Free Shades of Surrender by Lynne Gentry Page A

of her best doormats out in the hopes that today she would welcome her first real customer.
    “It’s going to be another beautiful day, Mother.” The cheer Ruth added to her voice did not really affect her mother as she hoped, but she prayed the habit would eventually change her own perspective of their new reality. She opened the window, placed the stool in the sunlight, then went to the mat and lifted her mother upright. “Let’s try sitting in a chair this morning.” She hoisted her mother to a standing position. “Steady as she goes.” With Ruth’s hand gripping her mother’s elbow, they slowly shuffled across the tiny room. “Once you’re settled, I’ll go see if the baker has any day-old bread.”
    Her mother didn’t say anything. But her silence was nothing new. Mother hadn’t spoken a word in six months. Ruth found the quiet harder to bear than the grief and shame that had accompanied her father’s death. But she refused to give up hope. One day the dark cloud would lift, and her mother would come to appreciate the life Ruth had made for them in the meantime. A life without the warm laughter in her father’s eyes and the luxury of his sought-after skills at the loom, but a life nonetheless.
    “Let’s comb your hair.” Ruth reached for the brush near the little oil lamp, but before her fingers closed around the handle, a large black dog burst through the open doorway.
    “Brutus, no!” A tall man, winded from running, scrambled inside. He launched himself headlong in pursuit of the mutt with a notched ear. “Brutus, come!”
    The dog ignored Caecilianus. The lanky dye merchant had dark hair as woolly and disorganized as the skeins of multicolored yarns hanging from the rafters of his dye shop in Ruth’s old neighborhood. His nose was far too big for his face, but if he’d just press his tunic once in a while, his kind eyes and quick smile could make some girl forget his lack of symmetry and coordination.
    “Brutus!”
    The horse of a dog galloped around the shop. His tail knocked over the empty water jug, whacked the loom, and then the small tool table Ruth had managed to keep from the tax collector’s hands. Her father’s packing forks and trimming knives clattered upon the floor.
    Caecilianus raced after him. “Brutus, come back!” He lunged for the rope leash. Missed. Then slipped upon Ruth’s weaving hook and went down face-first. His long body lay sprawled on the floor.
    Ruth couldn’t help but laugh as the dog circled her and her mother for the second time. “Here, Brutus.” She reached out and grabbed the hemp collar. “Sit.” The dog’s unclipped nails scratched the tiles as he skidded to an obedient stop and parked himself before her, tail wagging. “Good sit, Brutus.”
    Caecilianus struggled to his feet. “How did you get him to do that, Ruth?” He brushed bits of yarn from his wrinkled tunic and clamped his warm, calloused hand over her hold on the dog’s collar. “He doesn’t listen to a word I say.”
    At the jolt of Caecilianus’s touch, Ruth released the collar and returned her trembling fingers safely to her mother’s hair. “He needs a firm hand, Caecilianus. Discipline and order.” As do you , she thought but did not say out loud as she took in his disheveled appearance. Whenever the church gathered to worship in Caecilianus’s dye shop, it was all she could do not to take a broom to the clutter or scissors to the splatters of red, yellow, and green stuck in his untamed beard.
    “When did you grow up to be so wise, little one?” He winked at her.
    Heat flushed her cheeks. “Good of you to finally notice, Caecilianus.”
    She hadn’t meant her response to sound so forward. Caecilianus was nearly double her age. Thirty-one to her sixteen years. Perfect ages for a respectable marriage contract, were either of them so inclined. Which they were not. She had her responsibilities, and Caecilianus had always been more of the doting older brother type. Shy but