Tuesday Tales: From the Word FOOLISH

Welcome to September. Years ago, for me, that meant a return to the classroom. Now, it’s just the last few weeks of summer. This week, the authors from Tuesday Tales have another word prompt for their scenes. I’m continuing with Listen to the Stones. As always, my cover artist has provided me with an inspiring cover. Enjoy this snippet and your first look at our hero.

Nathan chuckled. “I’m not surprised. The man might’ve been a good businessman, but he was as foolish and stubborn as they come. He and his brother had a falling out over a woman some seventy years ago. He might be the eldest and the Fraser heir, but she chose his younger brother. The men never spoke again. But as to the great-niece, Angus might not have displayed the photographs, but his estranged brother, Iain had a son, Hugh Fraser. The young man, a reporter, was killed during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, just a few weeks after his daughter was born. He never got around to marrying the mother of his child. The woman stayed on the island for three years looking after Iain who’d suffered a stroke and was paralyzed. When the man died in his sleep, Angus wanted nothing to do with her or her bastard child whom he denied could be a Fraser. She packed up her three-year-old and went back to Canada. She never came back.”

“I wouldn’t have taken him to be such a small-minded man,” Jerome mused.

“It seems the old man mellowed with age,” Nathan added. “Ewen MacDonald and I are friends, so when I approached him about buying the land, he shared more than he would’ve with a stranger. When he was diagnosed with lung cancer last spring, Angus tried to reach out to the girl, but Eileen Harrington died four years ago from complications with COVID. The old man made a new will leaving everything to the grand-niece he hadn’t seen in more than thirty years. I hate it when stuff like this comes across my desk. It’s both petty and tragic.”

Jerome shook his head. “Aye, tragic in more ways than one.”

He’d hoped to be settled in Fraser Hall before winter and to take his time studying the stones—after all, he might be a successful writer, but he was still an archeologist. Those particular stones were on Fraser land, and while he could probably get permission from the historic society responsible for preserving all historic sites in Scotland, he wanted to do this on his own, not be required to publish papers and report to bureaucrats. His interest in the stones had nothing to do with their age, mineral content, layout, or purpose. It was all about the power they possessed.

That’s it. Stay safe, and don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.