Page 97 of Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness

He wouldn’t go that far.

Maggie, who’d been sitting on the sofa watching Annie on the small TV that the Glam Gram must have bought in Delilah’s absence, just then looked up and squealed, “Pizza! Yippee!”

Merrill set the pizza box on the table, on the other side from the cards, and Maggie came running over, demanding a piece. He put one on a plate for her and another for Grandma, then took a piece for himself.

The door to the bedroom was closed, and he assumed Delilah was in there. Is she hiding out from me?

No, Delilah would come out punching, if she had something to say to me. That’s the problem. She obviously doesn’t want to talk to me.

Well, tough toenails, toots! We’re gonna talk if I have any say, and, boy, do I have a lot to say!

“She’s mad at you,” Grandma said.

“No kidding!” He took another slice and wondered if he dared ask if they had any beer in this joint, or even a frickin’ soda.

Sensing his thoughts, Grandma got up, went to the fridge, and came back with two beers.

“So what’s up with Delilah?” he demanded.

“She was worried sick about you last night. It was storming real bad here, and you weren’t answering her calls.” She shrugged and stacked all the cards together, having apparently lost that round with herself, then began to shuffle them like an expert croupier.

“Wanna play a hand?”

He laughed at the apparent hustler. “Not a chance. You’d clean me out in a casino minute.”

“Wanna watch Annie with me?” Maggie asked, patting the sofa beside her.

“Maybe some other time.”

She had pizza sauce around her mouth and was pretending to feed the crust to her stuffed dog. Narrowing her eyes at him, she asked, “Did you get me a dog yet?”

“I never said I would get you a dog.”

“Betcha my Mommy would like you better if you watched Annie.”

He actually considered that possibility for a moment.

“Betcha she would like a surprise dog.”

What a little con artist!

Finally, he’d had enough. He went over and knocked on the bedroom door. “Delilah, are you decent? I’m coming in.” When he opened the door, he was shocked to find the room empty.

He turned and demanded, “Where is she?”

The conniving old lady blew out a thick cloud of bourbon vapor and said, “Gone.”

Chapter 19

Sometimes, just a hug is enough . . .

On the last ferry back to Bell Cove that evening, after spending more than an hour with her parole officer, Ms. Gardner, in her Nags Head office, Delilah was alternately furious and frightened.

Furious, because Merrill had gotten her into this mess. Oh, to be fair, he hadn’t reported her to her parole officer. She’s the one who’d been lax in notifying her contact in the department that she had a new job. Well, no, she actually had given notification of her new job by a cowardly voice mail before going out on the Sweet Bells expedition. Where she’d been lax—and, yes, deliberately so—was in failing to notify her employer of her prison record before the hiring.

Frightened, because even such a small thing as failing to notify an employer of a prison record could nullify parole and result in a convict being remanded back to jail to do additional time. And what about Maggie, then? Oh, Lord! The prospect of losing her child to the system was beyond frightening to Delilah. It was terrifying. She doubted they would appoint her grandmother as guardian again. They would consider her a whack-job, with all her talk of Vegas shows, and slot machines in Atlantic City, and Avon products out the wazoo. Instead, they might place Maggie—oh, who knows where? Inadvertently with a sex pervert, maybe? Or with some hairy-armed guy with a heavy hand? Or with some religious nutcase who lived in a compound? Or with . . .

No, she couldn’t think of all these things.