and some tea. With milk,” I said.
    â€œHope you’re not going to be this bossy all day,” she grumbled.
    â€œNot promising anything,” I said. I waddled over to the rocking chair and grabbed an old green sweatshirt hanging off the back of it. It had been my father’s once, and he had been a big man. I plunked down on the rocker and tugged my pregnant-lady shorts to just underneath my breasts.
    By the time Dottie got upstairs, I was standing in front of the mirror, looking at the blond, red, and brown frizzled curly mop I called hair.
    â€œWhat the hell am I going to do with this?” I asked her.
    She set my tea and a plate mounded with Stella’s coffee cake on the bureau. She stood alongside me at the mirror and ran her hands through her brown pixie cut. “Cut if off,” she said. “That’ll take care of that problem.”
    â€œIt’s a serious question,” I said. “What do you think I should do? Up? Down?”
    â€œYou’re asking the wrong person. Evie knows about that shit. She’ll fix you up.”
    Evie was Dottie’s younger sister. At fourteen, she was a handful. “Evie wants what she wants when she wants it,” Dottie had said more than once, “and the only time she doesn’t want for something, she’s asleep.” What mattered about Evie that day was that she would have good ideas. I changed the subject.
    â€œStella dropped by with the cake and woke up Bud. He wasn’t awful pleased.”
    â€œShe probably just wants to be part of the wedding,” Dottie said.
    I sighed. “Oh, I know,” I said. “But I don’t want her fussing around while I get ready. She’ll get weepy about Daddy not being here, and then I’ll get weepier than I already am, and I don’t need that today.”
    â€œI guess not,” Dottie said. “Anyways, Evie’ll be over soon, with Madeline. You don’t want to see either of them before they have their coffee.”
    Madeline was Dottie’s mother. For money, she worked at the post office up the road. For joy, she painted seashore and ocean scenes in watercolor. Some of them brightened the walls of our house. Once in a while, she’d sell a painting to a tourist Ray