A Little Too Late (Madigan Mountain #1)(32)

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 been our apartment. 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. But God, 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 a sculptor. 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.

Clearing my throat, I take another gulp of cider. “Thank you for finding that box. I’ll go through it tonight.” I’d peeked inside when we were in the storage shed and saw a few larger bowls and a bud vase. “She never signed pieces with glaze, but there’s an imprint on the bottom of each piece. A symbol.”

Ava carefully lifts her mug—she has the orange one, which was Weston’s—and examines the bottom. “The mountain? I’ve seen it, but I didn’t know who it belonged to.”

On the bottom of the red mug—Crew’s—I trace the indent with my finger. My mother made this with her own hands. She’s long gone, but it’s still here. Still solid against my palm. Another wave of sadness crashes over me. I breathe through it.

“Reed,” Ava says softly. “I’ll have your mug repaired by a professional.”

“Is that a thing?” I ask to lighten the mood. “Professional pottery repairer?”

“Art conservator,” she says. “Have you ever heard of Kintsugi?”

I think it over. “Sounds Japanese.”

“It is. It’s a way of fixing broken pottery with gold. Instead of trying to hide the crack…”

“They make it ornamental,” I finish. “Yeah, my mother explained that to me once. How a broken thing can become more perfect than it ever was.”

She gives me a tiny smile. “Some things are never repaired at all, though. Will you explain to me how these family heirlooms ended up in an unlabeled box in the shed? That’s where we dump the things seasonal employees leave behind.”

I flinch, although I’m not surprised by where we found the stuff. “At least they’re not broken. My father destroyed one piece of her art.”

Ava gasps. “Destroyed it? Your father broke your mother’s art?”

I nod and look away, because this memory is hard. My mother had died right before Christmas, while I was at Middlebury finishing up finals for my first semester. I flew home and then skipped out on J-term that year to be with my family.