THROUGH A MAGNOLIA FILTER – Teaser Tuesday

Posted at Jul 13, 2016 1:07 am

Next month THROUGH A MAGNOLIA FILTER releases! Thought I would give you a little teaser of the opening of the book.

If you read A SAVANNAH CHRISTMAS WISH, you briefly met Liam Delaney on Christmas Day. Now he and Dolley have their own book.

Here’s the excerpt.

LIAM DELANEY WAS an orphan. Again. He laced his hands together and waited for the priest to bury his godfather. A sigh whistled between his lips. At thirty, being alone shouldn’t matter. But it did. Was it wrong to want a home, a family? To belong?

The wind caught the priest’s deep voice and swirled it round the cemetery. Latin. English. The languages blended in the breeze.

Ignoring the words, Liam listened to the priest’s tone for any hint of sorrow at the passing of the man in the coffin. He heard none. No surprise that. He’d lived with the man for eleven long years.

This day couldn’t end soon enough. He was ready to escape Kilkee for the final time. Leave this reminder of his childhood and catch a plane—anywhere. Just so he wasn’t in Clare, Ireland.

As a distraction, he plotted how he would film Seamus FitzGerald’s funeral. With a wide angle, he’d pan from the crumbling dark stone wall through the gray-and-white crosses and sinking headstones. While the priest droned, he’d linger on the yellow warbler perched on a cherub statue and let its sweet, clear song play. The camera would swing to the Celtic cross marking his godparents’ graves. The towering cross lorded over the monuments of the other FitzGeralds buried near.

Seamus’s wife had died twenty-five years ago. Liam had only known her through pictures he’d found in the manor. Photographic evidence Seamus had once been happy.

When Seamus buried his wife, he’d buried his smile.

After pausing the camera on the cross, he’d pan to the eight mourners gathered round the open grave. The priest. The housekeeper. The mortuary man. The groundskeeper. Three strangers, one young and two who must be Seamus’s chums. And him, the unloved godchild. Standing alone.

Compared to memories of his parents’ funeral, this service was stark. For his da and mum there had been flowers, music, tears and hordes of people. Liam had stood next to his scowling godfather, grieving. He hadn’t realized he would never be hugged again. A lad of eight needed hugs.

He’d learned to expect no affection from the man in the coffin.

A gust of wind fluttered the flower petals in the arrangement straddling the yawning hole. A bee flitted from the single funereal wreath. His camera would follow the bee as it left the daisy to circle Father Patrick’s head.

The priest intoned, “Because God has chosen to call our brother, Seamus James FitzGerald, from this life to himself, we commit his body to the earth, for we are dust and unto dust we shall return.”

Liam would shift the camera frame to the housekeeper’s face. Wind tugged strands of gray hair free from her bun and ruffled her black skirt. He’d track the tear slipping down her lined cheek in a harsh unforgiving close-up.

Why would anyone shed a tear for Seamus?

Cut.

The eBook releases August 1 and the Paperback August 9th.

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