“Did you just get in?” Aiden asked.
“In?” I repeated, before I realized what he meant. “Oh no. Actually, I never left. I’ve been here. In Poultney. All week.”
“Oh yeah?” Aiden shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “What happened?”
“Nothing, really. My sister and I just decided that I would stay a little longer. We wanted to, you know, extend our visit.”
Aiden raised one eyebrow.
“What?”
He shrugged. “Nothing.”
I could tell he didn’t believe me. So what? What did I care if he knew what was going on with Sophie and me? In the first place, it was none of his business. And in the second place, well, it was none of his business.
He motioned briefly with his arm. “Come on up,” he said. “Now that you’re staying a while, I can show you the stuff that I do.” I didn’t move. “If you want to, I mean.” He shrugged. “You did seem interested before.”
I watched the soles of his Converse sneakers as I followed him up the hill. The laces, tied carelessly in a single knot, drooped on either side in wide loops. It reminded me of the time Dad tried to teach me how to tie my shoes: “bunny ear, bunny ear, criss-cross, loop.” For as intelligent as I was—even back then, at four years old—this simple task had eluded me. I simply could not, no matter how many times I tried, get the bunny ears to cooperate. Finally, I had kicked off my shoe, hurling it across the room in exasperation. Dad had been shocked by my outburst. Speechless even, for a moment. “That’s something I would expect Sophie to do,” he said finally. “Not you, Julia.” The disappointment in his voice—as well as the comparison to Sophie—was something I never forgot. Ever.
“Holy cow,” I said now, surveying the patio, which seemed more or less to have been transformed into a pottery studio. There was even a partial roof over half of it, shadowing the bricks underneath. A brick wall, no higher than my knees, was flanked at either end with flat, raised pedestals. On top of each pedestal was a design made out of little white stones.
“Did your dad make these too?” I stared down at one. It was a starfish. Tiny stones, no larger than ladybugs, had been arranged into what looked like swaying pieces of seaweed on either side.
“Yeah.” Aiden stood next to me, regarding the starfish. “That was the first one he ever did. It took him about a year. The other one”—he stopped and pointed at the other end of the wall—“only took him about six months. He’s gotten pretty good at it now.” I walked down to examine the other design. It was a tree with bare branches. No leaves at all. Just stark limbs, stretching out in all directions, like spindly fingers.
“They’re so beautiful,” I said, running the pads of my fingers along the pebbly surface. “And so sad.”
“Sad?” Aiden raised his left eyebrow again. “How do you get sad out of a stone tree? Or a starfish?”
I shrugged, embarrassed suddenly, and walked over to the large contraption I’d seen the day before. The broken leg had been reattached with duct tape. Several magazines had been wedged under it for leverage, but it still sat at a slight angle. In the middle was a large mound of pale brown clay. “Tell me about this thing. What is it?”
“This,” Aiden said, squatting down to examine the taped leg, “is my Laguna Pacifica Glyde Torc 400.” He looked up at me. “Or your basic pottery wheel. I was right in the middle of centering a new piece when you came by.”
“Centering?”
“Yeah,” Aiden said. “After you prepare the clay, you’ve got to center it on the wheel. It’s actually pretty hard to do. Sometimes it takes me four or five times to get it just right.”
“Can you show me?”
“Now?” Aiden asked.
“Well, yeah. I mean, if you want to.”
Aiden hesitated, but only for a moment. “Okay.” He straddled the little chair attached to the far end of the wheel and yanked off the mound of clay in the middle. “Centering is pretty much just what it sounds like,” he said. “You’ve got to make sure your clay is directly in the middle of the wheel. Otherwise, you’ll just fight the clay the whole time you’re trying to shape it.” He turned the mound over, looked at it, and then plopped it firmly on the wheel. “Doesn’t look too hard, does it?”
“Not really.”
“Okay, now comes the hard part.” He looked up at me expectantly. “You ready?”