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“Jesus!” I gasp, bringing a clay-covered hand to my pounding heart, breathless. Because he’s just scared the hell out of me, because he’s here, and because he looks likethat.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know…” I turn down the music, suddenly self-conscious in clay-covered black leggings, oversized blue sweater that’s sliding off one shoulder, and hair in a messy bun on the top of my head.

He walks across the room, stopping before he’s all the way to me.

He looks at the broken pieces on the table. “You’ve been busy,” he says, with the slightest hint of amusement as a toothpick bobbles on his lips.

I tug my sweater onto my shoulder. “Yeah, just playing.” My sweater slips again as I talk. “What are you doing here?”

He shrugs. “I’ve been checking on the place after work, today we stopped early.”

“Ah,” I say. “Well, I can leave. I was just going to finish but…”

No.

I’m not leaving.

My chin lifts.

“I mean, Veda told me in her note to keep coming here. I guess she wants me to have it.” I pause, wait for him to argue. When he doesn’t, I add, “I’m going to finish what I’m working on.”

His lips twitch, and I can’t tell if he’s hiding a smile or something else, but he doesn’t leave either. Instead, he sits in the wicker chair, elbows on his knees, watching me as I work.

Finally, after the silence that’s as suffocating as the first day I walked in this house, I speak.

“I watched my mom die—wither away—Gran didn’t want that for you.” I don’t look at him as I stick a jagged piece of the bowl into a line of slip. “And she also knew if she told you what was happening, you’d beg her to get treatment she didn’t want. So—and I know you don’t understand my rule following personality—but the fact she asked me, specifically saying, ‘don’t tell Bo,’ and because I understood deeply how she felt, I did as she asked. Even if I wasn’t legally obligated to keep her secret, I would have.”

I’ve put one bowl completely back together. It’s mangled, yet somehow whole, with lines of slip covering it, cracks visible. On display, even.

I move on to the pieces of the next one, this time mixing black underglaze into the slip. All the while, Bo stays quiet, which is exactly what I need himto do, so I keep going.

“When I remember my mom, I remember her dancing in the kitchenandslipping away to nothingness. I’d give anything to only have one of those. I don’t know if I did the right thing, but that’s why I did it. Veda asked me, and I said yes. Because she loved you.”

When I’ve said it, I’m relieved. I stick another piece to the bowl without turning to look at him.

“You don’t have to forgive me, I’ve come to terms with that, but I want you to know that I loved her, I cared what happened. I did it for herandyou. But mostly her.”

Without looking, I hear him stand, his footsteps moving across the room, and it’s his familiar Bo Mountain Breeze when he’s standing next to me.

“What are you working on?” he asks, close enough to touch me but not.

I blow out an amused exhale as I look at the pieces. “I broke something, and I’m trying to fix it.”

I lift my eyes to his and his lips pull to a small smirk, toothpick dancing. “Here,” I tell him. “Hold these two pieces together so I can add another one on.”

He pinches the pieces firmly in place as I add slip to another one and slide them together.

“I don’t remember Gran doing this.” His skeptical tone makes me chuckle.

“She didn’t.” I grin. “I got the idea from my dad with his cookie slab table. He drew inspiration from a Japanese technique calledkintsugi. Figured I’d try it here.” I shrug, our fingers still holding the pieces together.

“I'm sorry for what I said to you. The day she died,” he says, looking at the broken pieces in our hands. “I didn’t mean it, Birdie, any of it. I want you to know that.”

Every word he threw at me that day hurt. I never expected him to apologize, but now that he has, I know I needed it.

“You know, it was the part about the color-coded lists that really got me,” I say, lightening the mood just enough to make him laugh under his breath.

Then, we work in silence, finding a kind of cadence with one another like we do when we hike—putting the pieces together, holding them in place long enough for them to set, before moving on to the next one. And the next. Until all the pieces are back together, lined with wet black slip.