Broken Serenade Read Online Free PDF

  
        The young man looked at her wonder-struck. This child was telling him exactly what he wanted to hear, as if she were reading right into his soul. She knew exactly what he needed – love. He needed love so badly! What an irony! Timothy reflected sadly. The only girl who truly loves me is actually an eight-year-old child, and I’m going to break her little heart now the way Nadine did with me. Life is cruel. It punishes me in so many ways today… Without any reason at all… 
        He registered Vivien’s mother pitched voice like a gravely wounded man who hears the siren of the emergency ambulance coming to his rescue.     
        “Vivien, what in the world have you done now? I was dead sure you would do some sort of foolishness. I could feel it in my bones since we were still at home,” the woman said, wiping her daughter’s tears with an embroidered handkerchief and getting her down from the piano. 
        “Caprices of a spoiled child! The lack of education always surfaces, as oil on top of water,” a hostile Mrs. Leigh hissed nastily. The new hairstyle that she had recently adopted, right after she had bleached her hair, encouraged one to wonder if she were not, in reality, advertising for brooms. In fact, it seemed that she displayed one – in a tasteless manner – right up on her own head.  
        “I beg your pardon!” Alison Hopkins replied indignantly, and her cheeks flamed. “Vivien is a very sensitive child. She only wanted to express her empathy with Timothy’s misfortune,” the woman said to her daughter’s defense. 
        “Will you forgive me, dear Alison,” Timothy’s mother excused herself theatrically, a scornful smile on her heavily made-up face. “I was thinking about an entirely different person. The thought that I was actually referring to your daughter shouldn’t even cross your mind.”
        T hen, Mrs. Leigh brushed past her son and told him in the same aggressive tone that had made her proverbial in the Woodside area. 
        “Don’t make such a fuss, Timothy dear! She wasn’t worthy of you anyway.”
        Not quite content with her bitter remark, she turned around and lectured him a little more.
        “Just forget her! All right? She’s five years older than you. You’re so young! Smart men don’t marry at 21. You think marriage is good sex and laughter. You’re wrong, son! Happy marriage is a fata morgana . Only fools rush in!”
        Timothy didn’t want to reward her with a reply, and frustrated, she called her limousine driver and left.
        Alison Hopkins acted as if she had not heard Mrs. Leigh’s insensible words. She gently put a hand on the abandoned groom’s arm.
        “We’re really sorry, Tim darling,” she told him sincerely. “You certainly didn’t deserve this.”
        With that, she bid him goodbye and turned to her weeping daughter. She grabbed Vivien’s hand and dragged her toward the parking area, where Mr. Hopkins was waiting for them with the Mercedes’ doors open.    
        “I find it unnecessary to tell you that you’re grounded the entire following week,” she said categorically. “I am perfectly sure that you know what that means: no chocolates, no visiting friends, no escapades to Mademoiselle Lili, and no piano or French lessons. Rien, comprenez-vous? ”
        “ Oui, maman ,” the little girl answered resigned.
        “Don’t be so hard on her, Alison!” Carol Hopkins called from her chair.
        Vivien freed herself from her mother’s hold and ran to give her dear grandmother a hug.
        “There, there, child. You’re too young and beautiful to suffer. If it’s any help at all, just remember that I’ll always love you.”
        “I love you too, granny Carol.”
        For a few seconds, under her granny’s fancy, flowery parasol, Vivien felt as if she had evaded into a fairy-tale-like world. The tears ceased to flow.   
        As the two women