AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Thank you, Hilda," he said with a smile. "If I hired on to be your kept boy, I'd let you dress me in a suit woven by eight-year-old children in Taiwan, but since your sciatica is acting up..."
Hilda pulled her designer sunglasses down her nose to look at him. "Damn, I do like you.”
"So you've said."
"Such power you have in that smile." She patted his cheek again. "Employ it on my cousin, will you?"
"Heil,Hilda," he joked, falling into step with her as they crossed the street and headed toward an old-fashioned general store owned by the Burnsides.
"And a sense of humor, too. Lucky Abi," Hilda said stopping before the large plate-glass window. "There."
In the center of the window stood a bronze sculpture of a young boy holding a small bird in his hand. He knew right away that it was his mother's work. He glanced at Hilda. "You know."
"That your mother's Calliope? Yes."
Leif turned, studying the beauty of the sculpture. "How?"
"You look like her."
Leif turned away from the display which showcased the upcoming art festival with the poster Hilda had designed and several other pieces of art the owners of the store must have collected over the years. He walked away to lean against a cast-iron parking meter. "You knew her?"
"Yes. I was on the committee then and Simeon was most insistent that your mother's work be in the showcase tent. He was enamored of her."
"Simeon Harvey was in love with my mother?" Leif shook his head as the possibility Simeon was his father poured over him like the hot wax his mother had used in her castings.
"Oh, not the way you think. Simeon was gay, but he loved things of beauty, and your mother was one of the loveliest creatures I've even seen. He wanted her like he wanted a Monet. Had nothing to do with romantic love or sex."
Leif stared at the storefronts across from them."I don't understand."
If Simeon had been gay,he couldn't be Leif’s father. Or could he? If Simeon was attracted to beauty, maybe it didn't matter. Maybethe man played both ways.
"Simeon loved your mother as a friend. He loved her work, loved her very nature. Calli possessed a quality not many others do-she was a free spirit, very ethereal, but at the same time earthy. When she wasn't creating, her head stayed in the clouds."
Leif gave a hard laugh. "Yeah, you knew her all right"
Hilda nodded, jerking her head toward the way they'd come. They fell into step together.
"So what really happened to Simeon? I heard that-"
"Your mother killed him?"
"Pretty much," he said with a shrug, trying to distance his emotions from the facts. This was why he'd come to Magnolia Bend. He needed to know what happened when his mother lived here, needed to know who his father was. The key to his future lay in his mother's past.
"Are you here to clear your mother's name? And if so, what took you so long?"
"I didn't know anything about her life in Louisiana until she passed away several months ago."
"I'm sorry. She passed at a young age.”
''Cancer."
"Mmm." Hilda's expression was somber and respectful. “And your father?"
He stayed quiet for a few minutes. Hilda watched him.
Finally he bit the bullet. ''That’s the thing. I don't know my past and that keeps me from my future. Not knowing my father didn't really bother me before. As a child, if I thought at all about him, it was in the context of some fairy godfather who might swoop in and save me from being normal. Beyond that, what did I care? As I grew into a man, I put away thoughts of who my father was or what had happened between him and my mother."
Hilda stopped. "So now we reach your real reason for being in Magnolia Bend. It's not about a job or even clearing your mother's name."
