The girl sighed. “Is that what your kid did?”
“Yes. It is.”
“And she’s glad now? I mean, she doesn’t look back on it and think how whack it was that she had to live with you—and live by your rules?”
“I think she is glad now.”
Vanessa made a fist and plunked it against the wall behind her.
“It’s just something to think about,” Cassie told her.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Feel any better?”
She surprised Cassie with a creeping smile that changed the whole look of her young face. “Kinda.”
“Why don’t you take a walk and do some deep breathing?” she suggested. “You’ll feel so much better afterward.”
“Thanks.”
Cassie rubbed Vanessa’s arm and then headed for her car.
“Mrs. C?”
She stopped and turned around.
“You’re a’ight.”
“You too, Vanessa.”
It wasn’t until she’d turned over the ignition and pulled out into traffic that Cassie remembered that morning’s “Surprise Yourself” card.
Mentor a child who might benefit from your wisdom.
Vanessa was no longer the towheaded child with the bright orange bicycle that Cassie remembered. And she wasn’t sure if their conversation warranted the label of mentoring…or even wisdom, for that matter.
But she had indeed surprised herself!
Chapter Ten
13 DOWN: No one else like you (4 words)
“You must be Marvin!” Richard exclaimed, and he enthusiastically shook the man’s hand.
“What was your first clue?” Marvin returned with a glance down at the wheelchair that held him, and then he let out a rolling and contagious laugh.
“Well, aside from that,” Richard told him, “I saw my dance partner come in with you.”
Maureen gave the spark of a smile from the sidelines, where she was buckling into her dancing shoes.
“You shoulda seen the way Mo’s face lit up when she told of dancing again. You mighta thought she was suddenly raised out of her own wheelchair.” He tilted his head thoughtfully and then added, “I guess that’s sort of what it’s like for her, too.”
“Marvin Michael Heaton, you just stop that talk right now.”
Marvin flashed Richard a crooked grin and then bit it off like a thread. “I just had to come and see it for myself. She’s an angel on the dance floor.”
“That she is,” Richard agreed.
Without even looking back, he felt Cassie’s entrance into the hall, and then there was the tickle her voice made at the nape of his neck. Richard shook his head at the soft but persistent alarm going off somewhere in his head. It was a throwback to his days in the navy! Dit-da-dit-dit-dit-dit—a sonar signal going off within him.
“Ohh, Marvin!” Millicent cried, and she toddled toward the man and leaned over to give him a warm and welcoming hug. “It’s so good to see you out and about!”
“I had to come and watch my Mo dance.”
Millicent looked confused, so Richard began rounding up the troops. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen. Laura couldn’t make it today, but I was fortunate enough to stumble across someone with all the moves to make a great stand-in for our lesson today. Let’s give a nice welcome to Maureen Heaton, my dance partner for today’s tango.”
They applauded, and Maureen squeezed Marvin’s hand before she stepped up next to Richard.
“Some of you may know this, but I’ve only just learned it,” he told them. “Maureen operated a dance studio in Wisconsin before she came to Holiday. I had the pleasure of dancing a waltz with her recently, and she was as strong a partner as any other one I’ve ever had.”
“Oh, thank you.” She actually blushed as she angled her face toward the floor. Richard thought it was rather sweet.
“The tango is an emotional dance, with lots of clipped movements like sharp head turning and immediate stops.” He demonstrated. “The man’s arm is higher than usual, and the couple is closer together. Like this.”
Cassie’s hazel eyes flared when they met his for only an instant, and Richard darted his gaze away as he led Maureen across the floor.
“There is no rise and fall in the steps of the tango,” he told them. “You’ll make very level, flat strides, with the knees slightly bent at all times.”
Richard started the music, a piece from an Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt movie, and Maureen hopped into his arms like a frantic rabbit. Normally he would have just shown them the most basic of steps, but Maureen was invested. He could feel it from her grip on the palm of his hand to the sharp, pointed plunk of her shoes on the wooden floor. And so he indulged her, and Marvin as well, as he watched them from the sidelines with an emotional mist in his eyes.
Clearly, one man’s barn owl was another’s perfect, carved cameo. Seeing his wife dance again was a simple gift to give, but Richard noted that it was a gift received like gold and silver would have been. When they finished the dance, the onlookers erupted into applause and Marvin looked as if he might spring right out of his wheelchair.
Richard started the music again. As everyone paired off and began their own versions of the tango, his roaming eyes made their way to Cassie and Millicent.
He watched Cassie as she tripped over Millicent’s right foot and then her left. Two beats later, she dug her heel into her toes, and Millicent cried out in anguished pain.
“I’m so sorry,” Cassie crooned.
The woman has all the natural rhythm of a monkey running away from a hummingbird.
Richard approached them. “How about we give Millicent a break?” he suggested, taking Cassie by the hand while her partner hobbled off to the side and sank into the first available chair with a whimper. “Kick off your shoes.”
“Pardon?”
“Your shoes. Take them off.”
Cassie pressed the back of her heel with the opposite foot and nudged off the tennis shoe. She repeated the motion with the other one and then rocked on both heels and waggled her sock-gloved toes.
“Now what?”
“Now,” he said, leading her by the hand toward him, “gently…and please notice the emphasis on the word gently…step up on my feet so you’re standing on top of them.”
“Are you joking?”
“I never joke about golf or dancing.”
Wrinkling up her face like a dried nectarine, she placed one foot on his shoe and gingerly followed suit with the other, grappling for a tighter grip on his hand so she wouldn’t fall.
“Relax,” he told her. “Don’t try to move your feet at all. Let me do it for you.”
There was that bumbling monkey again, all arms and rubber cement. As hard as she tried to stand there and enjoy the ride, Cassie just couldn’t seem to manage it.
“Relax,” he repeated. “Let me do the movements.”
“I can’t help it,” she said from between clenched teeth.
“You can help it. Relax.”
He felt the rise and fall of a very deep breath press against him, and then, for just a moment or two, they moved across the floor almost as one single dancer.
“Do you think you can try that?” he asked her. She nodded tentatively. “Okay, step down.”
She did, allowing him to draw her along…and she followed! In perfect form, she actually followed his lead. Richard thought it might qualify as a minor miracle.
And just when he was about to allow the pride to move up from within him, to enjoy the rhythm of holding her in his arms and dancing in seamless synchronized harmony, the music dipped toward a close. And on the final beat of the song, Cassie Constantine turned back into a pumpkin, raised her foot, and planted it hard across all five of his toes.
“‘During the 1920s,’” Cassie read from the large hardbound book in her arms, “‘orchestras and bands played music meant for the fox-trot at a much faster rhythm than intended for the dance. Over time, a faster version of the fox-trot was de
veloped, with elements of ragtime such as the Charleston incorporated into it. This resulted in the dance known as the quickstep.’”
Millicent set down two glasses of sweet tea on the coffee table in front of her as Cassie continued to read.
“‘The quickstep is a fast and sporty dance with a great deal of tricky footwork involved. The tempo is slow-quick-quick-slow-quick-quick.’”
Millicent repeated it in a whisper as she moved her feet. “Slow, quick-quick, slow, quick-quick.”
“‘The majority of the slow steps are taken on the heel. And the quick ones are taken on the toe.’”
Millicent immediately adjusted the rhythm and stance. “Slow, quick-quick, slow, quick-quick. I think I’ve got it. Come here, hunny bunny. Let’s try it together.”
“Shouldn’t we watch the video again?”
“No amount of watching is going to replace the doing. Now come over here and dance with me.”
Millicent’s vinyl copy of “You’re the Cream in My Coffee” sounded grainy and scratched, but it was one of the songs listed in the book as ideal for dancing the quickstep. Cassie asked herself several times why she was working so hard at the next dance on Richard’s list for the seniors, and she hadn’t come up with an answer as of yet. She only knew that she’d found herself brimming with the desire to astound him. It may have had something to do with the “Surprise Yourself” card she’d drawn the day before: “Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others” Philippians 2:4. Think of a way to surprise someone else, rather than yourself.
Or it may have just been the staggering attraction she’d felt while he tangoed her across the floor, with her standing atop his feet, as his dumbfounded prisoner. Either way, Cassie was determined to render Richard Dillon speechless when he saw her bombshell of a quickstep.
“Like this?”
“No, no,” Millicent chided. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh. Well, let’s try it again.”
“Wait, I’ll start the music over.” And after a moment, “Cassie, you have to let go of me first.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.”
Another few tries at mastering the dance and Millicent was breathing hard, with a little wheeze at the end of each pant.
“Why don’t we take a break?” Cassie suggested.
Millicent only nodded since she wasn’t able to speak, and then she pointed at the sofa and wheezed, “Divan. Sit.”
Cassie hadn’t heard a couch called a divan since her grandmother was alive.
“It’s a dance of endurance, that’s for sure,” Millicent piped up after five minutes of puffing. “I betcha I’ll drop a few pounds this week, don’t you think so, hunny?”
Cassie nodded as she gulped at the cold tea in her glass. She leaned back against the sofa at the same time that Millicent did, and the two of them plunked their feet up on the coffee table in perfect unison. Cassie huffed out a sigh.
“So,” Millicent groaned, “why don’t you tell me about your hotsy-totsy?”
“My what?”
“Your big polka-dot crush on Twinkle Toes.”
“What on earth are you talking about, Millicent?”
“You and Richard Dillon. What’s going on there, huh?”
Cassie felt her heart kick into overdrive, thumping against her chest wall.
“It won’t go any further, hunny. You can talk to me.” Cassie just kept her eyes forward, as did Millicent, and when she didn’t answer, Millicent pressed on. “Does he know yet?”
“Know what?”
“How you feel.”
Cassie sighed again. “I don’t know how he would when I don’t even know how I feel.”
“Has he told you how he feels?”
“Yes.”
Millicent spun around sideways and faced her. “He has? When? What did he say?”
Cassie angled her head toward Millicent and then closed her eyes for several seconds. “Christmas. After dinner. We were out on the dock, and he said he was very interested in me.”
“And what did you say in return?”
“I don’t think I said anything. Stella came out and interrupted us.”
“Oh, of course she did. That woman! And have you spoken since?”
“Not alone.”
“So you haven’t said anything back to him?”
Cassie looked up at her curious friend and asked, “What would I say to him? I don’t know how to respond, or if I even want to.”
“You have to figure that out first. I mean, even if we think we know somebody, we don’t really know them, hunny bunny. But if he is who I once thought he was, men like Richard Dillon don’t come around too often, take my word for that.”
“I just don’t know if I’m ready.”
Millicent nodded, and then she asked, “Because of Zan?”
“Because of Zan, I guess. And because of that dumb crossword puzzle he left behind.”
“No com-pren-day, hunny bunny.”
“Every year, he would make these crossword puzzles for me on our anniversary, and they’d be chock-full of words describing me. Or his image of me.”
“And this has to do with Richard…how again?”
“They’re words like orderly and astute.”
“Oh, I see. And those words pretty much describe Richard, don’t they?”
“To a T. And they’re the things I don’t want to be anymore, Millicent,” she said, sliding around and folding her leg underneath her. “I want to be fascinating and surprising and—and—devastating.”
Millicent laughed. “Oh, I used to be devastating back in the dinosaur age. As I recall, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, hunny.”
Cassie chuckled and rubbed Millicent’s hand. “Until I can at least be interesting and breathtaking, I just don’t think I can give myself up to someone who is…”
“What? Who is what, Cassie?”
“The male version of Zan’s straitlaced wife,” she replied in a whisper.
“Well, I guess that’s something you’ll want to figure out first, then.”
The two women sat in silence again, and then Millicent broke it with the tinkle of the ice in her glass as she swirled the refreshment and then took a drink.
“I hope you won’t wait too long, though. Times are changing in Holiday.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Millicent flexed her ankles on the table in front of them and then kicked off her shoes and let them thump to the floor.
“I got a visit from a Realtor here from Tampa this week,” she told her. “He made me quite an offer on my house.”
“Really? Was he representing that corporation I’ve been hearing about?”
“I think so.”
“Millicent, what’s that got to do with Richard?”
The older woman gulped down the last of her tea and rested the glass on her knee. “I think Richard Dillon is the corporation trying to buy up all of the property in Holiday.”
Cassie folded both legs under her and sat sideways on the couch, her back against the armrest as she narrowed her eyes at Millicent.
“Richard? Why would you think that?”
“A few months back, he was asking a lot of questions over at the golf course. The place was…well, still is…in disrepair. It seemed like he was thinking of buying the course for himself, and the way he loves the golf game it seemed like a good move for him, now that he’s retired. But then there was nothing. Not another word. Ask him about it, and he’ll clam right up on you.”
Fragments of thought dangled in the air like loose strings hanging from the ceiling. “I don’t understand.”
“I think Richard was asking questions and then when people started to catch wind of it, he had the Realtor from Tampa pick up from there. Rumor has it that the corporation is going to bulldoze all of the properties that back up to the golf course and over to the canal, and then make the whole place into some sort of golf resort.”
“Bulldoze! Don’
t they have to get some sort of approval to do something like that?”
“Holiday is a small town, without a lot of resources. I’m afraid this would be just the sort of thing that would be approved because it would bring revenue and jobs into the area with no thought for much of anything else. But hunny, I’ve lived in Holiday since before my Bernie died. I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“So did you tell the Realtor that your property isn’t for sale?”
“I did. But he didn’t seem convinced, and Stella says they can get pretty rough when a homeowner stands in the way of their big corporate plans.”
“And you think Richard is behind all of this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, though.”
“Then why would you want me to take up with him, Millicent?”
“For one of two very good reasons.” Tears stood in the woman’s eyes as she replied, “To see if he has a part in all of this. And if he does, to talk him out of taking my home.”
“I’ll talk to him, Millicent.”
“When?”
“I’ll call him tomorrow.”
“It’s still early. Maybe you could call him now?”
“Let me work my way into that, Millicent.” Cassie rubbed the woman’s arm and smiled. “Maybe later.”
“Will you call me after?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“What do you mean?” Cassie asked her. “On the phone.”
“Do you have my number?”
Before she could answer, Millicent started speaking out the number, and Cassie plucked her cell phone from her pocket and programmed it into the memory.
In the span of the three minutes it took to walk across the street and up her driveway, Cassie decided that Millicent’s fears were unwarranted. Stella was a bit of a drama queen, and she had no doubt conjured up some sort of theatrical production after Millicent reported on the visit from the Tampa Realtor.
Richard came to Holiday to retire, after all. Not to change the whole face of the city into which he’d moved and then to become some big resort owner. It just didn’t fit together.
Cassie moved a chair from the patio down to the edge of the dock and settled there to watch the water and the stars for a while, and the scenarios continued to rumble around in her brain.
Love Finds You in Holiday, Florida Page 12