Silver Currents of Change

Chapter 40

Sitting at the head of the table in the dining room of his comfortably furnished penthouse apartment, with Zarah on his right side next to him, and Hilda on his left, Harvey smiled at his girlfriend's mother as she spoke. At the top of his mind was how much the beautiful woman on his left reminded him of the beautiful young woman on his right. The one he loved with all his heart and soul.

"I'll never forget this day," Hilda told him after they finished dinner. "Your company, your home, and the meal you made us all by yourself. Harvey, everything has been just so wonderful. All your offices and the way everything is laid out downstairs—it's almost too beautiful for words. The printing company is in the building, and the magazines you publish? I can hardly wait for my subscriptions to come in the mail every month. She smiled. I like the way you have them staggered, so I get a different magazine some months, and I get a chance to read every issue of one, before the next issue of it comes in the mail. And all the articles are interesting and every one of 'em is relevant to my life. You have a great company, Harvey, and it's easy to see—you know and you care about your readers."

"I must confess, Mrs. Brion," Harvey said, "it's your daughter who has our editorial offices running so smoothly." He looked at Zarah. "Even working from L. A., she's been doing a great job." When Hilda smiled at him and patted his hand that night was when he discovered he loved seeing her smile almost as much as he loved seeing her daughter smile. "There is no way I could do what I do without Zarah and Laura, my brother's wife. They lead my executive team, and they deserve the credit for how well the publishing part of my company runs. They just keep me around to give tours."

Laughing, Hilda gave him the "Oh shut up" hand swat, and he loved it. Zarah stood up and excused herself to go to the restroom before dessert, and he and Hilda continued their conversation. Harvey knew it was her way of making sure he and her mother didn't need her there in order to have something to say to each other. "Oh," he said, "I have something to show you." He got up, took a picture from a sideboard credenza, and handed it to Hilda. It was his favorite picture of him, as a young boy, standing on the lawn in front of his parents' home with his father and stepmother, his brother, and his two younger sisters. As Hilda looked at the picture, he told her Mary was the only mother he'd ever known. Then he told her the two young girls in the photo with them were his sisters, Mary and his dad's daughters, Emily Estelle and Reese Lyn Wilson.

"You have a lovely family. Beautiful people."

"Thank you. I hope you'll get to meet my sisters one day. I know you'll like them."

"You know what? I'm glad to know my daughter works for someone like you, such a nice, family-oriented person. My boys, Zarah's brothers? They're away up in Chicago, married with families of their own, so they're not around much. And I'm just a country woman, never liked the city much. But Zarah loves cities. Oh, she likes the country too, but I think she needs to live in the city because of her work, and because of what she wants to do with her life. And now, well, I guess I feel it's been an answer to my prayers for her to have someone like you as her employer ... somebody that's also a friend. A man so understanding ... about things. A man who cares about her. Who looks out for her."

"It's my pleasure," he said. "But Zarah is the one who has been a blessing ... to me. You have no idea how much I depend on her. She's irreplaceable." He wanted to tell Hilda everything, right then and there. But he couldn't do it without Zarah's approval, so he held back.

"She's always been real smart and creative," Hilda said. "They always said she was a genius when she was in grade school. You know. Based on the testing they put her through and all that. But she never liked that label much."

"I know. We've talked about that. Most folk would love being called a genius, but not her."

"She never liked standing out because of her brains. But everywhere she goes and everything she does, she always manages to stand out anyway."