Page 35 of My Heart Still Beats
Tessa smiles slightly. “She was my favorite person in the world. I suppose she felt close to me because I was her namesake. Eva—she’s my younger sister by two years—wasn’t nearly as close to her as I was. Nana was very devout. My parents were—are—too, but Nana was different. Her faith was more to her than Mass or a set of rules to follow. It was part of her.”
“How so?”
Tessa sighs. “It’s not easy to explain. You’d have to have known her. I can tell you about the altar in her bedroom, about the incense and candles she burned when she prayed to the saints, about her favorite rosary made of rose quartz. About her deep brown eyes that held so much wisdom… About how snuggling in her lap when I was small was the most comforting place in the world. But none of it would truly describe her.”
“Can you tell me why you left Catholicism?” I ask.
She turns away. “That’s personal.”
“I’m sorry.”
A glance back at me. “AreyouCatholic?”
“No. We were raised Christian, but we didn’t really go to church. Only on Christmas and Easter, and that ended when my mother died.”
“I’ll never go back,” she says. “Never.”
Interesting. Her grandmother was her favorite person and was also a devout Catholic, but Tessa will never go back? There’s a story there—and I sense it’s not a good one—but I won’t pry. Instead, I grab another oyster from the bar.
Briny and delicious, the oyster slides over my tongue and down my throat.
I order a Wild Turkey, and Tessa orders sparkling water. Charlie serves our dozen oysters, and I take one, add a twist of fresh lemon, and slurp it.
Tessa takes another one and downs it like a champ. “Mmm. So good.”
“Great. You had a hamburger earlier. Now you’re eating oysters. Tell me this isn’t better than bacon and ice cream for dinner again.”
“I’m not really that hungry,” she says, her tone noncommittal.
“Then this is the perfect place for you. I don’t think anyone could actually fill up on oysters on the half shell. I’ve been known to eat them until I burst, but that’s a heck of a lot of oysters. Way more than we’ll be eating tonight.”
Charlie shucks another oyster, and his eyes widen. “Here’s a special one for your lady, Ben.” He hands the oyster to Tessa.
She gasps. “This can’t be.”
“It’s unusual, for sure,” Charlie says, “with the stuff that we get. That, my dear lady, is a pearl.”
I look inside Tessa’s oyster. Sure enough, nestled against the oyster meat is a tiny black pearl.
“I can’t accept this.” She hands the oyster back to Charlie. “You found it. This should be yours. Or your wife’s or girlfriend’s or whatever.”
He smiles with a shrug. “Don’t have a wife or girlfriend, and my mother is no longer with us. I don’t have any sisters. I was shucking it for you, young lady, so it’s yours.”
“Do you know how many times I’ve come to this place?” Ben says. “Never once has a shucker found a pearl.”
Charlie nods. “It’s rare.”
“How?” Tessa asks. “Pearls come from oysters, don’t they?”
“They’re mostly cultured now,” Charlie says. “It’s uncommon to find them in oysters raised for consumption.”
“Must be a good-luck charm,” I say.
“I don’t know about that.” Tessa fishes the pearl out of the shell and wipes it off on her napkin. “It’s such a unique shape. Kind of like a teardrop.” She wrinkles her forehead. “Not round like cultured pearls.”
Charlie laughs. “That’s how you know it’s real.”
“I guess I can assume it’s real, since I watched it come out of an oyster.”
