Gold, Fire & Refinement

Chapter Thirty-One

"Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of moments." ~Rose Kennedy

The look on fifty-four-year-old Hilda Araminta Brion's face revealed she wasn't looking forward to having company. It was a hot and muggy Saturday evening in mid-August, and she was sitting on her porch swing breathing in fragrances from all the flowers blooming in her yard. Waiting for her soon-to-be white son-in-law to arrive, she was feeling a bit sad. She knew this was going to be one of those crazy-sad feeling days in her life that she wouldn't want to remember, but would never be able to forget.

Her youngest daughter was home—in her old room, trying to make it look less like a little girl's bedroom. Hilda stopped swinging for a moment to study how the setting sun was using clouds to paint a kaleidoscope of colors on the evening sky. Brilliant blue and gold, peachy pink, and vivid indigo. Every color she saw matched the color of some of the flowers in her garden. Staring at the flowers, she thought about how she always loved sunsets, but there was something about them that always made her feel sad. Maybe because they represented a powerful and overwhelming finality. A visible reminder that the day was over. Any hope the retiring day once held was gone, and a day that had become an old friend was being replaced by a new day. No matter how much or how little she had done in a day, and even though she might be blessed with a new day to do other things, she would never again experience the hope this day once held. Fading away forever, it was slowly becoming yesterday.

No matter how things turned out this evening, she would forever love her home and her homestead. Although nothing she owned could compare with anything Zarah's fiancé owned, it still belonged to her, and she was proud of it. Her late husband, Daniel Brion, Senior, was a carpenter by trade, and he built all twenty-seven-hundred square feet of the house she lived in. With light yellow vinyl siding, the three-bedroom ranch had a wraparound porch just like ones she'd seen on much more expensive homes. Her husband worked hard for many years building homes for rich people on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and once he saved up enough to build a home for his own family—one with no mortgage, he wanted it to have some of the design qualities of luxurious homes. It could never compare to Wilson Manor, the estate that would be her daughter's home once she got married. In fact, Hilda was sure her rural countryside home, if set inside the big one her baby would soon own, wouldn't fill half the ground floor. But that didn't matter. She still loved every inch of her house, from its blue-gray tile roof to its mahogany hardwood floors. Daniel made sure their home included two of her fondest wishes: hardwood floors and a porch that wrapped around the whole house, stopping only to allow for steps leading to a paved driveway in the front, and one in the back.

It wasn't long before the evening breeze enticed the soothing perfume of her flowers to dance in the evening air, the delicate scent of night jasmine offering its calming power. That's when she looked up and saw Harvey Wilson's silver truck barreling down the hill, causing a fullness to creep into her throat. Her husband paved the road. If he hadn't, Harvey's truck would be stirring up heavy clouds of red clay dust to go with all the other upset he was causing in her life. This man, this white man, was coming to spend the night in her home, and he was planning on sleeping in the same room with her daughter. She knew it was time for her to stop thinking of her baby as her baby. It was time to start looking forward to loving Zarah and Harvey as a married couple. It was time to think about how much she was going to love the grandchildren they would give her, but it was hard. Harder than most things she ever had to do, but she had to do it. She had to work extra hard to come to terms with all this man meant to her girl. 

A moment later, he pulled up and parked right next to her front porch. She smiled as he got out and started walking toward her. Soon, they were staring into each other's eyes without blinking. He was a white man, he was a lot older than her girl, and even the idea of him being worth billions was unsettling. People who had too much money, often, let it corrupt them. Still, everything about this man told her he loved her daughter more than he could even tell her in words. That he would fight hard, if he had to, to keep her baby safe from harm. He had proven his love for her girl, and deep in her heart, she knew he was the only man she would want for Zarah. Still. In this moment, it was incredibly hard to admit what she knew.