The Potter's Daughter (Literary Series) (25 page)

When Abby entered the side entrance
Louis, the security officer, welcomed her back.
 
They exchanged greetings as he passed
her bag through the metal detector and she walked through one herself.
 
The detectors for employees were a
necessary insurance formality that was mirrored by a quick bag check at the end
of the day.

Abby made her way in to the
recesses of the building toward the unadorned offices and let herself become
consumed with thoughts of the responsibilities that would once again be
hers.
 
She opened the main office door
and made her way to her work area, an unkempt desk under a corner window with a
flat panel monitor resting on an old stained blotter.
 
Stacks of oddly shaped envelopes,
brochures, and trade magazines over-flowed her corner inbox.
 
Abby sank into her comfortable and
familiar chair and set her coffee and muffin on the desk.
 
She contemplated whether to go through
the pile of papers in her inbox or to turn on her computer, and then decided
how nice to clean a little before the occupants of the other two desks, Olivia and
Jules,
arrived and took her day for a turn.

Abby reached for several of the
envelopes at once.
 
She grabbed too
many and some slipped out of her hands spilling coffee on the edge of her desk
and across the cover of a book on renaissance period artists.
 
She quickly opened her bottom drawer to
find the paper towel roll she kept there and soaked up the small spill.
 
No damage done though as she finished
mopping up the mess she saw a note that she had scribbled on her desktop
shortly before leaving for the lake.
 
The note read ‘patch all things up with Dad—you love him’.
 
Abby held the wet paper in her hand
while she read the note and thought about her state of mind when the letter had
been written.
 
The note was written
not that long after speaking with Caroline.
 
Caroline had her half convinced that
Will had one foot in the grave.
 
That may or not have been true, yet the essence of the note was that she
really wanted to remedy whatever rift was between them.

Abby’s hand made a final pass over
the desk and she tossed the paper towel into the basket at the side.
 
Abby had thought about Will on the train
ride back to the city and had been consumed with distracting herself
since.
 
Had she remedied whatever
rift was between them?
 
Hardly,
still Abby thought she had finally identified what the rift was.
 
Abby decided she would give Nathan a
call later and check in and then speak to Will himself.
 
Maybe she would call Mitch too.
 
Abby caught herself sorting through the
mail now and not even seeing what was in front of her.
 
Hours away by train, Willow Lake once
again was with her.

* * *
* *

“I figured it wouldn’t be long
until you showed up,” said Will.
 
Will peeked over his glasses at Caroline approaching the worktable.
 
“What’s the weather like sunshine?”

“Partly cloudy, storm’s a comin’,”
said Caroline, taking a seat across from him.

Will continued painting the little
soldier he had in his hand with the focus of a master.
 
The painting of his soldiers, like the
ornamentations on the urns, was intricate, the tools and brushes he used were
fine and commanded a high degree of attention.
 
Yet, from years of using these tools, he
easily split focus to his niece, “Like a tag team, the two of you,” said Will.

“You love the attention uncle
Will.”

“Never said I didn’t.”

“Where’s Nathan, you didn’t scare
him off already did you?”

“Oh no, he was complaining I wasn’t
eating enough so I sent him to the diner to get some meatloaf.”

“I thought you hated meatloaf?”

“I don’t like him nagging neither.”

“I see,” Caroline nodded her
head.
 
She knew better than to goad
her uncle any further, particularly if she wanted to get him to discuss what
she came to discuss, her absent cousin Abby.

The worktable had half of the
surface covered with soldiers waiting to be painted, which appeared to Caroline
to be around twenty-five.
 
Will had
already finished painting five.
 
Scanning the studio, Caroline saw little legions of clay soldiers on the
other worktables and ledges, some fired some not.

“I like these.
 
How many did you make?”

“Well, I suppose, let’s see I spent
yesterday and last night…
 
Probably
have about two hundred by now with the ones in the kiln.”

“And each one is different?”

“Yea, well, not really, but
yea.”
 
Will still did not raise his
head from the soldier he was painting.

Caroline reached over and picked up
a little green and khaki rifleman, “Didn’t Michael have a set of these when we
were kids?”

Will peeked over his glasses and
smiled, “Yea.”

Caroline set the soldier down on
the surface of the table, still holding the delicate soldier with her
fingertips, imagining playing with the little form yet not letting herself dare
to do so.

Now absently gazing down at the
table, Caroline said nonchalantly, “When I spoke to Abby the other day I was
under the impression she was going to stay a bit longer.
 
She left kind of sudden.”

“Did she?”

“Well, I thought she would at least
be here until next week.”

“I guess you don’t know,” said
Will.
 
He set the soldier on the
table and peered intently at Caroline, “I asked her to stay.”

“What happened between you two?”

Will set the brush down, took off
his glasses and stood up from the table.
 
He rubbed his eyes with his forefinger and thumb.
 
“I guess you could say that we had a few
words the night before she left.”

“What does that mean?”

Will chuckled, he was still rubbing
his eyes,
“You’re asking me what it means?
 
I haven’t been asleep in three days
because I don’t know what it means.”
 
Will dropped his head and turned toward the window.
 
“Maybe it means I was a bad father, a
bad husband.
 
Maybe it means I was
asleep at the wheel.
 
It means I
missed every clue for everything in my life that has been going on since Emily
died…”

Will fixed his gaze on something
out the window to the side of the studio, Caroline could not see at what.
 
“Hell, I don’t know if I ever had a clue
before that.”

“Wow, I guess you did have a few
words.
 
Sounds like you two went at
it.
 
Are you ok?”

“Yea, it was just about time for me
to start thinking a little bit I guess.”

“Ok,” Caroline had expected there
had been some type of quarrel yet Will was usually flippant about such matters,
“so what are you thinking about?”

“I don’t know yet.”
 
Will pulled his hand over his face and
abruptly changed the subject, “I have some of your order about finished, and at
this rate it will be done in plenty of time for me to get the other urns out on
schedule.”

Caroline studied her uncle.
 
His silhouette in the window amplified
his stature.
 
Changing the topic
amplified his confidence.
 
Caroline
pressed him, “So that’s your plan, to work in the studio and hope every thing
takes care of itself?
 
You might
want to rethink that.”

Will distanced his gaze out onto
the lake, “What you suppose I should be doing?”

“Well how’s Abby?
 
Have you talked to her?”

“She was ok when she left,” said
Will.

“I know she was ok, I spoke to her
and she sounded ok, but how are things with you and her?”

Will tipped his head down and let
his eyes close.
 
He had not slept in
three days for more than a few hours in a stretch.
 
His head swam with a rush of thoughts
that he had been holding back, all of which were about losing his
daughter.
 
Teardrops formed fast in
pools on his closed eyes and his lip began to tremble.
 
Caroline realized she had triggered a
repression to break free and went to him.
 
She had paid her uncle a visit because she knew that the situation
between Abby and him certainly would be amiss and she wanted to be sure of his
well-being
.
 
Still Caroline was taken back by Will’s sudden turn to tears, she
thought the visit would be a vane attempt to convince him to patch up whatever
had been broken with Abby, rather the time had now turned to her nurturing her
Uncle’s exhausted emotional state.
 
She embraced him to calm him.
 
Will felt Caroline’s head press against his back and her arms reach
around him.
 
“It’s all right,” said
Caroline softly as
Will
let out soft intermittent
sighs.
 
Will’s exhaustion had driven
his emotional state to a place he would not have gone.

“I’ve driven her away,” said Will.

“You just need to call her,” said
Caroline.
 
“Abby isn’t that far
away.”

“I don’t mean now, I mean…”

“I know what you mean.
 
Give her a chance, she’s given you
plenty.”

“Yea, I guess she has.”

Caroline moved to Will’s side, “You
really haven’t eaten anything have you?”

“No, I pretty much have been
runnin
’ on coffee and cigarettes.”

“Lets go in the house so I can make
you something.”

Will walked with Caroline out of
the studio toward the house.
 
“You
should knock some of the ice off those cables,” said Caroline.
 
She Gestured up to the cable jutting
from the studio to the willow tree.
 
“At least over the walkway.”

“Yea, I suppose,” said Will.

Will surprised Caroline once again
with his quick compliance.
 
Most
times he would have found a reason to not touch the cables for the sake of
putting off the suggestion.

Caroline walked with him into the
house and sat him at the kitchen table.
 
The refrigerator had been stocked well since Nathan’s arrival and inside
she found the eggs, milk, and cheese to make a quick omelet.
 
Something with protein that Will could
get down quickly to curb the state that had come over him when she had brought
up Abby.
 
She removed her jacket and
went right to work while Will sat patiently.
 
She changed the subject to the Johansson
order to alleviate him and that helped immediately.
 
Will sighed and struggled at first to
put his thoughts around the order and then embraced the conversation.
 
Soon Will was fervently speaking of the
pieces that had been put together over the last couple of days.
 
Caroline put a pan on high heat and
whisked the eggs and milk together.
 
After pouring the eggs, she put the kettle on.
 
Deciding that Will had enough coffee in
him for the time being, Caroline searched through the teas for something that
would be soothing and relaxing to her uncle.
 
Will commented that he liked the Black
Breakfast tea and Caroline told him that she could do better.
 
He nodded his head and continued to
discuss the order.

When the eggs were done and the
stove had warmed the kitchen, the breakfast aroma alone made Will’s shoulders
melt into his chair.
 
He had not
realized how tense he had become.
 
Caroline placed the omelet on a plate before him.
 
Will wanted to tell her that she should
not have bothered however when he raised his head to see the concerned
expression on his niece’s face he thought best to simply smile and say thank
you.
 
Pleased that her uncle was
feeling pleasant, Caroline smiled in return.

When Will finished eating, Caroline
talked him into building a fire in the lake room so that the two of them could
relax and talk.
 
Will happily
accommodated her and once the fire was going, he took a seat in his cushioned
recliner.
 
She spoke to him from the
kitchen and he replied a few times.
 
When she entered the room with a tray of tea and cookies he had already
faded off to sleep.
 
Caroline took
the crocheted afghan from the couch and placed the blanket over his chest.
 
She took the tray back into the kitchen
to wait for Nathan.

When Nathan returned from the
village, he parked behind Will’s truck so as not to block the Subaru in the
driveway.
 
He had not seen the
Subaru at the house before and did not know the owner.
 
The car was a typical for someone around
the lake, though less likely to be one of Will’s cronies that dropped by on
occasion.

When Nathan came into the kitchen,
he was pleasantly surprised to find Caroline sitting at the table drinking tea
and reading a magazine.
 
Nathan
recognized Caroline by description and had been anticipating meeting her as a
manner of changing of the guard from Abby.
 
Caroline stood and he quickly and politely introduced himself, setting
down one of the two bags he was carrying to shake her hand.