Even if he made it into a joke, what he was about to say about his old charm school teacher, Missus Garvey, would likely stick in Ciela’s head.
So he remained quiet for the most part.
At least on that topic.
“The final of the class is the stuff of nightmares. We had to get up in front of the class and our families. Show that we knew how to stand still and sit like a gentleman, in my case. Then, we’d have to introduce ourselves to the audience and say a little something about ourselves.
“I got up there. Did the sitting thing, all right. Then I stood up and walked to the microphone at the front of the class. Somewhere between the bright lights that they’d borrowed from the photo studio nearby and the hordes of people in the chairs in front of the raised stage area, I think I blacked out.”
He felt a warm hand on his arm and turned to look at Noelle.
Duval loved the gentle look of concern in her eyes and felt himself warm to her touch. “I didn’t fall or anything like that. I... I guess I ‘came to’ when I heard people applauding.”
“McCrae walked to the end of the dais and stepped down. I couldn’t even hear myself think,” his mother explained. “I sat there watching him walk back to us unsure of what had just happened.”
“Why, Gramma King?” Ciela’s eyes were wide with curiosity. “Did he do something good?”
“It’s a shame that dad isn’t here to tell the rest of the story,” Duval admitted, “he had a good laugh at the situation. Later, when I was older, he likened my ‘speech' to something akin to Jeff Foxworthy or Bill Engvall. No one knew what to make of it.”
As he watched, Ciela got down off of her chair and moved around the table to his side.
Without her even needing to ask for a hand, he picked her up and set her on his thigh so Ciela could look up at him.
“You miss your daddy?”
Before he could think about the answer to her question, Noelle’s daughter reached her hand up and touched his face with a gentle ‘pat pat.’
“I miss my daddy, too.”
Blinking back even the hint of tears in his eyes, Duval leaned in and placed a kiss on the top of Ciela’s dark head. “Yeah, sweetie. I miss my dad, too.”
She leaned in against his chest, her ear to sternum. “It’s okay, Mister King. We can miss them together.”
Well, he gave up the fight then.
He didn’t blink back the tears.
There weren’t a whole lot that touched his cheeks, but what there were flowed unfettered.
He didn’t care if anyone at the table saw his tears.
No one there would use it against him.
The people around him were good people.
The best.
If he were to let down his guard around anyone. These people were the ones he could trust the most and that, he knew, said a lot about how much he trusted Noelle and her family.
Duval wrapped his arms around the little girl he was falling for as much as he was falling for her mother. He gave her a little squeeze. “We can miss them together, CeeCee.”
When Ciela settled happily against his chest, her hand patting him on his stomach, Duval saw Patricia lean against the edge of the table and cast a look in his direction and then to his mother.
“So,” she shrugged a little, looking like she was hesitating to ask a question, “did you pass the final assignment?”
Duval tried to ignore his mother’s giddy laugh as he answered Noelle’s mother. “I did, but I think I only passed because Missus Garvey didn’t want me in her class again.”
Ciela sat up at that moment, tipping her head back to look up at him.