Page 40 of A Little Too Late
She frowns. “That class lasted a month, Reed. And it never came up.”
She’s right, of course. “I just didn’t want to be a sad sack. I didn’t want to lay my tale of woe at your feet. What was I supposed to say? ‘My mother was a potter. She made our home amazing. Then she died, and my father won’t even say her name.’”
“That would have been a good start.” Ava throws her coat on a chair. “Sit down.” She goes into the kitchen, opens the fridge, and pulls out a gallon of apple cider. Then she retrieves the other two mugs—a yellow one and an orange one—from a cupboard. “Hot cider?”
“Yes, please.” As much as I do not want to talk about my dead mother—and my own questionable behavior—I’m enjoying this invitation to see where Ava lives.
I set the box down on the coffee table and sit on the sofa.
The apartment is startlingly nice. It almost makes me feel better about leaving her here under questionable new management. The living room is small but comfortable, with a charcoal-colored couch and a leather chair. It’s very civilized—much nicer than that dude’s bachelor pad that I used to visit in high school.
She’s decorated the small space carefully. There are bookshelves and throw pillows with… Hold up. The pillows have mountain goats drawn on them.
“Ava, are theseyourdrawings?” I ask, lifting a pillow to show her. “I saw this in my hotel room.” There are drawings on the parking-lot signs, too. Hell, her mark is all over this property. “This is you, right? I’m not crazy? Your art is all over Madigan Mountain.”
“Yep.” She’s stirring cider in a pot on the stove. “And I’m starting to think Sharpe is going to wipe it all away and put golden snakes on everything instead.” She makes a face.
For once in my life, I hold my tongue. But she’s probably right. Even so, she and my father seem hellbent on going through with the sale. And it really is none of my business.
I’m going to keep repeating that until I stop worrying.
While Ava stirs the cider, I allow myself a weak moment to look around and wonder if this might have beenourapartment. If things had gone differently…
“How did the rest of the meeting turn out?” she asks.
I swear it takes me a long beat to even remember. I’d been so eager to brag about the concessions I’d won from Sharpe, so desperate to give her this trivial news. Negotiating her employee contract is such a cheap apology, really, for all the things I did wrong when we were young. “It went fine. The Sharpes will draw up an agreement giving you a two-year guarantee, three paid weeks of vacation, three personal days each year, and a twenty percent raise.”
She turns sharply. “Twenty?”
“Yeah. You deserve it.”
“I thought I’d have to prove myself first. Damn, Reed. Thank you. That’s incredible.” A smile lights up her face.
My heart pangs with fresh guilt. “You deserve it. You’re going to run the place.”
“Sure, but…” She begins ladling cider into the mugs. “Your father wants to sell so badly. I think he was afraid to push the Sharpes on the details. I was afraid to push, too. I have no stake in the game. I’m nobody in this negotiation. I just work here.”
“Really? Is there another employee anywhere on the property who puts as much into this place as you?”
She shrugs, like it doesn’t matter. Then she carries the cider over to the living space, and I rise from the sofa to take the mug. “To your mom,” she says, raising hers for a toast.
“To Mom,” I say, except my voice catches on the word. And my damn eyes get hot. ButGod, I never talk about her. Never.
Ava sits down quietly in the chair across from me, while I take a sip of the spicy brew in my cup and try to keep my composure.
“It never occurred to me that she made those mugs.” Ava runs a finger around the mug’s rim. “They’re unsigned, for starters. And while I knew she was an artist, I’d heard she was asculptor. Employees used to talk about how much they loved her and how talented she was.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “Sculpture was her main thing. But she loved ceramics. She’d model a new piece in clay, and when she felt she’d captured the shape, then she’d cast it for metalwork.”
“Wow, interesting,” Ava says. “I would have loved to meet her.”
Just the idea of my mother meeting Ava makes my heart ache. “She would have loved you. And that pottery class? I took it to try to feel closer to her.”
“Oh, Reed,” Ava says quietly. “I wish I’d known.”
“It was a mistake,” I say carefully. “I made a lot of those.” I hope she can’t tell how close I am to losing my shit. My mother’s been gone thirteen or fourteen years. And I’ve spent all that time trying not to grieve.
Obviously, it worked great for me. My lungs feel tight and weird. I guess this is what happens if you pack something away so tightly that it can’t breathe. When the cork finally pops, you just burst.
