The Night I Gave My Best Friend's Brother a Child novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: Her Mother's Pearls
By Saturday afternoon the farmhouse yard held sixty folding chairs and a banner that said Happy 80th, Edith.
Drivers from the freight company had hauled in the tables.
Two church ladies were arguing about the potato salad on the back porch, and neither of them looked at me when I walked past.
Edith sent for me at four.
Her bedroom was at the end of the upstairs hall, a plain room with a quilt and one window facing the hill.
On the dresser stood a framed photograph of Rhett at twenty, in a dress uniform, not smiling.
Edith sat on the bed with a flat leather box in her lap.
"Close the door," she said. "Turn around. Let me see you."
I turned.
She had sent a dress to the house on Friday, plain dark green with a high neck, in my size.
I had not asked how she knew it.
"It will do," she said. "Come here. Sit."
I sat beside her on the quilt.
She opened the box.
Inside lay a double strand of pearls on a bed of yellowed satin, with a silver clasp worn smooth.
"These were Rhett and Bridget's mother's," Edith said. "She wore them to her own wedding. I took them off her myself at the hospital, because I did not want a stranger to have them."
"Edith, I can't..."
"Bridget asked me for them when she turned sixteen. I said no." She lifted the strand out. "I have been waiting to find out why I said no. Lift your hair."
I lifted it.
The pearls were cold at my throat, and then warm.
Keep reading free with an account. Start The Night I Gave My Best Friend's Brother a Child from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.
← Chapter 16 · All chapters · Chapter 18 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend