Heart in the Field by Jillian Dagg

throat
at the beep, she left a message for him to call her back on her phone. She
added what the call was about to spark his interest. She then called her mother
at her city hall office to find out if she knew Seth’s whereabouts. Her mother
was closeted in meetings for the rest of the afternoon.
                When Don knew the score he said,
“Why don’t we split? We’ll get this thing edited and you guys can come back
tonight. Hopefully with your brother, Serena.”
                “I’ll do my best.” If Seth didn’t
feel it was the right venue for his sound she would have to add persuasion.
                Serena decided to go and visit
Seth’s apartment. He might be home by the time she reached there. She’d rather
talk to him in person than on the phone.
    •
                Nick took a cab to the rental agency
to pick up his car. It was a fully loaded new Buick, a comfortable car. The car
gave him a chance to drive to his father’s jewelry store.
                Fraser’s Precious Gems was still
open each day, even if his father didn’t have much faith in the younger man who
came in to work for him. Stephen Fraser couldn’t manage even a few hours a day
himself now. The store was running at a loss. Nick wanted to talk to his father
about selling it. Then his parents could move from the apartment above the shop
into a more modern place and live off the proceeds from the real estate. He
hadn’t put the plan to his parents yet. It was something he’d decided between
seeing their situation in April and now. He was always aware of how much of a
stranger he was to them, as they were strangers to him.
                Nick parked the car behind the store
in the overgrown back lane. He opened the wooden gate, walked up a paved
pathway, climbed the iron stairs at a run and knocked on the door. The action
reminded him of when he was a kid, coming home from school. Only then he didn’t
have to knock and he always received a scolding for running.
                “Break your neck doing that,” his
mother always told him.
                His mother, Maria, didn’t say that
this time. She wore a pair of light blue slacks and a white top, her gray hair
tied in a sleek knot away from her now wrinkled features. Once her hair had
been raven-black, the same color as Nick’s. She’d had a few small illnesses
over the past year that had sapped her strength, but she still managed to look
handsome and in command.
                “Nick.” Her manner was vague, as if
she needed time to remember who he was.
                She raised a hand full of rings.
Beautiful rings, some merely engraved bands, some bursting with different
stones, all crafted for her by his father over the years. It made Nick realize how full of talent and what a wonderful craftsman
his father was, and it made him sad that Stephen had never taught him his
craft.
                Nick took hold of his mother’s hand,
wondering why she’d never offered a hand when he was a kid. Now he had to hold
withered, cool fingers, and they would be his only memory of his mother.
Swallowing back a lump of emotion, he said, “My car’s still being fixed so I
rented one.”
                His mother was the first to drop her
hand. “That’s good. Are you working now?”
                His mother had never thought that
working in the field was actual work. One had to go somewhere to work, a store,
a factory, an office. “Yes. I got my new office this morning. Dad in?”
                “Yes. He’s in the front room. He
went down to help in the store this morning.”
                Sniffing a
slightly musty lemon oil, Nick walked through the narrow hallway of the
dark apartment. He wasn’t sure why the rooms always seemed dark. The paintwork
was light cream and the floors a light wood. Possibly the darkness was caused
by the lack of