Chapter 8: The Pearls

"Where's my mother's portrait?" I said.

Shelby glanced back at the neon sign.

"Oh, that big gloomy thing? It's out with the bins."

I turned around.

The trash cans sat at the curb, beside Hayes's truck. Pickup day.

Leaning against the recycling bin, face out to the street, was my mother.

Oil on canvas, in a gilt frame. Painted the year Sweetgrass opened, flour on her cheek because she'd refused to wash it off for the painter.

Hayes had already seen it. He was lifting it out of the gutter, very carefully, by the frame.

He carried it to the truck and laid it in the cab on the seat, not the bed.

I turned back to Shelby.

"I'll take the pearls now."

"These?" She put her hand over them. "Your daddy gave them to me."

"He gave you a lot of things that weren't his to give."

"They're a wedding present."

"They were my grandmother's. Then my mother's. They're mine."

Shelby's smile got wider.

She took out her phone and held it up.

"Hey, loves," she said to it. "So my ex-bestie just showed up at my house trying to take my jewelry. Again. I don't even know what to do anymore."

Across the street, a screen door creaked.

A neighbor on the next porch had stepped out with her coffee.

Two joggers slowed down on the sidewalk.

A tourist couple on rented bikes stopped right at the curb.

Shelby liked an audience. She'd always liked an audience.

She was about to have one.

"Daddy's coming," she said. "I already texted him."

The silver Lexus swung around the corner off Legare Street and pulled in behind Hayes's truck.

My father got out in his Sunday suit.

He looked at me on the porch. At Shelby in her robe. At the joggers.

"Liza," he said, in his soft voice for company. "What are you doing at Shelby's house?"

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