Potluck

This seventh short story in part two of my book Welsh Cakes: Book of Short Stories, has snow and winter as its setting once again. Tom and Joyce had been in love ever since they first met at the Sunday School picnic many years before this snowy winter's day. Their joining together in marital bliss was thwarted when Joyce's widowed mother was in need of care at home. Joyce's brothers deemed her to be the logical choice to fulfill this necessity. Tom, meanwhile, married another woman as he couldn't see any end in sight of Joyce's commitment to her mother. His marriage was not a happy one, however, as he really was still in love with Joyce and couldn't forget her. The seed for this story grew out of an old run down house on the street where I lived in Toronto a number of years ago. "Tom now observed the brittle curls of green paint clinging to the wooden siding as if in a desperate attempt to cover the mottled purple-blue-grey of earlier paint jobs lying beneath; this house has seen better days, he thought. The metal eaves trough looked like an elongated colander and was no longer able to channel water to the downspout. Icicles had formed at the roof's edge and dripped in the morning sun." Tom's wife had divorce him and left him free to pursue Joyce when her mother departed this world. Tom's opportunity to approach Joyce came when a snow storm provided him an excuse to shovel her driveway. Whether Joyce would be intereste in his advancements or not remains to be seen.