After I ran the vacuum, dusted everything in sight with Lemon Pledge, and made a centerpiece for the dining room table, I went digging through Momma’s china cabinet and buffet drawers to see what I could find. In the top drawer, I found a tablecloth and eight napkins, still in their original cellophane wrapper, never used. I couldn’t remember where they came from, but they were going to have a debut that night.

“Momma? Didn’t we used to have silver flatware?”

She was in the kitchen peeling shrimp while the ceiling fan overhead moved the paltry air around.

“My mother’s. It’s in the bottom of my closet, inside the American Tourister red suitcase, under a blanket. Why?”

“I thought it might be nice to use it. Why is it buried in your bedroom closet?”

“To hide it from the robbers! Why else?”

Of course. Why else? Our house was the last house on the island that would entice robbers. And besides that, there were very few crimes ever committed on the island anyway. The occasional speeding ticket. The occasional DUI. But robberies? Nope. I heard about somebody stealing tomatoes from their neighbor’s bushes, but that was probably kids, doing something stupid on a bet. I mean, Momma didn’t need to hide the silver like they did during the Civil War. Honestly.

I went in her closet, which had not been cleaned in a dozen or more years, and located the suitcase. Inside, just as she said, was a felt-lined box of silver flatware and serving pieces. It was blue with tarnish.

“Good Lord,” I said.

I didn’t have the time to polish it all by hand. And then I had a thought. There had to be a fast way to clean silver. I went online and found a solution that seemed too good to be true. But since I had nothing to lose, I tried it.

I took Momma’s biggest pot and filled it with water. Then I put it on to boil. Next, I crumpled aluminum foil—shiny side out—and dropped a few balls of it into the pot. Then I added about half a box of baking soda. When the water came to a boil, I carefully lowered in the silver and let it boil and bubble for about five minutes. I must say, the fragrance was that of rotten eggs, but if it worked, who cared? Momma, Leslie, and Suzanne stood there the whole time like a Greek chorus telling me this would never work. That the only way to polish silver was elbow grease.

“What’s that horrible smell?”

“You need that expensive pink stuff and a whole afternoon,” Momma said.

I removed each piece with tongs, and voilà, it was all as good as new.

“Really?” I said. “Apparently not.”

I laid it all out on dish towels and began drying it and buffing it with a soft cloth.

“I’ll be damned,” Suzanne said.