He couldn’t take her anymore. And he hated being mean to her. She’d be sad when he left with Brigitte, but she should get it. She’d left home when she was a teenager, too.
Knock, knock. “Can we talk?” Christine again. He put on his headphones for her own good. If he opened the door he’d just hurt her again.
CHAPTER THREE
THE NEXT MORNING, when Christine opened her eyes and saw gauze over her bed, she shot bolt upright. Where am I?
Then her mosquito bites kicked in, itching madly, and it all came back to her. She flopped back onto the creaky, saggy mattress of her childhood bed.
Her cheek itched with a new bite. So did both elbows. Damn. Mosquito repellant and calamine lotion were going on her grocery list, no matter what David thought.
“We said breakfast, not lunch,” Aurora grumbled when Christine met her in the kitchen for their visit to the clay works barn.
“It’s only seven-thirty, Aurora,” she said on a sigh.
“Well, let’s go then,” Aurora huffed.
Christine grabbed a slice of fruit bread and joined her mother, who was walking so slowly it seemed painful. Worry tightened Christine’s chest. Twice, she reached to support her, but gave up, knowing her mother would slap her hand away.
The barn that housed Harmony House Clay Works was cool and dim and smelled of moist earth. Sunlight slanting in from windows lit wide swaths of thick dust in the air. A crew of four young men shifted items from potter’s wheels to shelves that already held drying pots, bowls and bells.
“Hey there.” A woman in a red-paisley do-rag left the clay she was kneading, wiped her hands on her overalls and came close. “You must be Crystal,” she said, holding out a callused hand. “I’m Lucy. Pleased to meecha.”
“Happy to meet you, too.”
“Lucy runs the show when I’m not here,” Aurora said. “She’ll tell you what she needs you to do. Lucy?”
“Mostly you’ll handle the orders. Also make sure I got crew and clay. Help us load and carry when we’re in a bind and such. I’ll show you the books.”
Lucy led Aurora and Christine to a makeshift table at the rear of the barn—plywood resting on sawhorses with beat-up bar stools for chairs. On top were a ledger, a small invoice pad, an index-card box and a clay-grimy calculator. Not much of an office, Christine thought with dismay.
“Is the income steady?” She flipped through the handwritten ledger.
“About half the year,” Lucy said. “Trouble is we turn down jobs when it gets too busy.”
“We get backed up,” Aurora said, shrugging. “No big thing.”
“That’s a shame,” Christine said, hating the idea of inefficiency or lost profits. Maybe this was an area she could help. “Do you have a Web site?”
“No. And no computers,” Aurora said. “We’re not a factory, Crystal.”
“I’ve been telling her we could do a lot better with a Web site,” Lucy said, her eyes lit with energy.
“That’s absolutely true,” Christine said. Aurora snorted.
“Take this order for wind chimes.” Lucy motioned at a cardboard box full of ceramic bells. “This guy has a gift shop in Sedona. He looked for our Web site but no luck. He stuck to it and tried the phone book, but who knows how many sales we lose that way?”
“The kiln only holds so many pieces,” Aurora said.
“Not if we add more shelves,” Lucy insisted.
“And what about the crew? Huh?”
“We hire more when we need them,” Lucy said. This was obviously an argument they’d had before.
“Maybe I could help with that,” Christine said, not wanting Aurora to get upset. “I can probably get the design guy at my agency to put up a simple Web site for free. If we buy a cheap computer, you could see how it would work.”
“Let’s just get through a week or so,” Aurora grumbled, shooting her a look. “Bogie’s not up to much in the gardens and someone should supervise the animals—feeding, milking, collecting eggs. Plus, you have your own work, don’t you?”
“If I can help your business, I want to.” Aurora’s dismissal of her ideas hurt, but she refused to let that show.
“We’re fine as we are, Crystal.”
Behind Aurora, Lucy shook her head. No, we’re not.
“We were fine before you came, we’ll be fine after you’re gone. Because you are going…right?”
Before she could answer, the plea in her mother’s question stopped her cold. Her mother wanted her to stay?
Christine felt her jaw drop. That made no sense. Aurora was as uncomfortable around Christine as Christine was around her. They’d be lucky to survive the summer without tearing into each other and Aurora wanted her to stay? She must be more frightened than Christine realized. Her heart squeezed at the thought.
“How about this? Before I leave, I’ll be certain any change is dialed in tight. What do you say?”
“I don’t know….” Her mother’s pride surely would keep her from admitting she needed help.
“Marketing is my profession, Aurora,” she said gently. “I’m good at it. Why not let me see what I can do for you?”
Aurora heaved a sigh. “No changes without approval from me or Lucy. We can’t have a bunch of crazy stuff disrupting our operation.”
“Of course not,” she said, irritated by her mother’s insult. Crazy stuff. Really. Enough already. She wanted to say so, but then she remembered what Marcus had said.
Focus on the work. He was right. The important thing was that there were improvements she could make here. And Aurora was feeling weak and out of control in the place she usually ran. “I won’t do anything you don’t approve of, Aurora,” she said.
“As long as we’re clear, then all right.”
Behind Aurora, Lucy did a yes fist pump, which made Christine smile. Aurora lowered herself onto one of the benches, her breathing shaky. Was she too tired? “Lucy can show me the operation from here,” Christine said. “Maybe you need to head back inside.” To bed, to rest. Please.
Aurora waved off the idea. “You ever throw a pot, Crystal?”
“Throw a…?”
“Work with clay. Create something with your own two hands.” Her mother’s eyes were bright now, and full of mischief. “You want to see the operation, you gotta get your hands dirty.”
“Okaaay…”
“I didn’t start in until after you left, you know. It took a while to develop my style. Better late than never for you.” Her mother pushed to her feet, arms trembling, and led Christine to a half-dozen pedal-powered potter wheels and motioned Christine onto a clay-splattered stool. “Now sit.”
In for a penny, in for a pound, Christine thought, sitting. She’d have to share that with Marcus, when she told him his advice had worked.
“BUT I CAN’T do MY homework,” David whined as Christine drove him into New Mirage for his first appointment with Dr. Mike. “Dial-up’s too slow. It freezes all the time.”
“You don’t need the Internet once you’ve downloaded the assignments. Look, do you want to be a junior when school starts or not?” She gritted her teeth and twisted her hands on the steering wheel. Losing her