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    Saint Martin's Day
    Saint Martin's Day
    Saint Martin's Day
    Ebook44 pages33 minutes

    Saint Martin's Day

    By Kim Fielding

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    About this ebook

    Five years ago, Neno Kovač fled California, graduate school, and his lover, Toby Cowan, to return to his native Croatia. Since then, he’s led a quiet life as a librarian—until one November afternoon when Toby, who has never stopped loving Neno, shows up in Zagreb. When he left the United States, Neno wasn’t ready to give up his home and family to take a chance on a long-distance relationship. But Saint Martin’s Day has arrived, the day pressed grapes turn to wine and autumn turns to winter. Perhaps it will be a day when other changes are possible as well.

    A story from the Dreamspinner Press 2014 Advent Calendar package "Celebrate!".

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamspinner Press
    Release dateDec 1, 2014
    ISBN9781632167354
    Saint Martin's Day
    Author

    Kim Fielding

    Kim Fielding is pleased every time someone calls her eclectic. Her books span a variety of genres, but all include authentic voices and unconventional heroes. She’s a Rainbow Award and SARA Emma Merritt winner, a LAMBDA finalist, and a two-time Foreword INDIE finalist. She has migrated back and forth across the western two-thirds of the United States and currently lives in California, where she long ago ran out of bookshelf space. A university professor who dreams of being able to travel and write full-time, she also dreams of having two daughters who occasionally get off their phones, a husband who isn’t obsessed with football, and a cat who doesn’t wake her up at 4:00 a.m. Some dreams are more easily obtained than others. Blogs: kfieldingwrites.com and www.goodreads.com/author/show/4105707.Kim_Fielding/blog Facebook: www.facebook.com/KFieldingWrites Email: kim@kfieldingwrites.com Twitter: @KFieldingWrites

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      Book preview

      Saint Martin's Day - Kim Fielding

      Saint Martin’s Day

      "NENO! NENO!"

      Neno stopped with a sigh. He turned around and looked up the slope to the house where his mother stood on the balcony, waving her arms. The balcony was on the top level of his parents’ house—his apartment. He wondered if she’d purposely waited until he left for work to round up his dirty laundry and search for imaginary dust bunnies under the furniture.

      What is it, Mama?

      Will you be home for lunch?

      Not today.

      Well, bring me some bread when you do come home, then. Not that brown bread your father likes, but—

      I know the kind you want. I’ll bring it tonight.

      She smiled at him. Thank you. I’ll cook you some dinner.

      He waved at her before continuing down the hill. Sometimes he took the bus, but the weather today was unusually fine for November and he didn’t want to waste it. Besides, it wasn’t a long trek—perhaps three kilometers—and he liked the exercise. He listened to an audiobook as he walked. The crime novel was in English, a language so much better than Croatian for murders and vice, he thought, perhaps because it contained so many lovely guttural curse words.

      The narrator was uttering a few of the choicer blasphemies just as Neno walked by the Zagreb cathedral. The timing made him feel obscurely guilty, even though he’d always been a Catholic more in name than in deed.

      At the bottom of the hill, the main square was even busier than usual. In addition to dodging trams and skirting tourists snapping photos of the statue of Ban Jelacić on his horse, Neno had to dance around the coveralled workmen who were erecting small wooden booths. Even once he passed through the square, the pedestrian-only street was crammed with people heading to the café tables arrayed over the pavement. On days like this, it seemed as if he and the waiters were the only ones in the city who had to work. Everyone else could sit for hours with their coffees and cigarettes.

      Well, to be fair, Neno’s boss had to work too, and she waved at him as he entered the quiet sanctuary of the library. "Dobar dan, Neno." She stood behind the counter near the door, squinting at something on her computer screen.

      He walked over to greet her. "Dobar dan, Ivana. It looks like a slow day in here."

      Soon enough the weather will turn cold and we’ll be busy. It’s funny how everyone’s more literary when the temperatures drop. She smiled merrily at him.

      Even if we have an empty house today, I suppose there’s some work for me to do.

      Always. She pointed vaguely

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