Free Glass by Suzanne D. Williams

you.”
    No, she was the one afraid. There she stood watching all she’d sought to attain die around her: prestige, a good name – all of her family gone but one girl, who sought escape.
    “ You are a blind man groping around in the darkness,” he continued. “You hope your money or your influence will save you, but nothing you try will do that. Not a year’s salary or an expensive glass fixture. The only hope you have will be found on your knees begging grace and forgiveness.”
    She was rigid now, ince nsed, her pallor flickering red and white, and staring at her, a thought fitted in place. The design. She wanted the ultimate design to hang central to the room, and in that instant, the shape and form of it flashed in his thinking, the colors he’d need, the contour.
    A smile crawled on his face. “Six months,” he said. “I’ ll have it completed and float it over on a barge. It’ll take five workers and all day to hang. We won’t stay the night, so timing with the weather will be at my discretion.”
    He wouldn’t be trapped here again.
    “Very well.”
    “And Cerise is free to leave when she will to go where she will.”
    The old woman’s face twitched, a cross between her previous anger and a hint of amusement. “You’d throw her in with the deal? She won’t leave.”
    No, s he wouldn’t go right now. She needed more time. Time to realize she was only as tied down as she allowed herself to be. Time to believe in something other than a pile of old stories.
    “ You will allow her to leave.” He reiterated his statement. “Or I will tell what I know of this place to everyone I can.”
    This turned the old woman’s ire into rage and a change of her voice to one frothing with wrath. “I saved her,” she said. “My son tried to kill his own child. Did she tell you that? He tossed her mother around, thinking the baby wouldn’t live. But when he failed, he demanded I give her to him. But I knew what he’d do, so I secreted her away. I fed her myself with a bottle. Her mother wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t see her.”
    Awful. But he wasn’t surprised. Yet still there were questions.
    “Your husband,” he said. “He killed his son.”
    The temperature of her blood was almost palpable in the room, yet she was strangely calm. Ice-like. “He killed himself.”
    And the full circle stared back at him again. He had to get out, get away from this place. E scape. Except for Cerise. She was here, and she didn’t deserve to be left with a woman capable of such things. That she’d done the idea framed in his head, he had no doubt. This was her triumph. She had her husband’s glass, his prized possessions, his granddaughter that she’d saved, and apparently his madness as well.
    “God keep her,” he mumbled.
    The old woman squared herself, blocking the path to the door he entered through, and waved him the opposite direction. Confused and not willing to risk going against her, Andre took the indicated path, around the shelves to a wide spot in front of a garden entrance. At that instant, it opened and Osiris stood there. He was dressed in his boatman outfit, wool jacket, white pants, blue button-up shirt, and he wore a cap with a gold logo embroidered on it. He looked regal almost.
    “Your ride,” the old woman said.
    His ride. He glanced behind, but the door to the house was shuttered. So that was her game and why Cerise had been so upset, why she’d refused to look at him. She knew he’d not be allowed back inside.
    The sun sparkled off the rain-laden grass in a splendor only second to the one surrounding him.
    “Six months,” Mrs. Delacroix said. “You can call me.”
    He took a step forward and paused. Looking back at her, another question formed on his lips. “Who was Lucille?”
    Her anger was gone. Perhaps she felt now she’d won. He’d be gone, exactly the same way his father had, and Cerise would be left behind. His breakfast soured in his gut.
    “Lucille?”
    He nodded.