She paused and glared at the “Surprise Yourself” box. It stared back at her with a throbbing pulse for several seconds before she finally groaned and picked it up.
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” Proverbs 22:6.
She turned over the card.
Mentor a child who might benefit from your wisdom.
Cassie laughed out loud as she pushed the card into the back of the box and closed the lid. The chances of coming across a child—or even anyone under the age of fifty!—while in Holiday were pretty remote. And finding one that needed mentoring…or could learn anything at all from her? Slimmer still.
She shook her head as she hurried into the bedroom to change into some dancing clothes. She decided on her skinny black jeans, a capped-sleeve black T-shirt with shiny black beads drizzled across the front, and white Keds. As she pulled her hair back into a bouncy ponytail, Cassie fought against the urge to reach for her makeup kit in the pink canvas bag.
Why wear makeup? she asked herself. Because you’re going to see Richard Dillon?
She turned up her nose at her own reflection and marched straight out of the bathroom. But by the time she reached the hall, she’d surrendered the fight and went back for a little lipstick.
And maybe some foundation and mascara.
A little blusher couldn’t hurt either. She was also seeing Tameka, after all. And she always looked so beautiful.
Cassie reached down and flicked on the curling iron.
Just a quick touch-up.
“Tameka? I’m running a little later than expected. Any chance we could meet up around three thirty?”
“That’s perfect. I have a couple of stops to make myself.”
“How about a late lunch? At A Pizza Holiday? If I don’t get some spinach pizza soon, I’m going to cry.”
“Well, we don’t want that. I’ll see you there at three thirty.”
Closing her cell phone, Cassie jogged up the ramp of the church and into the recreation hall. A fast instrumental Latin beat greeted her, and she hurried into line beside Millicent as the group watched Richard and Laura move to the music. Millicent squeezed her hand and grinned and then twirled her hips several times to show off her dark red dress with the layers of fringe on the skirt.
“Fancy!” Cassie whispered. “Perfect for dancing.”
“I know,” Millicent replied with eager enthusiasm.
The dancers were in perfect harmony, and Cassie couldn’t help but notice the sleek, straight lines of Richard’s body as he moved. Every step and turn was so precise and timed. She feared she wasn’t likely to have that kind of balance or rhythm in her lifetime, no matter how hard she practiced.
When the music came to a crescendo and then faded to a close, Cassie joined the others in thunderous applause. She rocked to her tiptoes and clapped her hands with eager appreciation.
“Okay, let’s all partner up,” Richard told them. Cassie faced Millicent. “The cha-cha is a lively Cuban dance. The dancers should synchronize their movements, working parallel to one another. Let’s start with a basic count. You’ll dance five steps to four beats, like this. One, two, cha-cha-cha. One, two, cha-cha-cha. Got it?”
They all paired up and began with the most fundamental of steps. Cassie found herself counting aloud as she and Millicent struggled to stay in sync.
“One, two, cha-cha-cha. One, two, cha-cha-cha.”
“Let’s all stop a minute and watch the Hootzes,” Richard called out, and Cassie craned her neck to locate them in the room. “Georgette, start out on your left leg.”
As the music began and the Hootzes started to dance, Cassie’s hand flew to her mouth. She was astonished!
George Hootz had moves!
“You two have done this before!” Richard exclaimed. He and Laura stepped back and let the older couple dominate the floor. While Georgette was clearly the stronger dancer of the two of them, Cassie could hardly believe her eyes when George started with the hip action.
“Three whole beats and two half beats,” Richard narrated from the sidelines. “Notice that there are no forward steps on the heel…. Get your footwork correct first and then add the hip action…. That three-step is called a forward basic.”
Millicent reached out and tugged Cassie toward her. She was itching to dance, and she and Cassie began taking the steps along with George and Georgette. In just a few seconds’ time, several other couples were trying it, too.
“You haven’t trampled my corns even once, cha-cha-cha!” Millicent exclaimed.
“I was just thinking that myself, cha-cha-cha.”
“So, by the way, what happened with Hunter, cha-cha-cha?”
“Not worth telling, cha-cha-cha.”
“Cassie, excellent!” Richard called out. “Just watch your rhythm.”
And with those few words, Cassie promptly lost her balance and crushed Millicent’s corn with the ball of her foot.
Cha-cha-cha.
Richard watched as Cassie spoke briefly to Millicent and then turned away and walked right out the door. She didn’t so much as give a glance in his direction.
“You were wonderful, Richard.”
Maureen Heaton stood before him, abject and timid.
“Thanks, Maureen.”
“I’d give anything to dance like that.”
“It only takes practice,” he reassured her as he gathered his belongings.
“How did you get started?” she asked, peering up at him, hopeful and somewhat tragic. “Have you danced your whole life?”
“No,” he answered on a rolling laugh. “My wife insisted that we take dance lessons before our wedding. She didn’t want me to humiliate her when it came time to have our first dance as husband and wife. She’d always dreamed of doing a Viennese waltz, and I could no more do a waltz than I could…sew her a wedding dress.”
Richard sat down in one of the folding chairs against the wall, and he nodded at the empty one next to him.
“So the two of you waltzed into your new life together,” she surmised as she folded into the chair beside him. “How romantic.”
“We enjoyed it so much that we kept taking lessons. Then, after a few years, we started to compete.”
“I saw some of the photos. You were a handsome couple on the dance floor.”
“You did? How?”
Maureen gulped and then admitted, “I Googled you.”
Richard smiled at her. The poor woman was nursing quite a crush. As meek as she was, she’d never even tried to conceal her feelings, and he wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. He couldn’t reject her outright. At the same time, he certainly couldn’t let her think there was a future in it.
“I guess I’d better get going,” he said, pushing up out of the chair.
“Richard?” He turned and looked down at her, waiting. “Do you think sometime…at one of the lessons…or maybe afterward sometime…do you think we could, just once, dance together?”
Richard weighed her request. “You want to dance with me.”
“The truth is,” she said as she rose from the chair, “I love dancing more than almost anything else in the world. And it’s been a lot of years since I’ve had a partner to dance with. Well, besides Catherine.”
He laughed at that, and Maureen giggled like a schoolgirl.
“You don’t have to if it makes you uncomfortable,” she said, her head angled downward. “I just thought it would be something I’d remember, you know?”
He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t seen this sweetness in Maureen Heaton before. Beneath the clumsy, nervous little barn owl, there lurked a tenderhearted and engaging woman.
“What’s your pleasure?” he asked her.
“Pardon?”
“Rumba? Salsa?”
“Waltz,” she replied. “I would really love to waltz.”
Richard went over to the card table in the corner and flicked through the record albums and CDs stacked against the wall. He wanted to t
ake care not to choose a song that was romantic but was determined to make a choice that would lend itself well to the smooth float of the waltz. John Mayer’s “Daughters” was perfect.
He stepped up to Maureen and reached for her hand. In that moment, Richard watched a transformation take place that astounded him. Meek little Maureen converted into a strong and confident dance partner. She floated along across that floor, self-assured, graceful, and as light on her feet as anyone with whom Richard had ever danced. In many ways, he was reminded of Caroline.
As the music dissolved and the dance came to an end, Richard twirled Maureen into a light dip, and she grinned at him from ear to ear.
“Maureen,” he said as he brought her upright again, “you are remarkable.”
“Thank you so much, Richard,” she said, hand over her heart. “You have no idea what you’ve done for me, how you’ve taken me back to a time when…”
Her words trailed off, and he noticed a mist of emotion move up and over her as clearly as a morning fog.
“Where did you learn to dance like that?”
“I used to have a dance studio in Racine. My husband was a landscape designer, and there was…an accident. Before that, we used to dance together in the studio late at night—waltzes and the tango. I probably don’t look the part, but I lay down a mean pasodoble!” An enormous smile cracked across her face and then melted down suddenly into a sorrowful, disappointed grimace. “But that was before his accident, before we packed up and moved down here to Holiday.”
Her husband? “I had no idea.”
“He’s in a wheelchair now, and his dancing days are long behind him. But I’ve missed it so much.”
“Maureen, you’re married?”
“Thirty-six years. Marvin. The love of my life.”
Richard was suddenly ashamed of his own arrogance. He’d been mistaking Maureen’s longing for a dance partner for something else entirely. In the two years since he’d met her for the first time at a spaghetti supper at the church, he’d never even known that she was married. Or anything else about her life, he realized.
“Your husband doesn’t come to church,” he remarked.
“No. Marvin’s a deeply religious man, but he’s become very much of a hermit since the accident.”
“Can I ask what happened?”
“It was a random mugging. He was on his way to the corner market, and a young boy held up a gun and demanded his wallet. The boy got nervous, the gun went off, and Marvin was paralyzed.”
“I am so sorry,” Richard said, and he took Maureen’s hand into his. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
Maureen smiled through a haze of emotion. “You’ve just done it, Richard. Thank you for helping me recapture a piece of myself I’d thought was lost.”
“How’s your tango?”
Her brow arched immediately, and the corner of Maureen’s mouth twitched. “A little rusty.”
“The next dance is the tango. How about filling in for Laura?”
“Are you joking?” she exclaimed.
“Are you in?”
Grinning like a cat with a full stomach, she replied, “Oh, I’m all in.”
“I’m serious, Tameka. It’s almost impossible to reconcile the two different Richard Dillons: the one that drives me batty and the one that dances like Fred Astaire.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Fred Astaire dance.”
Cassie stared her down, mouth gaping. “How is that possible?” she finally asked.
“What?” Tameka exclaimed. “We didn’t know anything about Fred Astaire where I grew up. We were more into Kool & the Gang.”
“Hey,” Cassie replied, wiggling her index finger at Tameka, “I liked Kool & the Gang. We used to dance to them on Friday nights at the YMCA.”
“Oh, a wild girl, eh? Going to those Friday night dances at the Y.”
“It didn’t stop me from loving me some Fred Astaire, my friend.”
Tameka chuckled, and Cassie began humming “Get Down on It” by Kool & the Gang, pulling out a few of her disco moves, pointing to the ceiling and then to the table.
Tameka added lyrics to Cassie’s melody, and the two of them went into very different types of chair dances.
“Umm, can I…uh…get you anything else?”
Both of them turned instantly timid, squirming in their seats as the young waitress stood over them, and Tameka cleared her throat. “No. Thank you, dear.”
Once the waitress put down the check and walked away, shaking her head, Cassie and Tameka broke into laughter.
“She can’t even be eighteen yet, right?” Tameka cracked. “You know she’s thinking, ‘What a couple of morons.’ ”
“Yes, but I’m sure she has a much hipper term for it.”
“Like what?”
“How do I know? I’m your age.”
“Uh-huh, girl. I’ll remember you said that. Mm-hm.”
Cassie grinned and then realized that her cheeks ached from laughing so much over lunch.
“I’m so glad you met me here,” she told her friend. “First of all, I’ve been planning to have this particular pizza since the day I left Boston, but there’s been one obstacle after another until now.”
“And second of all?”
“Second, I’m nuts about you.”
“Back atcha.” Tameka reached across the table and tapped Cassie’s hand. “Promise me we’ll do this again before you leave.”
“Oh, we will. I heard a rumor that there’s a soul-food dinner with my name on it at your place.”
Tameka nodded. “You know there is, girl. Maybe we can invite Richard Dillon, too.” She looked up at Cassie and tried not to laugh.
“Oh, now see there. You ruined it. We were having a perfectly good time, and you ruined it.”
“I don’t know. It looks to me like there’s something more going on than just a bug and a windshield, Cassie.”
Cassie raised her hand in the air. “Check, please?”
“We already have the check.”
“Oh. Right.”
Tameka grabbed the check, scraped back her chair, and rounded the table to give Cassie a hug. “I have to run,” she told her. “I’ll call you to set up that open house. I’d like to hold off until I can get some more information about this mysterious corporation. At the moment, I can’t get any solid facts, just a lot of speculation.”
“Just let me know.”
“When I know something, you will, too.”
They exchanged another wave once the check was paid and Tameka was on her way. Cassie paused to sip the last of her soda and then gathered up her belongings and made her way out the door.
Just outside the restaurant, she stopped to dig her sunglasses out of her purse and was nearly knocked down as the door flew open and smacked her hard in the arm.
“I hate you! And you can’t make me work here another minute!” the girl on the other side of the tornado screamed, before ripping off her tomato-stained apron and pelting it to the ground. But instead of storming off as Cassie expected, the girl leaned back against the building and started to cry.
Cassie moved toward her with caution. This was the girl who had waited on them earlier. Her black eyeliner was running, and her black-and-pink-streaked hair was pulled into a long ponytail. Her bottom lip was pierced with a round gold ball, and a tattoo of a rosebud peeked out of the scooped neck of her T-shirt.
“Are you all right?” Cassie asked her, and the girl jumped.
“No,” she blurted.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“You can talk some sense into my father,” she whimpered.
Her father? “Oh my. Are you Vanessa?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “Hi, Mrs. Constantine.”
“Wow.”
“I know. I’ve changed, huh?”
“You…yes. You certainly have.”
“Sorry about Mr. Constantine.”
“Thank you. Are you going to be all right?”
“I have a chance to graduate early, in January instead of waiting until June.”
“That’s great…isn’t it?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you!” she exclaimed. “I have a 3.8 GPA, and I was accepted to UF.”
“Congratulations.”
“I’m gonna study criminology and then go into forensics after that. You know, be a CSI like on TV.”
“Oh.”
“So if I graduate in January, I thought I’d go up there early, a’ight? You know, check the place out, rent a room in the area until I can get into the dorms, maybe get a job for half a year. But my father thinks I’m too young, and he won’t let me go.”
“Oh, I see.”
“He is so bent.”
Bent?
Just then, the glass door of the restaurant jingled open. “Nessa, come back in here,” the young woman said.
“I don’t need you all up in my grill. I’m talking here.”
The other waitress looked at Cassie and angled her shoulders into a shrug before stepping back inside.
“You know, Vanessa, I understand your enthusiasm about getting out on your own as soon as you can, but didn’t you say when we talked on the phone that you’re just sixteen years old?”
“Seventeen next month.”
“Still, that is very young to be out on your own. The world can be pretty terrible sometimes, and I can tell you from experience that there are very few people out there who will have your back, no matter what happens.”
Vanessa glanced over at her, and then she lifted one shoulder.
“Your dad just wants to be there for you as long as he can. In another blink of an eye, you’ll be in college and then working a job, maybe moving away. It happens so fast. And I can pretty much guarantee you that, after it does, you’ll wish you’d stayed these last six months.”
Vanessa gave a bitter chuckle. “I don’t think so.”
“You love your dad, right?”
“Most days.”
“And he loves you.”
“Till I choke.”
“So you have a job here. You can make some money to sock away and take with you when you move to the dorms. And in the meantime, you can take advantage of free room and board and a little extra time to spend with your family before you leave them behind and start your life.”
Love Finds You in Holiday, Florida Page 11