Page 81 of See You Soon

Cara narrowed her eyes at his bowed head. She picked up her fork and stabbed a clump of egg. Her pleasure at receiving the flowers had dimmed. It could be a mistake, she supposed, but she had been home all morning and should have heard the door. It’s possible the delivery person knocked when she was on the deck, but that would have been extremely early.

“I talked to Declan earlier. Hang on.” She retrieved the snow globe from her room and set it on the kitchen table between them. “I told him about getting this in the mail and the note attached. He thinks there might be some connection to a vault Dad had in Dublin. It’s near where my mom said she ran into him.” Cara explained about Courtney trying to access a vault.

“You think the four-digit code is hidden somewhere in the snow globe?” Wes mused.

“It’s possible. We need a magnifying glass.” Cara chewed her lip. She slowly rotated the snow globe, tipping it in different angles. “I don’t see anything! I thought maybe there would be a number on the building or something,” Cara said, frustrated.

“What about the letters in the word Dublin?”

“There’s more than four.” Cara picked up the globe and wound the mechanism until the song played.

“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Her face wrinkled. “What the hell does that have to do with Dublin? Watch while I wind it! Maybe something happens when the music plays.”

“What did the note say again?” Wes asked, dutifully peering through the glass.

Cara frowned. “I’ll get it.” She walked from her room reading the message out loud, “know that I trust in you, little STAR, to discover the answer on your own.It would have been a tad more helpful if he’d given me a hint.”

“A security device usually uses a numeric pad,” Wes explained. “Could there be a correlation between the lyrics and numbers?”

“My dad didn’t know anything about that kind of stuff.”

“But, if it was a key to a vault, he might have tried or asked someone who knew.”

“That’s a good point. The answer has to be there. Why else would he have my mom send it to me?” She trailed her hands through her long hair, fidgeting with the ends.

A loud crash sounded somewhere in the distance. Seconds later, there was a loud click and the kitchen lights blinked out, followed by the beeping of Wes’s battery backup in the other room. Even though it was morning, the house was dimly lit, darkened by the trees behind the house and heavily overcast sky.

“Great!” Wes groaned. “There goes the Wi-Fi.”

“I’m sure the power will be back on in a few minutes.”

Wes arched a brow at her. “All these trees and aboveground utilities in the middle of a storm? We’ll be lucky if we get it back by tonight.”

“Oh.” She frowned.

“I need to wrap some things up before my battery dies.” Wes turned back to his computer.

Cara finished breakfast and retreated to her bedroom. She tried to stream some shows on her phone, but the poor connection made her nuts, and she eventually gave up. After cleaning her room and reorganizing her makeup, she plopped on the bed desperate for some other way to keep busy.

Her phone pinged with an email notification. Skye had emailed the call sheet for the next few days with the message, “Looks like we are back in business.” Cara wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or worried that Courtney hadn’t fired her yet.

She wandered back into the main room that had grown much darker as the storm intensified. Thunder crashed around the house. Cara carried the candles from the kitchen table to the coffee table and lit them.

“Want to play a game?” she asked hopefully, when he looked up. He shook his head, continuing to tap away at his keyboard. Cara made a face at the top of his head. She was bored!

Checking her watch, she saw it was close to lunchtime. Not particularly hungry, she pulled open the refrigerator door, and… storm days were like holidays, right? She pulled an unopened bottle of Chardonnay from the fridge. When she walked past with her full glass, Wes’s hands lifted from the keyboard.

She held up a finger on one hand and took a large sip from the glass in the other. “Not a word. I just got an email from Skye. We are back to work tomorrow, so this could be my last day off for a while.”

Wes set his headphones to the side. “So, the evil stepmother didn’t fire you?”

Cara took another swig. “Not yet. My guess is she either wants to do it in person or find ways to torment me a little while longer. So, today… I day drink.”

Wes looked from his computer to her and back again. He clicked a few keys, closed his laptop, and grabbed a few beers from the kitchen.

“I think I’ll join you.”

“Really? Wanna play cards?”