Free Beauty: an Everland Ever After Tale by Caroline Lee

seems to approve of your answer.”
    Eddie nodded. “That’s because he’s smart.”
    “And you’ve told me the truth, I can tell.”
    “Yes. I like playing my father’s instrument.”
    Vincenzo ran his fingers up the violin’s strings, reveling at the way the slightest shiver of music trailed his touch. “It’s a good instrument, Eddie. A fine violin. Your father must have taken good care of it, to save it for you.”
    “Yes, sir. Mother said he was saving it for me, even though he didn’t know about me when he died.”
    Unbidden, the vision of Mrs. Mayor in another man’s arms crawled through his mind. Since the moment he’d touched her, right here in this room, he’d wanted to touch her again. Why? She was just a woman, too obsessed with appearances and propriety. But the open way she’d cried told him that she was more; that deep down, there was a truth to Mrs. Mayor that could be unlocked with passion and music and sensuality. She’d been married twice. Surely that meant she’d experienced passion. Surely that meant she’d spent time naked, entwined with a man’s limbs, her fingers digging into his back as he heaved and stroked and caressed and—
    Abruptly, Vincenzo dropped his hand and stepped away from Eddie. This was not a healthy line of thought. Mrs. Mayor was just a neighbor. A friend, perhaps. The mother of his first and only student, but no more. Even if she were the type to overlook his appearance, she could never be more than a friend. He couldn’t let her; he’d long ago forfeited any chance at a Happily Ever After, and he knew it.
    Clearing his throat, he moved towards where he knew the table stood, and nodded. “Very well, Eddie. Let’s hear what you’ve been practicing.”
    The boy was right. He did sound better than a dying duck. And Rajah only joined in once, yowling along to the boy’s rendition of Mozart’ s   Ah! vous dirai-je, maman variations .
    Later, after Eddie’s lesson, the two of them talked about how his steamship model was progressing, and Vincenzo answered the boy’s questions about the propeller shafts on board while Eddie petted Rajah. It was gratifying to hear Eddie’s enthusiasm for knowledge, especially when it came to mechanisms and engineering. Here was a boy after his own heart.
    Mrs. Mayor had been smart to arrange for violin lessons. It was obvious that the boy was interested—he absorbed information like a dry towel—and he’d already learned to tune his father’s instrument. The first time Eddie handed it to Vincenzo, a shock of nostalgia had gone through him. A lifetime ago, he’d left his childhood instrument with Jane, before letting her go. In a different world, this could’ve been his. All of it.
    And now the music room was silent, Eddie having taken his father’s violin back home. Their next lesson was in three days, but Vincenzo would visit with the boy tomorrow evening, when he visited Eddie’s mother’s bookstore.
    Ahhh , Mrs. Mayor. Vincenzo sat forward in his chair, pulled the silk scarf from his eyes, and rubbed at his temples. Rajah’s throaty purr increased when he rubbed against Vincenzo’s leg, and then batted at the material that dangled from his left hand. Sighing, he threw the blindfold on the floor, listening to the big cat playfully pouncing on it.
    Mrs. Mayor. Now there was a confused woman. She put so much stock in appearances, in propriety… but underneath, he could feel, could hear her passion for life. A life, he suspected, that had passed her by.
    From her comments, especially during that first appointment, he knew that she tied appearances to worth, and wondered what she thought of him. Did she think he lacked worth, because he was… Vincenzo passed his fingertips over the skin covering his eye sockets. Hideous ? Hideous didn’t even come close. He was beastly.
    But this was no surprise. He’d lived with this pain—as the physical pain lessoned, another had begun—for over a decade. He’d known that it