Page 33 of Distant Shores (Stapled Magnolias #2)

ADAIR

T he drive from our house on Camellia Lane to the small visitor’s lot behind Zinnia House was laughably short, and now that it was over, I almost wished Jillie had found us a place just a little further from here.

“When do you think you’ll need a ride back to the house?”

Ireland’s head was tipped back, her gaze fixed on the Jeep’s sunroof.

She watched the rain droplets hit the glass.

Rain blurred all the windows now that we weren’t moving and I’d turned off the wipers.

She had one of my rubber ducks—the EMT one—clutched in her hand and was turning it in her palm mindlessly.

“Not until after my class at nine, if that,” she answered. Besides the day with the soup and the hug, she’d always spoken that way. Calm. Even. Self-contained.

“So, you’ll be busy until about ten?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

She slowly shifted her gaze from the rooftop rain to me, a hint of suspicion in her indigo eyes.

Oops .

“Yes. Why?”

I looked away and stretched languidly, nonchalantly, buying myself some time as I came up with a good response.

“Just curious,” I rasped out as my back popped.

Nailed it.

She put the duck back on the dashboard carefully, and her phone vibrated loudly in the cupholder between us, rattling around in the plastic enclosure.

I’d gotten a little thrill when she put it there. It’d felt familiar, like a tiny, positive sign of her comfort with me.

The suspicion lifted from her eyes, but her shoulders slumped, and she looked at her phone with something almost like dread.

I didn’t know what to do, what I was allowed to do, so I reached back behind her seat and blindly stuck my hand in the little box I kept back there, swirling its contents like soup.

She reached for the door handle, ready to push it open, so I let fate decide and grabbed one at random.

Her phone buzzed again. “I’ve gotta go,” she whispered.

“Here,” I said, reaching in front of her. “This is yours.” I rotated my hand and opened it in offering.

Ireland stared at it for a moment, and I held my breath.

Then her lips twitched.

“It looks like your grandpa,” she said.

“Rea—?” My voice cracked, and I had to clear it before trying again. “Really?”

I pinched the little thing between my fingertips and brought it closer for a better look.

The duck had a big, bushy mustache and a cowboy hat.

“Damn, you’re right,” I said, not bothering to correct her about Wilbur being my grandpa. I held it toward her again, my eyebrows raised in encouragement.

She took it without a word and then pulled the handle and slipped out into the rain, which was more of a light drizzle now.

I scrambled out of the Jeep after her, meeting her under the awning in front of the Zinnia House entrance.

She beeped us in, and we walked inside together, then rode the elevator up to the third floor in silence.

I kept my gaze ahead, resisting the urge to steal glances at her and preparing myself to not blow what came next. It was a struggle, especially when I had to act surprised when the nurse on duty informed me that Pops was already gone.

Of course, I’d known that already. Jillie mentioned during our phone call yesterday that she and her wife Rachel were picking up Pops for a morning out together.

“Want me to hang out with you guys for a bit?” I asked Ireland after delivering the world’s most unconvincing “Oh, darn!” to the nurse.

Ireland eyed the apartment door with the same look she’d given her phone, tucking her longboard close to her like a shield.

“No,” she said eventually. “Not today.”

I nodded but stayed by the door until she knocked.

“Make sure to get your dad’s opinion on the duck,” I murmured. “I’ll see if I can find a Beck one.”

She looked at me with a faint almost-smile and nodded.

The door’s handle moved. “See you later,” I mouthed.

Her attention moved to the door after that, and I headed back to the elevator.

When I got back in my car, it still smelled like lavender. Like her .

It really was my favorite scent.

A white van with a locksmith logo on the side idled outside our house when I pulled back up, and my pulse leaped in excitement. Jillie had come through, once again, by setting this up so quickly.

Part one of Ireland’s small but practical birthday gift was a go.

The rain had settled to a drizzle as I got out of the Jeep and waved to the guy in the van. He got out without a word and matched my slow pace to the house, his tools in hand.

“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” I said as we took the short path. He hadn’t offered his name when I shook his hand, so I just followed his lead.

He grunted in response.

We met Delly at the open front door. She was much less like a gremlin now, in both spirit and appearance.

“The bakery will have the cake ready in thirty minutes,” she said, addressing me first, then turned her attention to the older guy beside me. “Good morning, sir. How long do you think the new lock installation will take?”

“Not too long,” he said, apparently a man of few words. “Fifteen. Maybe less.”

Delly and I shared smiles, but then hers slipped away. “I’m kinda going to miss listening to her fight the locks. It almost made her seem more… something. Or maybe less intimidating?”

My smile disappeared next as I thought that over. “I can’t decide if that’s a good word for her or a terrible one.” I could think of so many others.

The man started arranging his tools loudly, taking up space in what I took as a silent demand for us to get out of his way.

“Come on, Delly. Let’s leave him to it. ”

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.”

He looked at me oddly for only a couple seconds before sighing in a way that said figuring me out wasn’t his problem, then rifled around in the drawer.