I laughed when she threatened to stop the car. She sounded just like my mom. When she settled down, I called Fritz and told him it might be helpful if she knew how to fly. He agreed to do it through his company. Of course, that meant I would get the pass-through for the expense. In the end, it was a better idea, tax-wise.
I introduced Roy to Dare and asked if Roy had anything for Dare to do while we were in class. Roy sent him off to do something, and we got started. The food was a hit with Roy. He said that if I kept it up, he wouldn’t charge me extra for the class time. He’d put this class together just for Cassidy and me.
◊◊◊
Once class was over, Roy walked us out back where we found Dare and several of Roy’s employees flying drones. I about fell over when I realized Dare was animated and talking a mile a minute. We’d finally discovered something the kid loved. I was a little jealous that he’d been doing this while I was stuck listening to Roy jabber on. It appeared that Dare had had a much better time.
“We’re getting prepared to teach a drone class. You have to have a license to fly them for commercial purposes, so we purchased a couple of different models to see what would work best. They’ve been testing them out tonight,” Roy explained.
Dare guided a drone with four props toward us.
“David, you should buy this one.”
Suddenly, I knew what my parents felt like when Greg or I would find something we had to have that made no sense. I decided to use an oldie but goodie.
“I need to think about it.”
“We can probably make you a deal on one of them,” Roy said, playing dumb.
Dare tried to play it cool, but he was literally quivering, he was so excited.
“We’ll talk about it later,” I proclaimed, officially becoming my parents.
“Brook would buy it for him,” Cassidy offered.
She giggled when I gave her ‘the look.’
“Go put it up. We need to go.”
Did I really say that? Even Roy gave me a funny look at that one. Everyone knew that if there was fun to be had, I was usually the first one in. Tonight, though, I had about fifty things I needed to do before bedtime. I sent Cassidy with Dare to land the drone and take care of it while I asked Roy how much they were. Let’s just say that they didn’t plan to give them away.
◊◊◊
Dare sulked for all of about two minutes before he couldn’t hold it in any longer and told us all about flying the drones. He’d tried them all and decided the last one was superior. Cassidy and I sat quietly as we listened to him say more words than all he’d ever spoken combined since I met him. When we got to his house, we let him out of the car and turned him loose on his mom. It was like I’d just filled him up on cookies and Kool-Aid to give him a sugar buzz. I was sure she wouldn’t want to dump him on me the next time she needed someone to watch him.
We had several cars parked at our house, forcing us to park on the street. I walked in, and Kyle and Mac ran to me. Each of them wrapped a leg and sat on my shoe. I’d made the mistake of walking like Frankenstein’s monster and letting them catch a ride. Now I was forever stuck with it, not that I minded. Nate reached up, so I bent down to pick him up.
“Baby crying,” Mac told me.
Grandma Dawson handed me Carol, who didn’t want anything to do with me. I knew that girls were trouble.
“Hey,” I barked and blew in her face.
She stiffened up, and I thought for sure we were in for major hysterics. She blinked three times and then laid her head on my chest.
“He fix,” Kyle said and then began to giggle when I walked them into the kitchen.
I saw Ms. Dixon and Tom Dole at the kitchen table with my grandma, dad, and Ian. They were drinking coffee, and it appeared that they’d all had cherry cheesecake. Angie and Scarlet came in and took Nate and Carol from me.
“You two leave your uncle alone,” Angie scolded Mac and Kyle. “Go play with your dad.”
“Have a seat. We have news,” Dad told me.
Cassidy had followed me in, so she stepped into the living room and grabbed a couple of the kitchen chairs that had been stolen for people to sit on there. She came back with Brook, Caryn, and my mom. Brook sat on my leg like old times.
“We were able to get in front of the judge this afternoon. I wish they would have let us videotape it because it would have been a keeper,” Ms. Dixon said.
I could tell that I was about to hear some good news.
“Mr. Fox made his case that Duke wasn’t qualified to run for mayor. I expect he wanted to change the focus from the signatures when he saw we planned to challenge his. Granted, the judge saw the common sense in his argument, but observed that the only qualification to run is that you live within the city limits. I think he might have ruled in favor of Mr. Fox if the idiot hadn’t made an ass out of himself. He basically called the judge stupid if he didn’t deny Duke’s candidacy.
