“Just coffee for me, thanks.”
“Have a seat.” When she stood, I noticed she was wearing a paint-spackled apron and garden shoes. She noticed me scanning her attire.
“I was in the Louvre. That’s my art studio in back, more popularly known as a garage. I call it that because, hell, I want my artwork in the Louvre, and this is about as close as I’ll get. I can take you there after breakfast.” She went into the kitchen as I took a seat. I mindlessly began tracing a vein in the wood with my finger while I watched Matt’s mom search a high cabinet for a mug. Aletha seemed like someone whose soul was so at peace, like life was no a longer a mystery to her.
“I’m nervous to meet Matt’s dad and his family,” I admitted, without thinking if she would take offense by my referring to them as his family.
Her movements stopped just for a second as she peered into the cabinet, balancing gracefully on her tippy toes. It was long enough for me to tell that my comment had jarred her.
“You’ll be fine,” she said, without looking over at me. When she returned to the dining room, she handed me a hand-thrown pottery mug full of black, thickly aromatic coffee. She was smiling. “Matt’s dad, Charles, was a lot like Matthias once.”
“Once?”
She pointed to the center of the table where a silver tray held a tiny metal pitcher of cream.
“Black is fine for me,” I answered her unspoken question.
She sat down on the other side of the table, leaned back in her chair, and removed the glasses from the end of her nose, setting them beside the empty oatmeal bowl. Seconds of silence passed before she continued. “Sometimes money changes people. As for Matt’s brother, Alexander, don’t worry about him. Monica is the one you’ll have to keep an eye on, especially when she’s around Matthias. She’s the conniving one. Alexander is just . . . well, I think Matt described him pretty well last night. Harmless but not exactly benevolent. I think that’s the nicest way to put it.”
I opened my eyes wide, shocked by her candor.
“I just tell it like it is, Grace. Monica always had a thing for Matt. It’s just that her thing for money was stronger. I think Alexander knows that, and it’s driven a wedge between him and his brother. They were always different but they were close before she came along.”
Desperate to change the subject, I nodded and sipped my coffee while my stomach did somersaults. “I’d like to get something for Matt.” I paused and she waited. “I don’t have much money. Do you have any ideas of what he might like?”
She looked up from her coffee and smiled. “Yes, I’m glad you asked. I think I know the perfect thing. Come on out to my studio.”
I followed Aletha out to the garage, which looked as old as the house but wasn’t maintained as well on the outside, its beige, battered shingles in need of repair. She ushered me inside and closed the door quickly, giggling like we were conspiring schoolgirls. There were racks everywhere with drying pottery, sculptures, and an easel with a half-finished landscape painting. The walls were lined with large shelving systems that went all the way up to the ceiling and were filled to the very edge with brushes in tins, metal tools, and glass jars. The new potter’s wheel sat in the corner. The only gleaming, untouched surface was the large, round metal top of the wheel. From the back of the door, Aletha grabbed a smock and handed it to me. “How about you make something for Matthias?”
“Sure, but what? I’m not very good at this.” I picked up a metal coffee cylinder filled with tiny silver tools. “What are these for?”
“Leather tooling.”
“Oh! Matt needs a belt. He’s been wearing two shoelaces tied together.”
“Perfect,” she said. She walked to a long metal cabinet and pulled out a solid leather strip with four round holes punched through one end. “All you’ll need is a buckle. We can go thrift-store shopping for that.”
I was falling more and more in love with her by the second.
Taking a tiny hammer and a few tools from the coffee tin, I held them up. “So do I just tap these into the leather?”
“First, we must wet the leather a bit so it’ll be pliable enough. That way the design will set and last longer, maybe forever.” She went to the farmhouse sink and returned a moment later with a wet rag. She saturated the leather using the small towel and then took a step back. “Have at it, honey.”
“What kind of design should I do?”
“That’s up to you.”
I studied the tools with different shapes on the end. There was a circle made of three squiggly lines. I grabbed it, along with a tiny solid circle, and pressed the larger circle into the leather with ease, leaving a permanent indentation. Then I took the smaller circle and tapped it into the center of the design I had already made.
She stood over me. “Wow, that looks just like an eye, doesn’t it?”