He grunted again. A thank you, maybe? But he was true to his word, and thirteen minutes later, we had a keyless entry to our house.
There wasn’t really anything I could do about the doors in and out of her bedroom without blatantly invading her privacy. If Delly was serious about missing the Ireland vs. Locks show, she could do what I did and listen to her lock her doors each night. And triple-check them. And then struggle to get out of them in the morning.
We got back in the Jeep and pulled out of Live Oak. Delly stared out the window at the shore wistfully, like she was starring in her own music video.
I left her to it.
We secured the cake she’d ordered for Ireland from a local bakery without issue and then headed back to the house to put it in the fridge before Delly had to get over to the Locc for the ballroom class.
The new electronic keypad offered three ways to enter the house. Fingerprint, keycode, or the two emergency keys that came with it. I’d kept one of those keys and put the other away to give Jillie later.
The locksmith had given us instructions on how to set up the fingerprint feature, and we planned to do that all at once with Ireland later.
Once the cake was stowed away, I drove Delly back over to the Locc, both of us wearing pleased smiles.
The rain picked up, coming down in thicker, steadier sheets, so I drove past the nearly full parking lot and eased under the large awning in front of the Locc’s doors. Delly jumped out the moment the Jeep stopped.
I hit the button to roll down the passenger-side window. “Have a great day at dance class, sweetie!”
Without missing a beat, Delly turned and waved back with a big, fake smile on her face. “Thanks, Dad!”
I waved back like a doofus, my cheeks heating as a line of strangers each looked through my open window curiously. Dropping my hand, I clicked the button to put the window back up.
It wasn’t easy to embarrass Delly. I’d taken the lion’s share of whatever gene was responsible for feeling that emotion.
I eased back over to the parking lot and put on some early 2000s rock. Then I reached back into the back seat and pulled my box of ducks to the front, plopping it down in the passenger seat.
Time to keep a promise to make up for a lie.
The Locc was busier than I’d ever seen it.
I guessed with beach days canceled and the weekly shuttle to the grocery store, this was the place to be on a rainy morning.
The queue for the front desk was long, so I wandered around while I waited for it to clear, muddling my way through a neat dozen “good mornings” and “how’re ya doin’ today?s”, plus countless vague smiles to strangers in the silent, implied versions of those greetings.
I checked out the big classroom right off the lobby, the huge recreation room with the old-school turntable, the compact gym, and the library with an impressive collection of bodice-ripper romances.
I suspected Miss Lenny’s hand in that one.
Each time I eased past the closed dance room door where Ireland and Delly were, I paused and listened.
Enough times that I was afraid security would come find me soon and escort me out as a possible pervert.
Enough times to draw some conclusions based on the faint strains of music coming from the room.
Every song was in 3/4 time. She must be starting with a waltz.
My heart was heavy with memories of Grams, the way she and Pops used to dance on the cabin’s back porch in the summer and in front of the fireplace in the winter. I wondered if Delly remembered that at all or if she’d been too young to keep the memory.
Yanking myself out of the melancholy before it took root, I glanced at the covered window to the studio one more time, wishing I could see inside, then wandered back to the front desk, which had finally cleared.
“Good mornin’,” I said once again, this time to the middle-aged guy seated behind the desk. The words had about lost all meaning at this point.
He must feel the same, as he did not say them back.
I trooped on.
“Do you happen to have a sticky note and two Sharpies I could borrow? One black and one silver, if possible.”
