Pearl of Great Price

by Myra Johnson

  He took my hand and pressed it to his cool, wrinkled lips. “No cause for you to be so confused, Julie Pearl. It just ain’t right.”

  Was Grandpa finally ready to talk? Instantly alert, I pulled another chair over and sat across from him. “What are you trying to say, Grandpa?”

  “I should’ve spoke up yesterday, when that Hobart character showed up and invited you out.” He fixed me with a worried gaze. “Please, darlin’, don’t get mixed up with that man. Promise me you won’t. It can’t do nothin’ but lead to more trouble.”

  “More trouble?” My stomach flipped around like a washer on spin cycle. I squeezed his hands. “If you know something, then tell me. What is it about Micah Hobart? What is it about Pearls Along the Lake?”

  He wagged his head. “It’s a long story, Julie Pearl. A long, long story.”

  There are times when you think you want to know the truth, but deep down you have to ask yourself if you really do. Like two days before Christmas, sneaking under the tree and peeling back the wrapping paper on a package, and either you’re so disappointed that on Christmas morning you’d rather not even open the gift, or so thrilled you can’t bear to wait.

  I had the sick feeling Grandpa’s “long story” would be one “gift” I’d be sorry I ever peeked into.

  Grandpa looked toward the ceiling. “Oh, Lord, give me the words.”

  “You’re scaring me, Grandpa.” I tucked my hands between my knees.

  He sighed. “There’s much I don’t know, can’t tell you for certain. But you’re a grown-up now, and you should be told . . . before it’s too late.”

  “Too late?”

  “Before your old grandpa ain’t around to tell you anymore.” He seemed to fold in on himself, like a book about to close, a story about to end.

  “Oh, Grandpa! Please don’t talk like that!” I flung myself into his arms and buried my face in the nubby blue collar of his plaid polo shirt.

  He gently pushed me away and dried my spurt of tears with the ball of his thumb. “I’m sure not planning on heading home to heaven anytime soon, but the years have a way of creeping up, and my ol’ ticker ain’t what it used to be. Honey-pie, you know I can’t live forever.”

  I sniffled and scooted onto my chair. “I know. I—I just don’t want to think about it.”

  “Someday you’ll have to—no forty-seven ways to Sunday around it. But for now,” he said, thrusting out his jaw, “it’s time to tell you what you’ve been hungering to know.”

  I didn’t dare imagine where this was headed. “Is this about the old resort? Micah Hobart? Renata Channing? What?”

  He waved a hand to silence me. “Remember when you were in second grade and your teacher asked you to make a family tree?”

  “Sure, I remember,” I said, his question dragging my thoughts back through time. I remembered how it bugged me so bad that everybody else in my class had whole orchards of ancestors—big, broad branches loaded with brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins once, twice, and three times removed. All I had was a squatty tree trunk labeled “Grandpa,” and a puny little branch sticking out the top marked “Julie Pearl Stiles.”

  “Now, Julie Pearl,” my teacher had said, “surely you have a few more relations you could add to your tree. You talk to your grandpa about it. Have him help you fill it in.”

  Grandpa nudged my toe with his and gave a rumbling chuckle. “I can still see you sitting at our same old kitchen table with that pitiful sketch and your box of broken crayons. I felt so sorry for you.”

  “It was the first time you ever talked much about our family. You gave me Grandma’s name—Julia Caroline Dugan Stiles—and then the names of all my great-grandparents.” I remembered how I’d added branches for each of them, feeling more and more like a living, thriving bud on a strong, deep-rooted tree.

  “And then you asked about your mama and daddy.” Grandpa huffed a shuddering breath and grew silent.

  “I remember.” I could still see my grandpa’s hunched shoulders as he trudged to the polished pine chest under the living room window. Folding back the brightly colored Mexican serape, he’d unlatched the lid and hefted an enormous, well-worn Bible. Once we were snuggled together on the coarse brown sofa cushions, he’d opened the Bible to the gilded flyleaf. An ornate family tree filled the page, each of the spaces filled with the spidery black handwriting I recognized as Grandpa’s. There were all the names he’d just given me.

  There were the names of my very own parents.

  Angela Mae Stiles. John David Jones.

  I pinched my eyes shut at the memory. The ache beneath my heart made it hard to breathe. “Angela and John.”

  “Angie, we called her. She was our little girl, our only child.” Grandpa’s voice sounded thin and reedy.

  “You told me her hair was even curlier than mine.” It always comforted me to be reminded of the one trait I shared with the mother I never had a chance to know.

  Then the pain of being abandoned pressed in on me again as I recalled the rest of what Grandpa had told me that night. For the first time in my young life, I’d found the courage to push him for answers. And still he’d hemmed and hawed. He said my mother had gotten so sick that she couldn’t take care of me anymore, so she brought me to the Swap & Shop and went away. I pictured her fragile and weak, pale against white sheets, my daddy hovering over her, tending her, loving her. Then, once she was all better, surely they’d come back for me.

  I looked up to see Grandpa staring off into the rafters. He scraped his palms back and forth on the knees of his khaki pants. “Hardest thing I ever had to tell you was that your mama wasn’t coming back, wasn’t gonna get well. That your mama had . . .”

  “Died.” A knot swelled against my larynx. “And then I had to go and ask about my daddy. And you said—”

  “I told you he’d gone on with his life somewhere else.”

  The words knifed through my heart just like they had that night. I hugged myself and shivered. I was a little girl again, with Grandpa taking my skinny face in those great warm hands of his that smelled like Dial soap. And just like that night, he said to me, “Julie Pearl Stiles, you are loved more than you’ll ever know. You’re my precious jewel, lost but found, a treasure beyond all earthly riches. You are my ‘pearl of great price.’”

  Then he sat back and with a sad shake of his head began to paint new pictures for me of the parents I never knew.

  CHAPTER 12

  April, 24 years earlier

  Texarkana, Texas

  Angie’s head pounded. She sagged against the bagged-ice freezer outside the 7-Eleven, her vision so blurry, she could hardly see the numbers on the pay phone. Could she even remember the right combination? Lately her mind would go blank sometimes, just empty itself at the most inconvenient moments. Or she’d get confused, start out doing one thing and find herself an hour later in the middle of an entirely different task, her original intentions forgotten.

  But this morning she willed her head to stay clear—too much was at stake—and once she started dialing, the numbers she needed came back to her like old friends.

  “Otto Stiles’ Swap & Shop.”

  “Daddy?”

  Silence, then a tremulous, “Angie, is that you?”

  Her reply got tangled in the sobs ripping through her throat. “Daddy, I need to come home.”

  “Oh, darlin’, you never had to ask.” Now Daddy was crying. “Just come.”

  She should have known. Just like the father in the story about the Prodigal Son, her father stood ready to welcome her back with open arms, no questions asked.

  Except she wasn’t coming alone. “Daddy, I have a little girl now.”

  “You’ve had a baby?” A quiver of excitement laced his tone. “When? How old is she?”

  “She’ll be four in September—on Mama’s birthday. I named her Julie, after Mama. Julie Pearl Stiles. And Pearl because she’s such a treasure to me.” She drew the sleeve of her ragged sweatshirt across the w
etness of her face.

  “Three and a half years old?” His pain and shock echoed across the phone lines. “All this time and you never told me I had a grandchild?”

  “I—I didn’t think you’d understand.” How could she ever explain to him about Ray, about all the promises he’d made, all the wasted years following him all over the country, living like vagabonds? Believing the lie that he loved her, hoping that if only she could get him to love this child, she could tie him to her forever?

  Her father gave a harsh, grating sigh. “It don’t matter no more. Just come home. Bring the little one. We’ll do fine, the three of us together.”

  Yes, yes. She squeezed her eyes shut and let her knotted mass of curls swing forward, grateful it hid her tear-streaked face from the prying stares of customers traipsing in and out of the convenience store.

  “Okay. I’ll be home soon, Daddy.” And soon it’ll be just the two of you.

  She gazed down at the green-eyed toddler clutching her leg and ran a hand over the soft, springy fuzz of golden curls. Oh my Julie-love, my precious little turtle dove.

  CHAPTER 13

  Present Day

  “I’m sorry, Julie Pearl. I don’t even know if that was your daddy’s real name. Your mama wouldn’t tell me about him, said I was better off not knowing, said he never mattered anyways.”

  All these years of wondering, waiting for the day I could track down this man named John David Jones and make him tell me why he left us! “But I have a birth certificate. It has my parents’ names, just like you told me. It says I was born in Big Spring, Texas.”

  Grandpa’s mouth flattened. His glance shifted sideways.

  I crumpled against the chair and felt the curlicue design of the metal pressing into my spine. “All those stories you told me when I was little, you made them up.”

  “I see now the harm it’s done, but back then I thought it was for the best.” His eyes crinkled downward at the corners. “Couldn’t flat out tell you your folks never married, that your daddy up and walked out on your mama, leaving her to suffer alone.”

  Anger choked me, and now I didn’t even have a name at which to direct it. “Is there truth to anything you told me about my parents?”

  Grandpa sighed. “All I know for certain is how much your mama loved you. She brought you here because she knew she was dyin’. She wanted to be sure you’d be taken care of.”

  A heaviness settled over me at the thought of what my mother must have suffered. “Dear Lord, a brain tumor. It must have been horrible for her . . . and for you.”

  “Nothing the doctors could do but ease her pain. I took care of her as long as I was able, but as the end drew near, she needed more tending to than I could give. Without insurance, we finally found a nursing home in Little Rock that would take her in for what I could pay. She passed on there a few months later. You’d just turned four.”

  Once again the memories came flooding back, real as a three-D movie—my first birthday party! I’d even picked out “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” invitations from Wilma Longoria’s card and stationery booth at the Swap & Shop. Grandpa said we could have my party right here in the flea market snack bar, with funnel cakes and root beer floats and paper hats.

  Then one day I overheard Grandpa on the phone. “I see . . . I see . . . Thank you, I’ll try to get there in time.” When he dropped me off at the church preschool later, he said he didn’t think the birthday party was such a good idea after all. “Maybe next year, honeybunch. Maybe next year things’ll be better.”

  The next day he left Katy Harcourt in charge of the flea market. Said he had some important business up in Little Rock and I was to go home with Sandy’s mom after preschool. He ended up missing my birthday entirely.

  I flicked a tear off my cheek. “You hardly spoke three words to me after you came home, just got busy sweeping and dusting and rearranging merchandise till all hours of the night. You couldn’t even tell me my own mama had just died.”

  “You were so little, I—” Grandpa stared at his clasped hands. “Can you ever forgive me, Julie Pearl?”

  “What do you want me to say, Grandpa? I just found out I’ve been clinging to a lie.” I stood, gripped the mop handle, pressed it against my sternum and hung on for all I was worth. I guess at some point I figured out my parents weren’t married. Why else would my name be Stiles instead of Jones . . . or whatever the creep’s name was? Illegitimacy didn’t carry the stigma it once did—celebrity couples had kids out of wedlock all the time these days. But the fact that my mother wouldn’t even acknowledge the man who’d fathered me? It made me feel dirty, ashamed. More worthless and unwanted than I’d ever felt in my life.

  “Don’t, Julie Pearl.” Grandpa rose and set his hands on my shoulders, his bony fingers biting into my arms. “Don’t let this change who you are, the kind and caring person you’ve always been. You’ll always be my ‘pearl of great price.’”

  “I don’t want to hear that right now, Grandpa.” I shrugged out of his grip and stormed upstairs to the apartment. Oh, Julie Pearl, you asked for it, didn’t you?

  Then about the time my feet hit the landing, it occurred to me that right before Grandpa told me about my parents, he’d warned me not to get involved with Micah Hobart—because it would lead to nothing but “more trouble.”

  Micah. Pearls Along the Lake. Renata Pearl Channing.

  I was missing something. Something important.

  An invisible fist slammed me in the chest. Did any of this have to do with the real reason Mama had chosen Pearl as my middle name? I mean, what were the odds she’d give me that name if she didn’t have some ties to the Pearl family or the resort? Maybe she worked there once, fell in love with my father while he was a guest. But he was already married. To Micah’s mother, Mrs. MacDonohoe. Yes, it had to be something like that. And when Grandpa saw the article in the paper about the child’s drowning twenty-five years ago, it reminded him about the time Mama had spent at the resort and he worried I’d find out and—

  My head reeled. Obviously I was as good at making stuff up as Grandpa, and it only served to muddy the waters even more.

  I hugged myself and stood before the kitchen window. The paved parking lot below shimmered in the noonday heat, but all I could feel was cold—colder even than the chilled, musty-smelling air flowing from the ancient Frigidaire window unit in the living room.

  The phone rang three times before I registered hearing it. Even then, it took Brynna nudging the back of my knee with her warm, wet nose. Hey, you, wake up, her big black eyes seemed to say. Life goes on. Get with the program.

  “Okay, okay.” I scratched her behind the ear with one hand while reaching for the phone with the other.

  “Julie? It’s Micah.”

  My stomach twisted. Before I even realized I was going to say it, I blurted out, “Micah, I’m going crazy, and we need to talk. Can you meet me somewhere? Now?”

  ~~~

  There was a campground and picnic area nestled in the rolling Ouachita Mountains about halfway between Hot Springs and Caddo Pines. A stream ran through the park, burbling and splashing over mossy rocks, with tiny fish slipping through the shallows and fighting to hold their own against the current—kind of like I felt right now. I got there ahead of Micah and arranged myself on a flat rock under a spreading maple tree, where I could safely slip off my sandals and let the cool water rush across my bare toes.

  The park didn’t have much activity this afternoon. In the distance I could hear the big logging trucks rumbling along the highway. Nearby, squirrels chattered, their toenails scritch-scritching on the rough pine bark as they raced each other up one tree and down another. A soft breeze played cello with the pine boughs.

  Finally I heard his pickup. Funny, I’d only seen it twice in my life, but I knew the sound of it without even glancing over my shoulder. Like we were connected somehow. Like Micah Hobart was already a part of me.

  “Hey,” he said, joining me on my rock. He crouched dow
n in his stiff, new-looking jeans and tried to sit sideways to keep his scuffed black boots out of the water.

  I wiggled my left big toe at three silver minnows who’d swum over to check it out. “Thanks for coming.”

  “You sounded upset. How can I help?”

  I nailed him with a pointed stare. “For starters, you can tell me why my grandpa warned me to stay away from you.”

  The bewildered look on his face looked real enough. He gave a half-laugh. “I only just met your grandpa. I have no idea what he’d have against me.”

  “I’m pretty sure it has something to do with Pearls Along the Lake.”

  He cut his eyes at me. “You mean the old resort? Why would your grandfather think that?”

  “I wish I knew!” I stood abruptly, my wet feet almost sliding out from under me on the slippery rock. Micah reached out a hand to steady me while I slid into my sandals.

  I stalked toward my Beetle. Stupid to think a perfect stranger could tell me anything about my past. Insanity to think a series of coincidences surrounding a termite-ridden, falling-down lake resort could have some connection to my parents.

  “Hang on, Julie.” Micah caught up with me and seized my elbow. “Now I’m as confused as you are. Tell me what’s going on here.”

  I let him steer me toward the nearest picnic table, and we sat across from each other on the stained concrete benches. Avoiding blobs of bird poop, I rested my elbows on the table and lowered my head into my hands. For several long moments I sat there, unsure where to begin—unsure if I should be telling him at all.

  But I did. I poured it all out. All those years of wondering about my parents, feeling abandoned, suppressing the urgency to search for my father and make him explain why he left us. I even confessed the secret story I used to tell myself to ease the pain—that Mama’s death had left my father so brokenhearted that he’d gone off on a private quest to find solace for his grief, and someday he’d come back for me.