My first attempt was an absolute disaster. The clay slid through my fingers and collapsed into a shapeless blob on the wheel.
“It’s terrible,” I groaned, ready to toss it aside entirely.
“It’s not terrible,” Brenna said, her hands moving gently as she reshaped it, showing me the motion slow enough to follow. “It’s just new. New things take time.”
Her patience with me was almost unsettling, given how little of it I’d ever been shown growing up. Even when I knocked over a jar of water and smeared one of her finished pieces, she didn’t scold me once. She just quietly cleaned up the mess, like it had never mattered in the first place.
Just as I started to relax, finally breathing a little easier than I had in years, Loretta’s calls started coming more often. It was almost as if she could sense the shift happening in me from three hours away.
“Mona, what are you waiting for?” her voice came through the line one night, sharp enough to cut through the calm I’d been building all week. “This isn’t a vacation. You need to take action. She doesn’t know what to do with that kind of money.”
I stayed silent, my grip tightening around the phone until my knuckles ached.
“She’s naïve, Mona. You need to convince her to sign it over. And if persuasion doesn’t work, then figure something out. Use her trust if you have to.”
Her words felt wrong in a way I couldn’t fully explain yet, especially standing in the middle of a house that smelled like clay and second chances.
“I don’t know, Grandma. It’s not as simple as you think it is.”
“It’s exactly that simple,” she snapped back. “Don’t let yourself get distracted by her little quirks. Focus, Mona.”
I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell her that maybe Brenna deserved far more than any of us had realized walking in. But the words wouldn’t come, and I mumbled something vague instead before ending the call. For the first time in my entire life, I found myself genuinely questioning my own motives.
For illustrative purposes only
Part Four: What Loretta Refused to Say
The following day, Loretta arrived completely unannounced, her sharp presence tearing straight through the quiet like a storm rolling in off the lake. Her heels clicked hard against the uneven floor as she stepped inside.
“This is where you’ve been hiding?” she snapped, eyes sweeping over Brenna’s neatly cluttered pottery studio like it personally offended her. “How can you stand this mess, Mona?” She turned toward Brenna next. “And you have no right to what’s been given to you.”
Brenna froze, hands trembling as she reached for the vases on her workbench, rearranging them over and over while muttering, “Gift, gift,” quietly under her breath.
Loretta ignored her completely and turned back to me. “Mona, end this nonsense. She doesn’t deserve your father’s legacy. She’s—” her voice curdled into something venomous, “not like us.”
Parenting
“Gift,” Brenna said again, louder this time, pointing toward a small cabinet in the corner of the room, her rocking growing more pronounced, fingers twisting hard at the fabric of her apron.
I hesitated only a second before crossing the room and opening it. Inside was a stack of old letters, their edges soft and faded from years of handling, every one of them addressed to my father. My breath caught somewhere in my chest.
“What are those?” Loretta demanded.
