breezes from the ever-after

Though it is December--a month not over-famous for having any time to write--I have written enough in No Mere Mortals and Cottleston Pie that it warrants a Snippets Post. I've also given Fly Away Home a total over-haul, which was good stuff too. Adding scenes and what-not. This pleases me, because some months I feel that I ought to have plenty of time to write and I accomplish nothing, and others I have no time, and I accomplish much. This was a month of the latter, as I've said, and I hope you enjoy these fruits of my labors from No Mere Mortals and Fly Away Home.

The monitor on the bed tracked the patient’s heart with a faint beep. The beeping gained speed as Barnaby Harcourt drew a ragged breath. “You’ll…take…care of her?”

Gregory rolled his eyes. “’Course I will, old fellow.”  The monitor continued to beep, the only sound in the hospital room. With his customary chill manner, Gregory took a sweeping view of the medicine arsenal on the bedside table, the IV stuck in Barney’s upper arm, the shallow rise and fall of his chest, the crumpled “Get Well” cards gathering dust—each day more mocking.

-No Mere Mortals

“…I need to impress those lawyers. I want my yacht.”

“Sir! You might do well to remember you are headed to Harcourt Commons to hear the reading of the late Mr. Harcourt’s will—not to go grave-robbing.”

“Anders, I am shocked and affronted. Put it that way and you make me sound a villain. He asked me to take care of her. To love her. I am only doing old Barney the last service he ever asked of me—asked for it three times.” Gregory smoothed his hair once more in front of the hall mirror and glared at Anders’ reflection. Barnaby Harcourt had not died that day in the hospital. Rather he’d lived through two more “attacks” till the last killed him off. Poor chap. Gregory sniffed once for memory’s sake then clapped his hands. “Well, Anders—shall we?”

“Very well, sir.” With his customary limp—courtesy of an old wrestling injury—Anders followed him out to the limo.

-No Mere Mortals

Gregory shifted in his seat, rubbed his hand over his chin, and swallowed. “Anders, is it possible?”

The limo pulled through the gate and crunched gravel as Anders nosed it up the drive. He sighed, Gregory noticed. “Is what possible, sir?”

“To like someone. No—no…I mean, to be fond of someone. So fond you’re sorry they die.”

“I should think so, sir.”

“You would think so, wouldn’t you?”

-No Mere Mortals

The yacht was his, the fortune was Adrian’s, and everyone else got a lampshade or an acre or two in Alaska.

-No Mere Mortals

“Look kid,” Gregory raised the pitch of his voice and the sharp note hurt Brian’s ears. “I don’t want you. I wanted a yacht. An exotic vacation. Not…Kindercare!”

“She can’t hear you.”

“What?”

“She can’t hear you.”

Gregory licked his lips. He’d paled to one shade tanner than his cuffs. “What do you mean.”

Wrong guy. Terrible choice, Mr. Harcourt. “Your ward is deaf, Mr. Abbot. A complication from a difficult birth.”

-No Mere Mortals

“So what did the virtuous little woman do?” The contempt in Gregory’s tone was plain as a green Christmas.

-No Mere Mortals

“No name, huh?” Somehow Gregory was not quite so astonished as he expected to be. Who would bother naming a child no one wanted? He turned to her now and cleared his throat. “You’re…eh…coming home with me, all right?” The deuce—she was deaf. He’d forgotten that. He felt utterly stupid. Stupid as a barnacle on the bottom of that yacht he should have inherited. Ummmm….he pointed to her chest. “You…are…” he scooped his hands toward the door, “coming…home…” he made his hands into a house-shape, “with me.”  He balanced the point of his finger against his tie before remembering it was silk and the oil on his hands would stain it. The child continued to stare at him, and Gregory was not at all sure his charade had done a thing in making her understand. She didn’t budge. Gregory winced. There was only one thing left—he’d have to hold her hand and lead her to the car. He reached out, took grabbed her fingers, and tried not to think of how ridiculously small they felt in his hand.

-No Mere Mortals

He shifted an inch or two closer. “But just think. Why do we love stories? Why are we addicted to knowing what happened? Because we are part of a Story. A drama. We were made for something more than this—we are always seeing glimpses, hearing news, feeling breezes from the Ever-after. And because we do not acknowledge that we are beings—souls—created for eternity, we are left with an empty ache. We refuse to see our Story and thus we lead empty half-lives, under the shadow of a longing for something—Someone—we push away.”

-Fly Away Home

“But you have to understand my side of things.”

“Do I?” I arched my eyebrows and crossed my arms, wondering if his statement warranted my throwing the salt shaker at him.

-Fly Away Home

“Yes. I will admit my journalistic side got the better of my judgment. A man in love, bored to death with his usual thoughts, and faced with a mysterious woman, can’t help but rise to the occasion.” The roguish tilt to his smile and the way his eyes flickered over me again and again made me weak.

-Fly Away Home