Page 45 of Property of Prime
I flipped through a few more sketches.A raven perched on a branch, the outline of the haunted house, a set of long shadows cast across the grass at sunset.She captured the eerie beauty of this place in a way I hadn’t seen before.
Pearl reached for another box.“Look at this one.”
She pulled out a canvas no bigger than a notebook.The painting was muted blues and warm browns.It was a pair of hands holding a coffee mug with steam swirling upward.
“It’s so… gentle,” I whispered.
“That’s Bernice.”Pearl set it aside carefully.“She collected gentle moments.And weird ones.And, well, she actually painted everything.”
She dug into the box again and pulled out framed pictures wrapped in paper.She set them in a pile between us, then slowly unwrapped the first one.
A faded photograph of a young woman.Bernice, but maybe sixty years younger, stood barefoot in the shallows of the lake with her jeans rolled up and her hair wild in the wind.She might’ve been in her twenties and smiled like she didn’t have a care in the world.
Pearl snorted softly.“Look at her.Carefree as hell.”
“She was beautiful,” I said.
“She still was,” Pearl answered, voice cracking.“Just… different.”
We set the photo aside with the others.
The next stack was more art.Some bright, some dark, some half-finished.Portraits of people I didn’t know.Watercolors of leaves.A surreal painting of a hand reaching out of the shadows.A black-and-white piece that gave me goosebumps.It was a little girl standing at the edge of the water and was turned slightly as if someone had just called her name.
I stared at that one longer than I meant to.Something about it tugged at my mind like a memory hiding behind a locked door.
I shook myself and dug into another box.
Pearl reached into one across from her and pulled out a picture wrapped in tissue paper.She unwrapped it and burst out laughing so hard she startled herself.
“What?”I leaned over.
“Oh my god, look.”She held up the photo.
It was Bernice, maybe fifty years ago, wearing high-waisted bell bottoms, a tie-dye crop top, and the world’s biggest sunglasses.She was flashing peace signs with both hands while standing in front of a van covered in flowers and stickers.Her hair was enormous.Like, defied-gravity enormous.
I snorted.“Stop.No way that’s her.”
“That’s her.”Pearl wiped tears of laughter.“She partied through the seventies like she invented them.My dad has a photo of her dancing on a picnic table at some festival.It’s framed in his office.”
I laughed harder than I thought I could today.
She set the photo aside, still smiling, and reached into the box again.
The next photo wasn’t funny.
At all.
Her expression changed instantly, smile fading.“What…?”
It was Bernice again.Older than in the hippie picture, but not by much.
She was pregnant.
Round belly.Soft expression.One hand pressed protectively underneath the curve of it.
Pearl stared, stunned.“She was… pregnant?”
“She had kids?”I asked.
