Sophie Littlefield - A Bad Day for Sorry

Noelle turned the little guy around in her arms. He was rubbing at sleepy eyes with a fist, yawning, showing a pair of tiny white teeth.

“Mama, a lady came by the house this morning and dropped this little fella off. She said I should bring him to you.”

“Holy shit.” Stella breathed, her heart leaping.

“Mama! Not in front of a child,” Noelle scolded, covering one of Tucker’s perfect little shell ears with her hand.

While they made their way down the hall, Stella going as fast as she could while limping and dragging her IV drip, Noelle said the lady looked as if she hadn’t had a decent meal in a year but was dressed nice and driving a new Escalade, and that she said Stella would know what to do.

“Where was she going?” Stella asked.

“I didn’t ask her,” Noelle said, exasperated. “I was still trying to figure out what to do with this guy, you know?”

Stella shut her mouth, but not before noticing that Noelle seemed to be finding her way around a baby without too much trouble.

Maybe she’d make Stella a grandma someday. The notion wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

Stella pushed open the door to Chrissy’s room, and Tucker took one look at the sleeping woman and made a sound that was half burp and half exclamation and then he leaned out of Noelle’s arms like he wanted to fly through the air to his mother.

Noelle sat gingerly on the bed just as Chrissy’s eyes fluttered open and then she saw her baby and cracked a smile that couldn’t have been lovelier if she’d been the Mona Lisa herself.

Stella, watching from the foot of the bed, holding her gown shut with one hand and the IV pole with the other, beaten and bruised and smelling of a couple hard days, got a little sniffly and figured she’d never seen anything prettier.

Good job, she congratulated herself.

There was nothing quite as satisfying as honest hard work.

Endless thanks to: Lisa, Lynn, Trish, and Cyndy for all those years of friendship and guidance; my brother, Mike Wiecek, for sticking with me and cheering me on; my agent, Barbara Poelle, for seeing something special in my words; and my editor, Toni Plummer, for helping me make this book the best it can be.

Thanks, also, to Craig McDonald, for teaching me the handshake and many other industry secrets; to my Northern California MWA friends, for the warm welcome and for showing me the ropes; to David Rotstein, for creating a perfect cover; and to Frank Borelli of Borelli Consulting, for explaining gun stuff.

And finally, thank you, T-wa and Sal, for tolerating the demands of this new gig—I sure like having you two around.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A Thomas Dunne Book for Minotaur Books.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group

A BAD DAY FOR SORRY. Copyright © 2009 by Sophie Littlefield. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press,

175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.minotaurbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Littlefield, Sophie.

A bad day for sorry / Sophie Littlefield.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-55920-5

ISBN-10: 0-312-55920-8

1. Abused women—Fiction. 2. Middle-aged women—Fiction. 3. Abusive men—Crimes against—Fiction. 4. Missouri—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3612.I882B33 2009

813'.6—dc22

2009007906

First Edition: August 2009

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