Free The Fragrance of Her Name by Marcia Lynn McClure

“Patrick…where’s Mama?” she demanded. She must escape her little brother before he heaped more humiliation upon her. But no sooner was the thought in the front of Lauryn’s mind than it was proven.
    “ So, are you and Lauryn gonna have a baby, Mr.?” Patrick asked.
    “ Patrick!” Lauryn fairly screamed. Instantly, Brant was laughing so hard he doubled over, his hands on his knees as he attempted to catch his breath.
    “ Well?” Patrick said, shrugging. “You must’ve married him, Lauryn. Why else would you come draggin’ him home like this?”
    “ Patrick! Shut up and go find Mama!” Lauryn told him through clinched teeth.
    “ All right, Lauryn. All right.” Patrick whined. “You don’t have to go getting’ your bloomers in a ruffle. And I’m tellin’ Mama that you told me to shut up!”
    “ Patrick,” Lauryn growled, stomping her foot on the ground.
    “ All right, I’m goin’. I’m goin.” And she watched, her eyes filled with tears of humiliation as her little brother ran off to seek out their mother.
    Brant was standing again and sighed heavily after one final chuckle. “That was the best laugh I’ve had in months,” he sighed.
    “ Well, I’m glad he amuses you,” Lauryn snapped wiping at the tears on her cheeks.
    “ Ah, let it go, Miss Kensington. He’s just a boy,” Brant suggested.
    “ Yes. And y’all stick together tighter than teeth,” she grumbled.
    Lauryn had half a mind to leave him standing there with no assistance. That would teach him to find amusement at her discomfort. But he was smiling broader than she’d seen him smile all day and it warmed her heart. Patrick, in his tactless, improper, boyish way, had brightened the heart of the tortured man. How could she begrudge either one of them that?
    “ You’ve got a sharp little tongue in your mouth when you need it, don’t you, Miss Kensington?” Brant asked, grinning with amusement.
    “ If I need it,” Lauryn assured him.
    Goodness, he was handsome! More than handsome. Attractive! Attractive like a magnet attracts ore. And she couldn’t look at him any longer for her discomfort at her own unsettled senses was too strong.
    “ Gracious!” Lauryn’s grandmother exclaimed breathlessly as an older man helped her down from the train. “If this trip hasn’t just taken all the sassafras out of me.”
    “ Patrick has run off to find Mama,” Lauryn stated.
    “ Has he now?” Nana asked with a knowing smile. “And just what has that little dickens done to put that tight set to your mouth already, Lauryn?”
    “ Nothin’ to be goin’ on about,” Lauryn answered, inhaling a deep breath in an effort to calm herself.
    Lauryn looked from her Nana to see her mother, Georgia Kensington, approaching. Actually, it was Patrick barreling toward them yanking mercilessly on his mother’s arm to hurry her along.
    “ See, Mama!” Patrick exclaimed excitedly. “I told you she brung a blind man home. She ain’t gonna have a baby, though.”
    “ She isn’t goin’ to have a baby,” Lauryn’s mother corrected seemingly completely unaffected by the fact that her young son had posed such a question to her daughter and a strange man. “Ain’t isn’t a word, sweet patata.”
    Lauryn’s mother greeted her with a warm and rather needful hug. Then kissing her lovingly on the cheek she wiped the tears from her own face before looking up into the bandaged face of Brant Masterson.
    “ Oh, Lauryn!” her mother began. “I’ve missed you so it has nearly broken my heart. And who is this fine young man with you on his arm?
    Lauryn inhaled deeply to try and calm her embarrassment and impatience with her family’s assumptions. It was apparent that her mother, too, thought she had surprised them with a nameless lover.
    “ For cryin’ in the bucket!” Nana exclaimed through her laughter. “Do y’all know who this man is?” she asked.
    “ Yeah, I do,” Patrick answered. “It’s a blind man that Lauryn’s draggin’