Westbrook Academy was fifty minutes from our house in traffic. Two bus transfers if you didn’t have a car. Classes ran from 5:30 to 8:00 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights.
Scott worked until seven most days. I worked until six-thirty, sometimes later if there was a crisis on one of the floors. Neither of us could get across town by five, and neither of us wanted our sixteen-year-old standing at a dark bus stop at 8:15 at night.
“We’ll figure something out,” I promised her.
Audrey heard the hesitation in my voice. She always does.
“You always say that.”
“Because I mean it.”
“Then why do you look so worried?”
I didn’t have an answer that wouldn’t break her heart.
For two weeks, we tried everything. I asked coworkers. Scott asked guys on his crews. I posted in our neighborhood Facebook group. A few people could cover one night here or there. Nobody could cover all three.
Every morning, Audrey checked the enrollment deadline on the calendar on our refrigerator. She’d drawn a little star on it in purple marker.
At Sunday dinner, she tried again.
“If I take the earlier bus, I can wait inside the studio until class starts,” she said. “It’s safe in there. There’s a lobby.”
“Getting there isn’t the problem, honey,” I said. “Getting home is. I’m sorry, sweetheart. Without a safe way there and back, I have to say no.”
“Dad?”
Scott sighed and set down his fork. “Your mom’s right, Aud.”
Audrey looked down at her plate and didn’t say anything.
That’s when our friend Derek spoke up from the other end of the table.
“Why doesn’t anybody ask me?”
Derek Malone had come for dinner that night, like he did most Sundays. He and Scott had been best friends since their freshman year at Shawnee Mission North. He’d been best man at our wedding. He’d held Audrey at her baptism.
Scott laughed. “Ask you what?”
“To drive her,” Derek said. “My office is right down the street from that studio. Two blocks.”
Derek owned a small insurance agency on Metcalf Avenue. I’d never really thought about where it was.
I blinked at him. “Three times a week?”
“Sure. I can move my afternoon appointments around. I’ll pick her up after school, she can do homework at the studio, I’ll catch up on paperwork at the office while she dances, and I’ll bring her home after.”
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