Chapter 4

Early the next morning, I slipped out of the house with the rusted tin box tucked against me.

I didn't dare tell Old Tim. I was afraid he'd call me a fool chasing pipe dreams, stirring up trouble for nothing.

So I just said I was going to see some old coworkers, to figure something out.

First I went to the old street nearest home, the one with several pawnshops and antique stores that had been open for decades.

If this bowl really was worth anything, I figured, they'd know it when they saw it.

I picked the one with the grandest storefront, a place called the Treasure Trove.

The moment I walked in, the owner was lying back in a rocking chair with his reading glasses on, listening to the radio. He didn't so much as lift an eyelid.

"Sir, could you take a look at this? What's it worth?"

I set the box on the rosewood counter and carefully opened it.

He gave it a lazy glance, and something flickered through his eyes, contempt too quick to catch.

He didn't even get up from the rocker. He just craned his neck and grunted.

"Where'd you pick that up?"

"I didn't pick it up. It's... it's been handed down in the family."

I lied.

"Handed down?"

He let out a scornful little laugh and finally rose, slow and easy, came to the counter, pinched the rim of the bowl between two fingers like it disgusted him, lifted it, and held it up to the light.

"It's just a coarse black folk-kiln bowl. The firing's not even, look at the glaze, dark in one spot, pale in another. And it's chipped. You couldn't give it to me. It'd just take up space."

My heart sank halfway, but I still asked, clinging to one last thread of hope.

"Then... then how much would you give?"

He dropped the bowl back into the box with a hard clack, hard enough to make my chest clench.

He stuck out one hand and waved it in front of my face.

"Five hundred?"

I ventured.

He turned the hand over and waved it again, impatient now.

"Fifty! Not a cent more! Seeing as you dragged yourself out here first thing in the morning, I'll take it off you like scrap. Go buy yourself some groceries."

Fifty dollars?

Blood shot straight to my head, and humiliation and disappointment swallowed me whole in an instant.

I felt like the biggest joke in the world.

The mysterious phone call, the buried good deed coming back around, all of it fake. It was a scam. A cruel

joke!

"I'm not selling!"

I snapped the box shut, hugged it to my chest, and turned to leave.

"Hey, don't go!"

The owner called after me.

"Thirty works too! Keep it around for the memory, why not!"

I rushed out of the Treasure Trove without looking back, and the sunlight outside stabbed at my eyes.

I went into two or three more antique shops after that, and it was more or less the same everywhere.

Some owners were at least polite, telling me not to waste my effort, that it was just a worthless common piece from the Republican era. Others were like the first one, every word dripping with mockery, as if I'd walked in holding a brick and kept insisting it was gold.

I walked down the street with no direction, the tin box in my arms.

Cars streaming past, the roar of the crowd, and yet it felt like I was the only person left in the whole world.

Like a clown, hugging a broken bowl, dreaming a daydream about getting rich.

Hope, gone.

That feeling of being flung from the clouds straight into the mud was more crushing than having had no hope at all.

I came to a small park in the middle of the street and found a bench to sit on.

I opened the box, looked at that grimy black bowl, and the tears fell before I could stop them.

I hated whoever had made that call. Why give me a false hope like this, only to make me smash it with my own hands?

I hated myself too, for being so naive, so stupid, for letting one absurd phone call run me in circles.

My phone rang at the worst possible moment. It was my son, Stephen.

I sniffled and picked up.

"Mom, where are you? Lorna and I talked it over. We don't think we can drag this out any longer. I've got a realtor lined up. They're coming to see the house this afternoon. You..."

"Don't you dare!"

I shouted into the phone, my voice raw.

"I told you, the house is not for sale! Anyone who brings people to that door, I'll break their legs!"

"Mom! Can you be reasonable? Is now the time to be stubborn? What matters more, Dad's life or the house?"

Stephen's voice was heating up too.

"Both matter!"

I shouted back.

"I'm going to save your dad, and I'm keeping the house too! You stay out of it!"

I slammed the phone down, shaking all over with rage.

Pressuring me, every single one of them pressuring me!

I looked at the bowl in my arms, and a wild anger caught fire deep inside me.

Throw it out! This wretched thing that had brought me nothing but humiliation and disappointment!

I raised the box, ready to hurl it into the trash can beside me.

But my hand hung there in midair and wouldn't come down.

And into my mind came that snowy day again, that boy's stubborn, clear eyes.

When he handed me this bowl, he'd done it so solemnly, so reverently.

This bowl had to mean something to him. Something important.

I slowly lowered my hand and let out a long breath.

No. I couldn't just give up like this.

Those shop owners, maybe they simply didn't know what they were looking at. Maybe they were lowballing me on purpose.

A proper place. I had to take it somewhere proper.

Wasn't there a cultural relics authentication center in the city?

Nothing left to lose, one last try!

If they told me too that it was worthless junk, then I'd accept it.

I'd smash the bowl, and then... then I'd do what Lorna said and sell the house.

I wiped my tears and packed the bowl away again.

I flagged down a cab and gave the address of the city's cultural relics authentication center straight off.