Pawleys Island-lowcountry 5 Read Online Free PDF Page A

been with me then…”
    “Me too. Huey? This is still a problem, you know. You cannot possibly expect Sallie Anne to walk in here and be happy to see Rebecca’s work hanging in the same gallery on the same night as her opening! And, Huey, I know you would not enjoy the cognizi of Litchfield and Pawleys calling you an opportunist, now would you?”
    “I can sell everything Rebecca can paint. Every blessed last piece. And you know it.”
    “Framed or unframed. But, Huey? Darlin’, we hardly know this child! Are you hiring her to be our new framer? She’s an artist, for heaven’s sake! Don’t you think she will be insulted?”
    “I’m going to ask her if she’ll be the assistant manager of my gallery.”
    “And who is the manager? You? ”
    “Okay! I’ll make her the manager ! Happy?”
    “Oh, Huey, Huey, Huey. If you really want this puppy, then I know you’ll have this puppy one way or another. Lord help Rebecca! She’s falling down the rabbit hole and doesn’t even know it.”

T WO
MEET MISS OLIVIA
    M Y darling son, Huey, bought me a corsage to wear to his opening tonight. I don’t have the heart to tell him that it’s old hat to wear a corsage these days, so I made him a boutonniere. I picked one perfect gardenia from my own garden, added a sprig of rosemary and wound them together with florist’s tape. When I pinned it to his lapel I confess that I became a little weepy, remembering all the times I had pinned them to my late husband Chalmers’s lapel, and, oh well, he’s been dead for a thousand years and who cares about that anymore? Life goes on whether you like it or not.
    The reason I chose a gardenia was because Huey is so sweet, but the rosemary is to remind him to never forget to love his mother. You know, in Victorian times, brides would give rosemary sprigs to all their family and friends. Even though she was leaving to start a new life, a sprig of rosemary let them know she would never forget them. Don’t ask me who started that bit of foolishness. I simply couldn’t tell you. There are so many traditions to honor that it just wears me out.
    The reason I was looking forward to this opening was that I was to meet the young woman Huey has been raving about, this girl Rebecca, an artist from Charleston. Huey hired her just like that! Doesn’t even know who her people are! It just seems to me that when you have someone handling your money, you should know all about them. But that’s my boy. He gets an idea that he wants thus and so to be thus and so and the next thing you know, it’s thus and so. In all my eighty-four years, I have never met another man so determined to have his own way. All right, eighty-six years, and it’s no one’s business.
    My job tonight is to get the poop on Rebecca because my Huey can’t stop flitting around long enough to do it himself. He’s just like a bumblebee in a garden of blooms, darting from one budding beauty to the next. Ah well, that little weakness in his deportment is also why he’s so good at selling paintings. Huey just loves people and artists most especially. Probably because, and I mean this in the most charitable way, it’s all my Huey can do to draw his breath! Oh, Lordy! That’s a little art joke, you know.
    After I looked at all the paintings, I had to agree with Huey’s enthusiasm for Rebecca’s work. Poor Sallie Anne Wood was sure to have a pebble in her shoe when she arrived and saw Rebecca’s paintings all hung in the framing area. Huey was clever to install them in the rear of his gallery, well distanced from the show he had put up for Miss Wood. But even though he had repainted the front walls in Ralph Lauren’s new ivory metallic paint and had special lighting adjusted for each of Miss Wood’s canvases, it just didn’t help one fig. Miss Wood was a fine painter, a competent artist to be sure, but Lord have mercy, did the world need another painting of a beach path with palmettos?
    Rebecca’s watercolors grabbed you and