“Yes. He called it that. In the letter from the lawyer. Did he leave you a gift too?”
I hesitated, Loretta’s sharp voice still ringing somewhere in the back of my skull. “Not really. He didn’t.”
“That’s strange,” Brenna said, tilting her head slightly. “Everyone should get a gift.”
I smiled despite myself. “Maybe.”
“You should stay for a week,” she said. “You can tell me about him. What he was like. What he liked to eat. What his voice sounded like.”
“A week?” I asked, caught off guard. “I don’t know if I—”
“In return,” she interrupted, hands twisting together as she waited for my answer, “I’ll share the gift. It’s only fair.”
“I don’t know if I have much to say about him,” I admitted, and even as the words left my mouth, I felt the small, uncomfortable sting of how untrue that actually was. “But okay. A week.”
Her whole face lit up. “Good. We can have pancakes. Only if you like them, though.”
She turned back to her workbench, already humming softly to herself. And I already knew, standing there in her cluttered little kitchen, exactly what her so-called gift really was. Loretta’s plan had seemed so simple back in that office. Too simple, maybe. Brenna’s kindness, I could already tell, was about to complicate every part of it.
For illustrative purposes only
Part Three: A Week in Brenna’s World
That week at Brenna’s house felt like stepping into a parallel universe, one where the world spun a little slower and every expectation I’d ever carried simply melted off my shoulders without my permission. Everything about her life ran in a completely different rhythm than mine.
Breakfast wasn’t a croissant from the corner bakery paired with a sleek latte anymore. It was bacon, eggs, and a mug of tea served on paper plates.
“Easier this way,” Brenna explained one morning, matter-of-fact. “No big cleanup. Time saved is time for pottery.”
She had a way of saying things plainly, without any of the social filters most people carry around out of habit. It caught me off guard every time, in a way that slowly stopped feeling uncomfortable and started feeling almost like relief. Her habit of setting and resetting the plates on the porch rail, always making sure they lined up just right, made me watch her more closely than I meant to. Every small, repeated ritual seemed to be telling its own quiet story, if I paid enough attention.
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“Let’s walk to the lake,” she suggested after breakfast on my second morning there. She slipped out of her sandals and left them neatly by the porch steps before stepping barefoot into the grass. “It’s better like this.”
Dew clung cold and sharp against my feet as I followed her down the path. She led the way, pausing now and then to touch a leaf or straighten a small pile of stones scattered along the trail. Those small, deliberate movements seemed to steady her the way breathing steadies everyone else.
At the water’s edge, she crouched down and dipped her fingers into the lake. “You ever just sit and listen?”
“To what?” I asked, standing stiffly behind her.
“Everything.”
Her studio became the real center of our days together. The air inside always smelled earthy and damp, thick with the scent of clay and quiet concentration. On the third day, she handed me a fresh lump of it.
“Here. Try making something.”
