Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 82077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
My daughter shot me a look. “Oh, Pa, it’s not necessary. I always think, maybe they’re all having bad days. Maybe they lost a parent or they’re going through a divorce. You never know.”
I nodded. “That’s very good of you.”
“Now,” she continued, slipping her arm through mine, “that being said, if people are crappy to me on purpose, like snide or something, then the Pretty Woman scene is applicable.”
I chuckled, and we were off to the next place, which turned out to be a crystal store. When Hannah gasped, I stopped looking at amethyst geodes and moved to her side. She was staring at a clear quartz crystal on a shelf. It wasn’t that big, maybe three inches long by an inch and a half wide and another inch and a half tall. It looked like a lot of those in her room, sort of broken-off pieces of something much bigger.
“Why are we excited?” I asked my youngest.
“Well,” she whispered, “that’s not a piece of clear quartz.”
“No?”
She shook her head.
“So then it should be more than,” I had to squint at the tag, “seventeen ninety-nine?”
“You need reading glasses.”
“Bite your tongue.”
“Dad has reading glasses.”
“Which are very sexy on him.”
She made a retching noise. “Please. I liked my breakfast. I want to keep it down.”
I shook my head at her.
“Hi there,” a woman greeted us, stepping in next to Hannah. “Would you like that piece of clear quartz?”
Hannah did a slow turn to the woman. “I believe you’ve mis-labeled it.”
The woman chuckled. “Have you been studying crystals a long time?”
She wasn’t mean, it wasn’t that, but her tone was slightly patronizing. And the implication was there that with how old Hannah was, what could she actually know.
“For a while, yes,” Hannah confirmed. “And I promise you that the crystal you have there is not a clear quartz.”
“Is that right,” she said, and that time she sounded snide.
“Yeah,” Hannah snapped. “That’s an ajoite crystal, and you’re doing yourself a grave disservice by not marking it up.”
The woman laughed. She invited the man behind the counter over, who had never heard of such a thing, and he laughed too. Her husband, she told us, was a jeweler with years of experience so…yeah. He basically mansplained to my kid that she was adorable but he knew clear quartz when he saw it. He had pulled it out of the back that morning and had only put the one piece on the shelf because it was pretty.
To her credit, Hannah persisted, and even pulled up a page on her phone to show them that it was a real thing. They were not interested in listening to her, they had other customers.
“You should look up the crystal for yourself,” Hannah pleaded with the woman. “Because it’s most often found as an inclusion in quartz, yes, but––”
“Sweetie, do you want it or not?” The woman almost barked at my daughter, clearly sick of her.
“Well, yeah, I want it,” Hannah declared.
As we were turning away from the counter, the piece in one of those cheap little organza bags, three people walked into the shop, two men and a woman, and made a beeline for the shelf where the ajoite had been. They looked around, and then one of the men, the shorter of the two, turned to the woman.
“Pardon me, but did you sell the piece of quartz that was on that shelf just a bit ago?”
She tipped her head at Hannah. “Yes, to this young lady right here, who thought it was something else altogether.”
“Yeah, I think it is too,” he told her, rounding on us. “If you don’t mind, would you please show it to my friend Gavin?”
“I’m warning you,” Hannah told Gavin as she fished it out of her tote bag, “I don’t look it, but I’m a badass. Don’t make me hurt you if you try and grab it and run.”
Gavin chuckled and put his hand over his heart. “Madam, you wound me. If it is what Diego here thinks it is, then you have a very discerning eye and to the victor goes the spoils.”
She gave him a big smile and took it out of the fuchsia-colored bag and put it in her palm so all three could see the stone.
“Holy shit,” the woman breathed out, giving Hannah a quick clap on the shoulder. “Girl, you know your stones.”
Hannah beamed at her.
“I’m sorry,” the woman behind the counter chimed in. “You’re saying it’s not a quartz?”
“No,” Gavin told her. “I’m a geologist, and I can tell you that it’s an ajoite crystal. The first ones were found in Ajo, in Pima County, in Arizona, hence the name, but they can also be found in Zimbabwe and South Africa. I suspect this one is from there, as most of them are now.”
The woman turned to her husband, the jeweler. “Hal?”