The Master Fiddler Part 15

"What's wrong, Jo?" he asked quietly. If he was angered or hurt, there was nothing in his voice to reveal it.

"I don't know," she sighed. She glanced back at him hesitantly, letting him glimpse the melancholy expression in her eyes that silently apologized.

"You've been home a week now. No calls on any of your job applications?"

"I haven't applied anywhere." His eyebrows raised briefly at her statement, but his face remained impa.s.sive otherwise. Jolie inhaled deeply as she averted her eyes from his face. He always knew so much more of what she was thinking and she couldn't even begin to guess what was going on in his mind. "I've got my diploma and I don't even know what I want to do with it."

Something Extra "Home economics graduates always make good wives," John stated.

Although there was a light, teasing air about his words, Jolie knew it was a testing statement. But how could she possibly tell John that she didn't love him, or at least not the way she wanted to love the man she would marry. What was worse, she felt so guilty for not loving him.

John Talbot was a girl's dream. Not only was he good-looking, extremely so, but he was also solid and dependable. Just looking at his tanned features, so clean-cut and handsome, made Jolie wonder if she wasn't out of her mind for not s.n.a.t.c.hing up this man who had waited faithfully the last five years for her. She didn't deny that John had a magnetism that attracted her to him, but nothing happened no bells rang, her heart didn't beat any faster when he held her in his arms. It wouldn't be fair to marry him when she knew this.

"Did you ever wonder why I didn't give you a ring while you were at college?" the quiet baritone voice asked her.

Jolie nodded, too full of her own feelings of guilt to reply vocally.

Something Extra "I knew you liked me, even loved me, but I knew you weren't in love with me." Jolie grimaced and John lifted her chin that was threatening to sink into her chest. "You were eighteen and I was twenty-four. I decided it was only fair for you to wait until you had graduated. But, to trade on an old cliche, absence hasn't made the heart grow fonder, has it?"

"I feel like the lowest beast on earth, John," Jolie whispered, "but I'm not really in love with you. I care about you more than anyone I've ever met. In my way, I do love you."

For just a moment his fingers dug into her shoulders, revealing the pain that his face didn't show. Then he had released her and was lying back against the tree trunk.

"The way you feel wouldn't satisfy either one of us for long." His smile was slow and regretful with only the barest traces of bitterness around the corners of his mouth. "So what are you going to do now? Are you going to stay around here?"

"I don't think so." There was an almost imperceptible shake of her head as Jolie replied. "I thought if I came back here to the farm it would give me a chance to put my thoughts together. After three years of being Something Extra whisked along by the steady flow of cla.s.ses, homework and odd jobs, I feel as if somebody has just put me ash.o.r.e. I thought coming home would reorientate me but it's only made me more confused. I don't want to take just any job, but I can't keep sponging off my parents either. I've cost them enough."

"It will all work out."

"I hope it does... for both of us. John?" His gaze that had been turned unseeingly on the landscape reverted to Jolie. "Is it too much to ask that we still be friends?"

His hand reached out and ruffled her hair in a gesture reminiscent of her teenage days. "Of course," he smiled, moving agilely to his feet. She rose to stand silently beside him. "Don't be so solemn, honey," tracing the curve of her cheek with his finger. "It's not as if I'd suddenly discovered you weren't in love with me. I think I would have been more shocked if you were, and a little bit afraid that you were lying."

Jolie stood on tiptoe and planted a soft kiss on his mouth, her eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears she didn't have any right to shed. "Aunt Brigitte will have my scalp for letting you go."

"Don't tell me your neurotically romantic aunt is here," John laughed.

Something Extra "Aunt Brigitte is a died-in-the-wool spinster. How can you possibly consider her romantic? Mother swears she would be surprised if Aunt Brigitte had ever been kissed."

"Don't you believe it. There is one woman who knows exactly what love is all about." That was a puzzling statement to Jolie and one that John was going to let her think about by herself. "Uncle Ray will be wondering where I am, so I'd better shove off."

She didn't realize at first that he was leaving until he was already several steps away from her. "John, I'm... I'm sorry," she called after him.

There was a slight stiffening of his shoulders before he turned and waved. Yet his stride quickly carried him away from her toward his car. Jolie watched him drive off before she walked over to her rotund horse still contentedly stuffing himself with gra.s.s.

The screen door slammed behind her as Jolie entered the two-story, white-framed house. She didn't feel any better or worse than before she had left that morning. Only one thing was definite and that was she would not be looking for a job anywhere near home. It wouldn't be fair to John, not that he was the type to jump off a cliff. Actually, he was the oppo Something Extra site, the kind who met a problem head on and conquered it.

"h.e.l.lo! Who is it?" The imperious call came from the sun porch.

"It's me, Aunt Brigitte," Jolie replied, sticking her head around the door with a wave of her hand. "Where's Mother?"

"In town getting groceries." When Jolie would have gone on to her own room, her aunt motioned into the room. "Come sit with me."

The iron-gray hair was drawn into a severe bun at the back of her aunt's head. Jolie had always regarded her aunt, who was twelve years her mother's senior, as being stern and practical, but in the light of John's statement, Jolie wondered how correct her a.s.sessment was. Her features, which had always possessed the uncompromising lines of age, could quite possibly be attractive when her aunt smiled as she was doing now.

"What have you been doing since you've returned home?" Her Aunt Brigitte's questions always sounded more like commands, but then she had been a teacher for the last thirty years, Jolie mused.

On rare weekends her aunt journeyed to her only sister's, Jolie's

mother, to spend two un

Something Extra eventful days on the farm. This was one of those rare times.

"Relaxing from the grind of all the finals, mostly and trying to figure out where and what I want to do next."

"That sounds as if it's a momentous problem." Jolie saw her aunt'slips quiver, almost breaking into a smile. Brigitte Carson glanced up,noting the troubled expression on her niece's face. "It is, isn't.i.t?"

"Yes." Jolie sighed heavily and turned away from her aunt's searching gaze.

"Where have you been this morning?"

"Out with John."

"I'm quite sure he had an answer to your dilemma."

"Yes, he had a suggestion." Jolie's voice was soft and simultaneouslyfirm. "I'm not in love with him, Aunt Brigitte."

It was her aunt's turn to sigh and she did. "I'm sorry to hear that.Sorry for you as well as for John. He would have been a loving husbandand father. You are quite sure about how you feel?"

"What is love?" Jolie asked quietly, turning away from the window toher aunt. "I'm twenty-one years old and I don't even know what itis."

Something Extra

"That, my dear, is an eternal question that will be asked as long asthere are people on earth." Her aunt's dark gray eyebrows raisedsignificantly. "At least, I do know you aren't in love with John oryou wouldn't ask."

"Which is a tricky way of avoiding my question." Depression turneddown the corners of her mouth. "And please don't use mother's oldquote Love is many things to many people."

"The kind of love that I believe you're talking about is a rare thingwhere bells ring," her aunt answered her quietly. "Mostly because it'sa selfless love and there are few people who can give of their feelingsso freely and completely. Others search for it so hard that they neverfind it. There are only a lucky few who really do find it."

"Did you, Aunt Brigitte?" The withdrawn expression on her aunt's face

drew the whispered question from Jolie's lips.

"Yes, once. A car accident took him away from me." A melancholy smile lifted the usually stern mouth. "And that love completely spoiled me for second best, which has made my life very lonely. The type of love you're speaking about can cost very dearly. Perhaps that's why it's so precious."

Something Extra Something Extra "Do you suppose I'll ever find it?"

"Not with that mopy expression on your face. n.o.body would be interested in a mourner." From experience, Brigitte Carson put just enough sharpness in her teasing words to pull Jolie away from the depths of depression.

"Well, I certainly need something to do with myself in the meantime. I'm not looking forward to leaving here and still, I don't want to stay."

"Sometimes, Jolie, it's difficult to make a decision when you're surrounded by the people you know. You want their suggestions even knowing they're not helpful. The best thing for you to do would be to take off for a week or two. Go somewhere by yourself, relax, and have a good time. It's surprising how clear everything becomes afterward."

"There isn't any place I particularly care to go," Jolie shrugged.

"Oh, surely there's some place that you've always wanted to see."

A light shone for a moment in Joke's eyes as she thought of her long-held childhood wish before she blinked it away.

"Perhaps," she admitted, "but it's quite out of the question. What little money I have saved I'll have to use to start out on my own. It wouldn't stretch to include any extravagant whims."

"It doesn't hurt to talk about it. Where would you like to go if you could afford it?" the matronly woman persisted.

"I know this must sound awfully strange to you, but I've always wanted to go to Louisiana where my great-grandmother or whatever came from. I remember grandmother telling Madelaine and myself the stories her mother had told her about the plantation home where she lived." Jolie glanced over at her aunt, shyness creeping into her voice. "I can't help wondering if Cameron Hall is still standing."

"It is rather curious how that one lone ancestor of ours has managed to still be so much a part of our lives." Dark eyes scrutinized Jolie carefully. "You were named after her, weren't you? Jolie Antoinette. Somehow all the girls received French names down the years."

"I don't mind. Jolie is much more romantic than Jane Smith could ever be," she laughed.

"Perhaps there is a way you can make this trip." The wheels were turning almost visibly in her aunt's mind as Jolie watched her set the book from her lap and stand.

"I don't see how."

Something Extra "I have a fair amount of money saved and I never have decided what I'm saving it for. I didn't get you a graduation gift because I wanted you to pick it out. It seems you have," her aunt smiled. "A trip to Louisiana and the bayou country." "That's much too expensive!" Jolie gasped. "I couldn't possibly let you do it."

"How could you possibly stop me?"

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