When I got home, my dad was out back under the eave of the house, cigar between his teeth and a steaming cup of coffee in his hand, the mug big, brown, and handsome – almost a tankard versus a mug. The clay was thick and sturdy, the layers of coating or whatever artistic and rustic.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked, getting off my bike under the overhang and whipping my goggles off over my head as soon as I could get them off my face. They did the job and I needed them, but I didn’t like them.
“One of your boxes,” he answered. “All sorts of dishes and things in there. All like this.”
“Jesus, that must have cost a fucking fortune!” I said. I knew what the handmade pottery pieces around here went for and it wasn’t cheap.
“Full service for eight,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t think it cost her much but time, Son. I think she made them.”
“No shit?”
“Wipe your boots before you go in that house!” he called after me sternly like I was twelve. I stopped in the mudroom, excited to see what was sitting on the table through the back door, but not so excited I was gonna tromp a mess through the place.
I hung my jacket and cut to dry and pulled off my chaps to hang next to the other leather, all of it supple with how waterlogged it was. I pulled off my boots for good measure and went into the kitchen in my sock feet. Sure as shit, here was all this handmade dishware stacked and scattered over the dining table, the cupboards open and our old dishes coming out of the cabinets to make way for ‘em.
“Odin’s beard,” I said in awe, picking one of the heavy pieces up.
“She left that for you.” My pops gestured with his coffee mug at a white rectangle on the tabletop. I picked it up, and he leaned his shoulder against the back doorway and took a sip of his ever-present coffee. He’d ditched the cigar out back somewhere. The card read…
Clayrity Studios
Aspen Lawson-Craig
The address was in Seattle, on Airport Way – I had to bet Georgetown. There was a number, but I was betting it was a business line. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket where I’d stuck it when I’d hung up my coat and unlocked it.
I dialed her up and waited as it rang through.
“Clayrity Studios, this is Amber, how can I help you?”
“Uh, yeah, is Aspen there?” I asked.
“She’s teaching a class right now, is there something I can help you with?”
I cleared my throat and said, “Uh, no, just tell her that Fen… er, Fenris called, would you do that for me?”
I could hear Amber’s smile in her voice. “Absolutely! You want to leave a number or does she have it?”
“She should have it, but just in case…” I rattled off my cell.
“Okay.” She repeated it back to me.
“That’s correct,” I said.
“Alright Mr. Fenris, I have this all down and she’ll get back to you as soon as possible, okay?”
“Alright, thanks,” I said.
“Of course!”
The line went dead and I let my gaze wander over all the fine dishes and shook my head. This was way too much.
“First time anyone you brought home from Mitch’s like that has done anything like this,” my dad said coming fully into the kitchen.
“I see you wasted no time,” I said with a grin and he grinned back.
“It’s good shit, better ‘n’ what we got.”
“True that,” I said nodding.
“Right, so get to work, boy.”
I laughed a little and helped clear cabinets and hand washed the new dishes before putting them away.
“She’s got talent if she made these,” my dad observed.
“I don’t think it’s an ‘if,’ looks like she runs a whole damn pottery studio.”
“Yeah? Nice.”
“What’d you think of her?” I asked my dad, and he raised a bushy steel gray eyebrow at me.
“Seems like a lost soul,” he said carefully. “Seems like a good girl.” He eyed me equally carefully as when he’d spoken. When I didn’t say anything, he asked me, “Why, what you thinkin’?”
“Nothing, Pops. I don’t know…”
He harrumphed and shook his head, “Your mom was a good girl when I met her and I broke her damn heart.” He slid up onto one of the breakfast bar’s tall chairs and wrapped his hands around the big mug he’d pilfered from the pile before I could even get a look at all of it.
“You went to prison,” I said with a sigh. “Mom knew what she was signing up for when she married you,” I reminded him.
“Did she, though?” he asked and stared off into nothingness.
“Do I think she had herself convinced you’d never get pinched for nothing? Yes. Do I think she fell apart when you did?” I remembered. I’d been about seven, my sister nine or ten. It’d been ugly – Mom left scrambling, but a lot of that had been her fault. The club had tried to take care of us, but she’d blamed them as much as she’d blamed my pops, so she wouldn’t take their money.
“Shit fell apart,” my dad said in a tone that brooked no argument.
“Yeah.” I nodded a little sadly. “Yeah, they did.”
My dad had served eight years, and my sister had headed off to college right before he’d gotten out. Mom wouldn’t let my ass see him at first, but then Lacy had died and she couldn’t stop me if she wanted to.
My pops had been the path to revenge, but I’d carried most of it out on my own.
“You want my opinion, or don’t you?” he asked, and I shook my head.
“Naw, man, I don’t.”
He nodded carefully and said with a grunt and a sigh getting up, “Then you already know what it is and you know I’m right. You just don’t wanna hear it.”
I hissed out a disgruntled chuckle and carried on washing and rinsing the bowl I had in my hands.
“Either get over here and dry or fuck off,” I told him.
“And away I go,” he said with a shrug, and he fucked off toward the living room. That’s just the way we were. Brothers via the club more than father and son, then again, he hadn’t been around to be a father much after he’d been sent up.
I was just finishing up drying and stacking things in the cupboards when my phone rang. I picked it up from where it was blaring Wardruna on the kitchen counter and answered it, even though it was an unknown number. I had a sneaking suspicion I knew who it was.
“Hello?”
“Hi.” Her voice was soft and nervous at the same time. She cleared her throat and said, “Amber said you called?”
“Yeah, I’m here washing up these dishes, getting ‘em put away. I wanted to say thank you, they’re real nice. Definitely way too much, though. You shouldn’t have.”
“You didn’t have to do what you did either,” she murmured, and I chuckled.
“You’re not the first, baby. You won’t be the last, either. That’s just to say it’s what I do.”
“Oh, well, you’re a kind man, Fenris… consider it a kindness for a kindness.”
“You make these?” I asked abruptly, dying to know.