Read Online Fade to Black by Wendy Corsi Staub - Free Book Online Page A

Manny is saying.
    “Hmmm?”
    “The meeting last night,” he reminds her, and adds proudly, “I got the lead role.”
    That captures her attention. She knows how desperately Manny, a child who has never had any kind of attention or encouragement at home, longs to be in the spotlight.
    She has been coaching him with his lines for the audition, and has noticed that he seems to have a flair for acting.
    “You got the lead?” she squeals, and gives the little boy a hug, lifting him off his feet. “Oh, Manny, that’s fantastic.”
    “No, it isn’t,” he says dejectedly when she sets him down. “I can’t do it.”
    “Why not?”
    “I would need two different costumes—a frog one and a prince one. Grammy says there’s no money to buy them, and she doesn’t know how to sew.”
    “Well, I do,” Elizabeth says spontaneously.
    “You do?”
    “Sure.”
    Of course she sews.
    Sort of.
    Hadn’t she taken home economics classes back at Custer Creek High? Hadn’t she been graded a respectable C-plus on her junior project? It was a ruffled prairie blouse that had been a real pain because of all the gathers, but she had not only completed it, she had actually proudly worn it—until two of the buttons simultaneously popped off one day as she was lifting her arm to wave to the mailman.
    “Then, Elizabeth, would you make me my—oh—” Manny interrupts his own excited question.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Grammy doesn’t have any money to buy the stuff for the costume even if someone else makes it. She doesn’t have any money at all.”
    “I’ll buy the fabric, Manny. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it for you.”
    Even as she says it, she knows it’s a mistake. She’s boxing herself into staying here, when only minutes ago she was planning her escape.
    But his young face is already lit up. “You’ll do that for me?”
    She hesitates only briefly before saying, “Sure I will. I’ll have to stitch it by hand because I don’t have a sewing machine, so it’ll take some time, but it’s no problem.”
    “You sure? Because the show’s in two weeks, and—”
    “Manny, I’ll have the costumes ready for you by then. I promise.”
    Vera taught her, so many years ago, never to break a promise. “If you don’t intend to do something, Cindy, then don’t ever give your word to someone that you will.”
    And so she had learned, very young, never to make promises. Because you never knew what life was going to toss your way.
    Like with Brawley. “Don’t ever leave me, Cindy,” he used to say, usually late at night, in the dark, as they lay in the sagging full-sized bed in the apartment they shared. “Promise you won’t ever leave.”
    She never promised him that. Never promised him anything. She knew better.
    So what’s happened to you now? a disdainful inner voice demands. What makes you think you should start making promises now, to a little boy who’s depending on you because he has no one else?
    Cindy O’Neal didn’t make promises.
    Nor did Mallory Eden.
    But apparently, Elizabeth Baxter does.
    Whether she keeps them remains to be seen.
    “W hat’s the matter, Jason-boy?” Pamela Minelli reaches into the bouncy seat that sits in the middle of the kitchen table and picks up her whimpering son, hugging his little body close. Then she makes a face.
    “Oh, Christ, did you go again? I just changed you,” she says with a groan. “Why couldn’t you wait until later, when Daddy gets home? Maybe I could have talked him into doing diaper duty for a change.”
    Jason coos, looking at her with his solemn, infant-blue eyes.
    “Yeah, you’re right,” she mutters. “He probably would have come up with a good excuse to get out of it, as usual.”
    He looks so much like his daddy, Jason, with all that dark hair and the quick, dimpled grin.
    Maybe that—and the fact that this one’s a boy—will help Frank to take more of an interest in parenting this time around, Pamela thinks hopefully as she balances the