Free Still Life in Shadows by Alice J. Wisler

Period. There was never any room for discussion.
     
    Gideon pushed thoughts of his father aside as though they were empty oil bottles ready to be recycled. He wanted to dwell only on happy thoughts this morning. He sought to be smiling and lighthearted when he went to Another Cup for his tea and pie. Today was going to be the day. He spent extra care as he shaved and tossed on one more splash of cologne before heading out for his walk to work. As he walked out under a murky sky, a lone catbird meowed from a desolate maple tree, reminding him that winter was just around the corner. To the east, a few crows cackled and then got lost in the distance as a hawk spread her wings, circling for some tidbit on the nearby ground.
     
    He had to admit that he continued to feel a little imprudent for assuming that Mari was Kiki’s mother. Since Mari looked to be about twenty-five or twenty-six, and Kiki was thirteen, that would have meant Mari had been awfully young when she’d conceived Kiki. She would have been barely a teen. He shuddered to think of how his great-great-grandmother on his mother’s side had had her first child at thirteen.She went on to have eight more after that. Story had it that one of her sons had found her body in a cornfield. She’d died of a massive stroke at the age of thirty-seven.
     
    At the shop, he greeted Ormond and later Luke. By nine, he tried to hold in his frustration that Amos was nowhere in sight. He asked Luke if he’d heard anything about the young man’s whereabouts. Luke looked up from under the hood of a 1998 Camaro and said he had not seen Amos since yesterday.
     
    When the boy ambled in to work twenty minutes later, Gideon glared. “You are to be here at eight when we open,” he said.
     
    Amos rolled the long pants legs up so that they no longer dragged. Scratching his chin, he said, “I overslept.”
     
    “Do you need an alarm clock?”
     
    “A what?”
     
    Slowly, with emphasis. “A clock with an alarm that goes off to wake you up in the morning.”
     
    “I have a cell phone that beeps when I set it.”
     
    Gideon was impressed that the kid had found the alarm on his phone. “Be here at eight tomorrow,” he stressed and then told him to help Luke with the pastor of Second Presbyterian’s car that had just arrived for a tune-up. He was tired of reprimanding Amos. Days ago he’d headed over to his apartment to remind him of the contract. “You signed it, you need to keep to it. You are getting free rent by working for me for a month.”
     
    The boy had stared up at him and then sat on the wicker chair in his living room, looking weary from just breathing.
     
    “Are you getting enough sleep?”
     
    “I don’t know. I guess.”
     
    Gideon had left the apartment after that, uncertain as to what to do. He’d helped others who were only passing through on their way to someplace else, realizing that Twin Branches and the Russell Brothers Auto Shop was not to their liking. But those boys and girls were clear about what they wanted. Like Luke’s sister, Rebecca, and others whohad connections in Raleigh or Atlanta, they each desired to experience what a larger town had to offer. He was fine with that; they didn’t have to feel obligated to stay in these mountains. But none of them had been as lazy and ungrateful as Amos was proving to be.
     
    Again, Gideon needed to rid himself of ill thoughts today. He was about to head over to the tearoom to see Mari. He wanted to feel courageous and brave. Suave and warm would help, too. He was going to ask her out. He studied his hair in the restroom mirror. His curly locks had a tendency to look forlorn if he didn’t keep them in check. He took off his cap and swiped a hand over them so he didn’t have hat hair. He smiled into the mirror. Even though he’d spent a majority of the morning working under the hood of a Honda, he could still smell his aftershave.
     
    Briskly, he walked to Another Cup, hope expanding in his