It was a small showing.
Mostly family and friends, though Daisy Creason brought a camera and promised a quarter page in The Tribune. Though her hair had long since grayed, and her hand shook a little as she wrote shorthand in her notebook, she did recall a similar showing near three decades before.
Charlotte wore a simple yellow dress, her hair tied back and only the lightest touch of makeup. And she worked the room with an effortless ease, smiling for her friends, hustling potential customers just like Sammy had taught her.
“You’ll miss her when she heads to college,” Saint said.
“Best assistant I ever had,” Sammy said. “She once sold a Rosenquist print to a tourist who came in to use the restroom. You could tell he couldn’t afford it. Most beautiful thing I ever saw.”
“How lovely.”
Sammy wore a satin jacquard twill tuxedo jacket, left three buttons of his tailored shirt open to tanned chest, and stood in the far corner of Monta Clare Fine Art, for once content not to hold court.
Saint strolled slowly, taking in each of the landscapes, wishing her grandmother were beside her, so that she might point out scenes from their town, from the woodland and the water before it.
Most, she noticed, carried a small red sticker on the comment beneath.
“She’s popular,” Saint said.
“Telephone bidder,” Sammy said, swirling his whisky. “Always looking for the next big thing.”
Mary Meyer followed her granddaughter with unabashed pride. She wore a floral embroidered silk evening dress, and Saint could not help but admire the refinement of the Meyer women, her mind on Misty, on just how wide her smile might have been.
“I saw you in the newspaper,” Sammy said.
Saint shrugged, like it was nothing.
The FBI Medal for Meritorious Achievement. Himes had shaken her hand, posed for a photo with a hotdog cupped behind his back as he commended her lifelong work on the pursuit of Eli Aaron. She’d suffered nightmares awhile after, still saw his face in that Alabama barn, and would wake sweating, only to find Charlotte had slipped into the bed beside her, the girl feigning sleep until Saint’s heart calmed enough. By morning she would be gone. They did not speak of it.
When the last wine had been drunk, the last painting sold, and the visitors had spilled into the arms of a summer evening, Daisy asked for one last photo of the girl and her family.
Charlotte placed herself between Saint and her grandmother, then called for Sammy to join them.
Sammy shook his head. He knew that he was not the missing piece of that particular puzzle.
“Please, Grandpa,” Charlotte said.
“You don’t fucking call me that,” Sammy said, jabbing a finger and sending Dalmore splashing over his arm.
Outside, Charlotte locked the door.
Ahead, Mary Meyer took Sammy’s arm, and the two strolled toward the hill.
“Sometimes I imagine them having sex,” Charlotte began.
“Jesus,” Saint said.
“But then I think there’s no way he can summon an erection with all that booze.”
Saint nodded somberly and did not tell the girl of the blue tide of pills sweeping the country.
“Do you think he’s a good man?” Charlotte said, and looked to Saint with those eyes.
“No.”
Charlotte glanced at the church.
“But he tries,” Saint said, and smiled.
“Can I stop by Mom? Sometimes Grandma throws me a couple extra bones when I tell her I visited.”
“Sure.”
And while Charlotte visited with her mother, Saint took a little time to sit before Norma and Chief Nix. She did not pray much anymore. Though she still believed. Entirely and absolutely.
Had she turned her head she might have noticed the oak tree, and in the right hour of sunlight the faint initials still carved into its face.
Sometimes she imagined him out there somewhere, painting, working, living the kind of small life that did not impinge. Charlotte spoke of him more, that first year raced to the telephone when it rang, the mailbox when the post arrived. She watched the news each evening, badgered Saint to check in with Himes each week. For a while her father lit up the national news, but Saint knew in time the heat would cool until such day that his name would slip from memory, sometimes whispered in prison yards as the man who bested Warden Riley and half the Missouri police force. Himes filled her in on the rumors, that he had robbed another bank in Texas before crossing into Mexico, that he was likely dead, that his paintings now quietly changed hands for millions of dollars that were somehow funneled to him. She believed none of them. They were merely the myths and the legends.
It was as they climbed the creaking steps to the porch of the tall house that Charlotte saw it.
The small package bore her name.
“Secret admirer,” Saint said.
“It better not be Noah again. His testicle has only just reengaged.”
Charlotte settled herself on the porch swing as Saint let herself into the house and fixed them cocoa, a routine passed down. A routine that still made her smile each evening as they sat together and watched fireflies spark from the St. Francois Mountains.
Saint carried two mugs out and settled beside the girl, who had kicked off her shoes and sat curled on the seat.
Saint sat beside her, only then noticing what Charlotte gripped in her hands.
The jar glowed.
Charlotte held it to the moonlight, the colors shifting from cardinal to mulberry.
Otherworldly.
Impossibly beautiful.
“What is it?” Charlotte said.
Saint took a breath. “It’s honey. It’s purple honey.”