“Just wandering the bay front.” Uncle Cotton picked up a necklace with a large blue stone dangling from a silver chain. He held it up to Birdie’s neck. “You like this?”

“It’s lovely.” Birdie looked at me, and I smiled.

“I think I’ll go look around. You two enjoy your day,” I said.

“Bye,” they called in unison.

I glanced around for Hutch—he would enjoy knowing these two were on a date. Nothing, I thought, seems nearly as funny alone.

I went inside the store, where my attention was caught by a canvas painted with a field of abstract wildflowers, the colors blending together. It was like a piece of art I wish I could paint, and yet I was always snagged by the intricate beauty of a single flower. A young girl stopped, standing in front of the painting. “Mama,” she said, “look. Those are like the flowers on Papa’s sand dune.”

The mama was distracted, talking on her cell phone, digging for something in her purse.

“Wildflowers,” I said. Gaillardia pulchella, I heard Mother’s voice inside my spirit. “Those are called Gaillardia pulchellas.”

“Huh?” The little girl tilted her head.

“Those are pretty wildflowers that grow in the sand dunes. They’re called firewheels.”

“That’s it,” she said with a wide smile, her lips blue from the remainder of the Icee she held in her hand. “I knew I knew it; I just couldn’t think of the name.” She screwed up her mouth and eyes, as if the question she was about to ask formed itself in the sun-kissed skin of her face. “Did you paint that?”

“No, but I like to paint.”

“Wow.” She exhaled and twirled a strand of her hair in her sticky blue fingers. “I paint.”

“You’re an artist,” I said.

“I draw, too. And I make sculpture things out of sticks and shells. And I can even paint on rocks.”

The woman tuned in, smiling at me but grabbing her child’s hand to leave the store. “Mama, look at those flowers.”

“Those are pretty, sweetie. They really are. Just like you.” The mama kissed her child on top of the head and they were gone and Hutch stood in front of me, smiling.

I smiled at him and held up my earrings. “Like?”

“Love,” he said, and gave me a hug.

We wandered through the store, commenting on art and sculpture.

“Are you working on anything now?” Hutch asked, pointing to a painting of an alligator.

I laughed. “Nothing like that. Nothing that would sell.”

“Meaning?”

“It’s silly.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I’m working on a timeline of ’60 to ’62, trying to fit the events of Mother’s life into some semblance of order from the summer of 1960 to my birth. I’m sketching and drawing, but it’s nothing … really.”

“I want to see it,” he said, stopping in midstep.