Read Online Summer of Pearls by Mike Blakely - Free Book Online

dreamed of him climbing the stairs to her room. But in her dreams, he never spoke of pearls. “So what?” she said, rather defensively.
    â€œWell, if you don’t mind, I’d like to see them.”
    â€œWhat for?” she asked, suspiciously.
    He crumpled the hat brim in his hand. “You might say I used to collect pearls, too. Saltwater pearls, mostly. I’d like to see yours, if you don’t mind.”
    She looked in his eyes. It was like looking into a mirror. His stare
couldn’t meet hers. He diverted his line of sight. He was trying to get by some shame of his own.
    â€œAll right,” she said, stepping aside to let him in. “I wasn’t expecting anybody.” She put the can of beef stew behind the curtain on the windowsill, fluffed her hair a little, and pulled the bedspread tight where she had been lying on it.
    Billy stood uncomfortably in the candlelight. “Mind if I light the lantern? I can grade the pearls better in lantern light.”
    â€œGrade them?” she said, handing him the lantern from her bedside. “What do you mean by ‘grade’ them?”
    Billy held the burning candlewick under the globe and lit the lantern. “See how much they’re worth. I’m not up ori today’s prices, but I can give you an idea of what they’d sell for.”
    Pearl wrinkled her pretty nose. “Pearls from that old muddy lake aren’t worth anything.”
    â€œA pearl is a pearl, Miss Cobb. It doesn’t matter if it comes from a Caddo Lake mussel or a South Seas oyster. They’re all graded the same way.”
    She stared across the room at him. He was an unusual man to know so much about pearls. Who was he? What had he come here for?
    Billy shuffled nervously. “Well, where are they? If you don’t mind …”
    â€œThey’re in here.” She picked up the tobacco tin from her bed.
    They sat across from each other at her table and he opened the container. He angled the box to catch the light, then reached in with his fingertips and nudged apart the square of velvet bundled around the pearls, to get a glimpse of them. “You’ve got a lot of them,” he said.
    Pearl shrank into her chair with shame, and Billy looked as if he regretted commenting on the extent of her acquisitions. Perhaps he hadn’t meant anything by it. He removed the piece of velvet from the tobacco tin and spread it across the tabletop, letting the light strike and dance upon the pearls.
    There were more than twenty pearls of many shapes and colors. About half of them were white. The others varied from blue to purple to pink to yellow to gold. Only a few were perfect spheres. Some were
flat, others long and thin like spikes; still others were shaped like flower petals or angels’ wings. Then there were the smoky-blue teardrop and the yellow oval.
    â€œYou like pearls?” he asked as he pushed them into groups, studying them.
    â€œAll girls like pearls.” She looked at him blankly, coolly. “I like the white ones best.” She felt compelled to speak something she had never said to anyone else. “The colored ones are pretty, but the white ones look like the moon through a rainbow.”
    He glanced appreciatively into her eyes. “In the South Sea islands,” he said, turning back to the pearls, “there’s a legend of a god called Oro who rides to Earth on a rainbow.” He held a round white pearl up to the light. “And he leaves a little of that rainbow color on the pearls wherever he goes.”
    She felt her heartbeat quicken. “How do you know things like that?” she asked, fascinated by his manners and his talk.
    â€œLike I said, I used to collect pearls. And I’ve read everything ever written on them, I guess.” He spoke as if pacing his words while he herded the gems into piles, comparing them, moving them from group to group. “The Greeks thought they were