Page 18 of Dearly & Lovesick Lorraine (Dearly and The Departed #6)
Chapter Seventeen
Dash
“Three more, Dash. You can do it.” Little did Kenny, the physical therapist, know, but I was ready to rip his fucking head off. I’d already been at it for an hour, and lifting kettle bells—even light ones—was painful as fuck.
When I remembered why I was undergoing physical therapy, I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and gave him three more reps on my right side before switching to the left and repeating the torture.
Falling through the floor of Dearly & Son and landing on the tile-covered concrete in the mortuary served me right for not listening to the fire marshal that the building was unstable. I was trying to retrieve our important papers from the safe in Keir’s office, but the natural gas fire that began in the mortuary and exploded through the stove upstairs had done a lot of damage. It was truly unsafe.
“There’s Papa, baby girl.” Keir pushed the stroller into the large therapy room, a smile instantly blooming on my face. I’d been out of the hospital for a month, and our little angel was turning six weeks old the next day. Things were currently in flux in the Dearly family, but we were going to see a house when I finished my session. I was bouncing-off-the-ceiling excited.
“There are my two favorite people in the world,” I said as I took the towel from around my neck and dried the sweat rolling down my face.
They’d shaved the back of my head to perform surgery on my neck, and when I’d seen it, I’d demanded Keir shave the rest of it. It was starting to grow back, but not fast enough for me.
I’d wrecked three vertebrae in my neck because of the fall—C2, C3, and C4. There had been surgery to repair the damage, and I now had a small titanium rod to stabilize my neck and hold up my big head.
I was told it was a miracle my spinal cord hadn’t snapped. My doctor had been optimistic that I would have minimal nerve damage. Sometimes, my hands and fingers were numb, but the swelling was still going down from the surgery, and once the nerves, muscles, and tissue returned to normal, they all believed I’d be as good as new.
My husband stopped next to the mat where I’d been doing my therapy, a beaming smile on his face. “Good morning, Kenny. How’s Grumpy Gus doing? Was he a pain in the a-s-s?” Kenny laughed, the dumb fucker.
Keir refused to curse in front of Grace, which made me laugh. She cried, pooped, ate, and occasionally, she made sweet little sounds that lit up my heart. Her picking up any bad words from either of us was a long way away.
Not being able to hold that little angel in my arms was currently my biggest hurdle, which pushed me to work harder to regain strength in my arms and shoulders. I could sit in a chair and hold her for short amounts of time before the tingling and fatigue in my muscles forced me to ask Keir to take her. I wanted that shit behind me as quickly as possible.
“He’s committed, which is half the battle, Keir. How’s that little beauty doing today?” She was a beauty, all right. She looked exactly like Keir with his dark hair and porcelain skin. No DNA tests were necessary to determine her biological father, not that we wanted any.
I reached into the stroller and let her latch onto my index finger. “What did Dr. Phillips say?”
Keir had taken Grace to the pediatrician’s office in the same medical complex for a check-up. She had a little rash in the bend of her left arm, so we wanted to get it looked at to be sure it wasn’t serious.
I pushed back the hood of the stroller to see our beautiful daughter flinging her arms and kicking her feet. “Hello, Gracie Jo! How are you, sweetheart?” I brushed my other finger over her soft cheek. She was the light of our lives and the best medicine for my recovery.
I’d fallen through the floor of Dearly & Son the day before Christmas Eve, thirteen days after Gracie had been born. Thankfully, Keir had been waiting for me in the SUV with our daughter, so when I hadn’t returned in a hurry, Keir called Scotty Locke, who worked for him at the funeral home.
Scotty came over and found me in the mortuary. Keir later told me that Scotty was able to immobilize my head with some bubble wrap from the recycling bin in the bay and bring me out of the building. He alerted Keir to call the ambulance that took me to the emergency room.
It was my own stupid fault for going against the fire department’s determination that the building wasn’t safe, but we needed those documents to start the adoption process for me to adopt Grace Josephine, who was named after Keir’s Aunt Jo.
Scotty was a great guy, and we’d become close friends over the time Keir and I had been falling in love. Sadly, Scotty’s partner, Jay, had taken a job on the East Coast, so they would be moving sometime in the new year, and we wouldn’t get to see them as often. I’d forever owe him my gratitude for getting me out of that building before the whole second floor caved in. At least I’d gotten everything out of the safe before I went down.
I’d noticed some memory issues since my fall, experiencing blank spots in my life that dated back to the first head injury I’d had in Italy a few years ago. The latest crack to the noggin was my second Grade-3 concussion, and the doctors didn’t seem surprised that I had memory issues. They’d told me to remain positive and more of the blank spots would be filled over time, but frankly, I wasn’t dwelling on the things I couldn’t remember. I was only looking forward to a bright future and all the new memories we’d make in the Dearly family.
“Doctor says it’s nothing to worry about. Maybe we have the thermostat a little too warm, but I have a prescription for a topical to put on her twice a day until it goes away.”
My husband’s body temperature ran cooler than normal for most others, so we kept the thermostat a bit higher. I ran around without a shirt on most of the time in our old apartment and now in the residence hotel where we lived. Keir didn’t seem to mind, but sweet Grace had changed everything. We’d have to make her comfort the priority. I’d just have to hold Keir in my arms to keep him warm.
“Good. Ready to go?” After donning the foam neck brace I had to wear for one more week, I slid my arms into my jacket to leave, excited for our house-hunting adventure.
We’d lived in a residential hotel closer to Sacramento since the fire. A topic of constant discussion was where we thought we wanted to live, and after each of us threw out ideas, we kept circling back to Reardon. It was like a small town—an ideal place to raise a family. We finally landed on staying in the area if possible.
Keir’s father had been friends with a fellow mortician, Darren Meyer, who owned a funeral home about ten miles from Reardon. Keir had helped him with funerals a time or two, and he liked the man, seeing in Darren what had scored him David Dearly’s friendship.
When Keir had phoned him to tell him about the fire and ask if he could refer guests to Darren’s funeral home, the man had mentioned he wanted to retire and had suggested maybe Keir buy him out and reopen Dearly & Son at that location.
My Keir, however, hadn’t entirely decided not to rebuild on the property we owned. There was a memorial garden behind the building that we’d built together and was special to both of us, and Keir was worried about leaving it behind or trusting it to someone else.
After confirming my therapy appointment for Friday, we left the medical center and crossed the parking lot to the SUV. Keir put Grace in her car seat while I put the diaper bag inside before folding the stroller and lifting it into the cargo hold of the SUV. I tossed the brace into the cargo hold and got into the back seat with Grace as Keir jumped in behind the wheel.
“Next stop, 313 Misty Lane.” Keir programmed the address into the GPS, and we were off.
I entertained Gracie Jo in the back seat, watching as her eyes followed my finger as I made it dance in front of her while I sang along with Def Leppard on the radio.
It was amazing to me that I could remember the words to a song that was popular in the late eighties, but I couldn’t remember parts of our recent honeymoon or even falling through the funeral home floor. The human brain was a mysterious thing.
Keir pulled onto Misty Lane, slowly driving down the Valley oak-lined street. As I glanced from side to side, I saw swing sets anchored in yards, basketball nets on driveways, and bicycles laying across immaculately manicured front lawns. It appeared to be a very family-friendly neighborhood, just as we’d hoped.
Keir stopped on the street when he saw the black mailbox with three-one-three mounted on the top like horses pulling a carriage. “Looks like this is it.”
I turned to look out the window and felt as if I’d already been to the property. It was a Tudor style with a faux brick front and a raised front porch. The rest of the house had taupe siding and a beautiful mature yard with plants and trees that provided shade.
“Have we been here before?” The feeling of déjà vu was nearly overwhelming. I could see myself riding my Knucklehead up the drive while Keir played with Grace on a big playset on the left side of the yard. It was very strange.
“Maybe we saw it when we were looking at houses online? It’s cute, right? Three bedrooms. Three bathrooms. Formal dining room and an eat-in kitchen. Downstairs is a media and game room. Detached garage with a fenced backyard. Yeah, I think we saw it online.”
I unbuckled my seatbelt and opened the door, getting out of the back seat while Keir got out and rescued the baby from her car seat prison and walked up the paved driveway. An older man stepped out of the dark taupe door with a huge grin. “Dearly family? Welcome. Please, please, come inside.”
“Mr. Klein, I’m Keir. This is my husband, Dash, and our daughter, Grace.” Keir and Mr. Klein made small talk for a moment about how old Gracie was, which made Mr. Klein remember when his daughter was born and how his granddaughter was soon graduating from UC Berkeley.
I glanced around the empty house with its gleaming hardwood floors and the gas fireplace blazing in the living room. I could see us making a great home there for our family. I could see myself cutting the grass and planting roses with my mother-in-law in the raised flower bed by the wooden fence surrounding the nice yard.
Keir and I toured the home while Mr. Klein went outside to take a call. We checked out the bathrooms, which had been newly renovated. I was thrilled one of them had a tub for Gracie’s evening baths as part of her bedtime routine.
The house had been newly refreshed, and there was an attic that could be turned into a great playroom. I turned to my husband. “How many houses do you want to check out. How many were on your list?”
Keir pulled up the listing on his phone. “It was our list, and we agreed on five. How many do you want to look at?”
I took Grace from him and propped her little head on my shoulder, holding her under her butt as she burrowed into my neck. “One.”
Keir smirked. “You want this one?”
I smiled, kissed Gracie on her cheek, and winked. Asked and answered.
We moved into 313 Misty Lane on the first day of February. We had a crib, a rocking chair, three boxes of clothes, most of which were Gracie’s, a king-sized mattress on the floor, and a table and chairs we’d salvaged from the hospitality room at the funeral home. We were sickeningly happy.