Day 919: 5 Minute Freewrite CONTINUATION: Sunday - Prompt: rough hands

“So, Harry told me that you helped him get that last bit of the work done on his report for Morton Master Investigator together – I've also looked over the samples of the work you did in Thornton Enterprises,” Mr. Victor Morton, founder of Morton Technologies said to Mrs. Maggie Thornton. “I must say you entirely live up to the professional billing you have gotten.”

“Thank you, sir,” Mrs. Thornton said, and smiled as she watched her fiance – Harry Lee – glowing from happiness in her peripheral vision.

“So, how did they let you go in Big Loft's police department? You would figure that with all the changes they are going through, they would find a place for a person of your skills, because they are certainly going to need the help.”

“Well, Mr. Morton, I wish I could say things have changed for the better more than they have since your family and Harry came here from Lofton County, but, not everyone wants change.”

“I know, Mrs. Thornton. I also know people who are ready keep finding their way to where they need to be. Welcome to the fold, and, in advance, to the extended family, because you are in a space no one has been allowed in for 27 years, and if you're here, you're definitely supposed to be here.”

It was an interesting idea for a White woman to consider … to have to pass muster with a Black family before being allowed to marry a White man. And, the hard part hadn't even happened yet – she still had to meet Mama Morton, the mother of the woman who had been Harry Lee's first wife.

But it was all right. Mrs. Thornton understood it, because of the tight bonds Captain Lee had forged with the Mortons. He had defended their daughter when she had needed it – twice – against jealous boys of his own race, and he had abandoned home and legacy to be with her, to go with her as she and her family sought the freedom to be and do what God had intended them to be and do. He had gone all in with the Mortons, and they had just as fully taken him in as a beloved son. Their opinion came second only behind the Lee grandparents who had raised him and not turned on him when he had given his heart to a Black woman.

Victor Morton, while showing the offices of what he had built from the ideas he had shared with his sister, showed that he was willing to accept a new sister-in-law of olive hue, and his brother-in-law glowed with joy. That made Mrs. Thornton happy too.

Captain Lee had gone over just as well with her parents and grandparents – his flawless Italian and gorgeous tenor voice and bel canto singing had been a shocking delight to them, and that led to her grandmother Margherita saying, “At least you got an Anglo who honors our traditions – this is the second time I am saying this to you and I still don't know why you just don't get an Italian, but at least he's not a Southern killer.”

Mrs. Thornton had blushed wildly because Captain Lee spoke Italian and heard every word, but he had smiled.

“The criticism is fair, Nonna,” he had said, “but your granddaughter is too wise to have brought home a bigot, because of course you would have seen right through him.”

Well, that had won Nonna over, and Mrs. Thornton's mother Mona already liked Captain Lee!

Nonno Nabucco and Padre Niccolo and all of Mrs. Thornton's uncles and brothers had been won over when they had seen how completely Captain Lee was like them – a soldier version of a man with rough hands and a hard body who had worked hard in life, and who casually and easily fell into helping out with the work they had arranged on the vineyard that day to test him.

The happiness Mrs. Thornton had felt that day as “Enrico” was accepted by the Milanos was the same happiness he was experiencing as Victor Morton, and later, all the Morton family heads including Mama Morton met her and gave their approval. She knew she was in for real when Mama Morton said, “I've been watching your shows on the web with your Cousin Margie – and girl, you can cook!”

Of course, not everyone was entirely happy in the Morton household … the racial tension that had existed between some of the younger Mortons and Captain Lee extended also to the woman who was going to be Captain Lee's second wife … they accepted that Uncle Harry had been married to the sister they had never met as cousin or uncle, and that his place in the family was a done deal before they were born, but as they grew older and got to know about and directly experience the racism of America, their resentments from that began to leak over onto Uncle Harry, despite the fact that he had always been a loving uncle.

Now, here he came adding another White woman to the mix – she wasn't white-white, for she was clearly olive in hue, and they had family members close to her color – but she was breaking the tie to their family because she was about to marry Uncle Harry, and she represented him doing exactly what one of his teenage nieces said to him (for they would not dare break out on Mrs. Thornton – they knew their Uncle Harry and their Uncle Victor and their Mama Morton better than to talk with any guest that way):

“Now you're going to get married to Whiteness again and go away and forget about us!”

That was basically the same fear that Nonna Milano had about her granddaughter marrying yet another “Anglo.”

Uncle Harry answered his teenage niece pretty much the same way he answered Nonna Milano.

“I love you too much to add anyone to our family who would take me away from you – you're gaining an Aunt Maggie, not losing an Uncle Harry.”

“Are you sure you aren't going to just turn into an average White guy now that you are marrying?”

“Oh, I gave up on all that when I was younger than you are now, and the average White folks won't even take me back now. There are some lines that you cross that you can't get back across.”

“You're still White, Uncle Harry. You can cross back anytime you want.”

“But I don't want to, Violet, and I'm not going to, and Aunt Maggie wouldn't have it anyway.”

“She wouldn't?”

“Give her a chance, Violet.”

There had still been some grumbling in Violet's cohort of the Morton family, but they had settled in because of Mrs. Thornton's humble and kind ways, and when she got up and joined the clean-up of the table and the kitchen before Mama Morton and Victor's wife Annette told her to enjoy being a guest and go sit down, that settled the matter for the day.

Victor Morton chuckled with his mother about this.

“She's really something, this new Mrs. Lee-to-be,” he said to Mama Morton after Mrs. Thornton had gone to the guest room for the night. “She's not Vanessa, but she is super smart.”

“I know,” Mama Morton said. “You know how our friend Mr. Hiddecker talks about how a new queen bee behaves when she goes into a hive?”

“Yes, ma'am – the submissive posture,” Victor said. “Maggie Thornton has got that down pat. Of course the family has all kinds of feelings about her getting with Harry – but she was just too humble and sweet to rile up all those emotions for long, and so things settled down.”

“She really is very sweet,” Mama Morton said, “and, for any White woman to come calmly in here and be in an environment she knows nothing about – Black billionaires at home – she is also very brave to face down her own fears and prejudices, and she must love Harry very much.”

“She does, and he loves her,” Victor said. “She is giving us the Harry we remember back … the often hilarious, sunshiny Harry that we thought died right by Vanessa. We moved on fully with life although the hole can never be filled, but he didn't – until now.”

“I've been praying for years that he could find love again,” Mama Morton said, “and the answer just walked in here today.”

“Yep,” Victor said, “and, sure enough, she fits in with us as well, so, we are adding to the family, not taking away!”