And Then There Was Her

by Tagan Shepard

  Madison laughed so loudly she nearly spilled her wine. A few eyes turned to her, but they all had a sparkle of interest to share her glee rather than the perceived judgment she saw earlier. She lifted her fingers to her lips to cover her laughter, but that only served to keep all the giggles inside, shaking her body and her full glass with each new wave. CS was laughing, too, a genuine smile painted thickly across her face. She reached out and took Madison’s hand down, exposing her toothy grin.

  “I’m glad you approve of my pettiness. Don’t cover your smile. It’s good to see.”

  CS was so warm. So full of life. So captivating. Madison felt nothing else apart from CS’s fingers on hers. The room around them melted away. Her ears plugged out the sounds of conversation and laughter. All her pain and shame fled in the power of that deep blue stare. When CS would have released her hand, Madison held on, slipping her fingers between CS’s and rubbing one thumb across the woman’s hard knuckle.

  There were tears in her eyes, but Madison knew they wouldn’t fall. They had everything to do with the current of electricity from their clasped hands and nothing to do with sadness. She gave CS’s fingers a light squeeze and mouthed the words “Thank you.”

  CS blushed and looked for her wineglass, shrugging her shoulders in a flippant sort of way that was somehow not dismissive. Releasing Madison’s hand finally, she sipped her wine.

  “Carter made it to the finale. It’s an upgrade.”

  Madison filled the hollowness of the loss of CS’s touch with another long sip of wine. Her head swayed pleasantly, like the gentle lapping of waves on an anchored boat, from the company as much as the alcohol.

  “So you finally watched the show?” Madison was shocked to hear the teasing note in her own voice.

  “Yeah, I…A friend convinced me to watch last season online.” She twirled her fork. Madison’s eyes were drawn to the graceful dance of her fingers. “Just so I knew who I had in my restaurant.”

  “I still can’t believe you didn’t watch it before we got here.”

  CS set her fork down, hesitated, then reached for her glass. Madison felt her tension as CS stared into its contents. “She shouldn’t have gotten that far. She wouldn’t have if…she didn’t get so much sympathy from everyone.” She looked up into Madison’s eyes and the rotation of the earth wrenched to a halt again. “Sympathy she didn’t deserve.”

  It took a moment for Madison to drag herself far enough out of that stare to realize what CS meant. She’d watched the season, so she knew about the call. Kacey was on the verge of elimination when Madison called with the news about Robert. It wasn’t during their scheduled call time, but the producers allowed Kacey to answer, even though they were in the middle of prep for the elimination challenge. At the time, Madison had been grateful for the deviation. Grateful that she had Kacey there to talk to if not to hold. To be fair, Kacey was wonderful that night. Talking Madison down from her hysteria, reminding her that she was loved. That she wasn’t alone. She had been gentle and kind.

  Madison hadn’t realized the pressure Kacey was under in that moment. She also hadn’t realized how much of the conversation was on camera. How much Kacey told everyone else when she got back to the kitchen. Or how much she told the camera during the confessional interview. She’d cried talking about Madison’s pain that night, but she had shared quite a lot more than Madison would have wanted, had she known it would be made public.

  It had been awful watching it on replay. Awful to relive the pain, but no less for the feeling of betrayal. Kacey was always extremely open with her own life, so it shouldn’t have surprised her that she would be open with their conversation, but Madison was not quite so forthcoming with strangers. Millions of people watched this show, and now all of them knew her grief. It was hard not to feel like Kacey had stripped her naked and put her on display.

  What no one else knew, not even Jada, was that Kacey had missed their next scheduled phone call. Madison had called, still broken from her loss, and heard an unanswered phone. Kacey never answered. They didn’t speak again for ages. Not until the sympathy ran out and she’d been eliminated.

  Madison drained her half-full wineglass in one swallow and pushed her plate away. “Why don’t we go for a walk?”

  “Oh.” CS stood abruptly, knocking over some cutlery in her haste. “Sure.”

  The night was considerably cooler now. Madison and CS walked silently down the path, each lost in their own thoughts.

  A sadness crept through Madison at the thought that she did not belong here any longer. Jada had been right—she would have to go eventually. This place would always be associated with Kacey, but, oddly, few of Madison’s memories included her. Peaceful walks with CS at her side, her undemanding presence. Their comfort together.

  As they neared Madison’s cottage a strange energy grew between them. Madison shot a look at CS, wondering if she felt it too. Other than a barely perceptible tightening of her jaw, nothing marred CS’s serenity, her gaze fixed on the moonlit trellises, the foliage dying back after the harvest. Their fingertips brushed as their arms swayed and CS did not pull back from the contact. When they entered the pool of light at the edge of Madison’s deck, she took the chance and caught CS’s hand as it swung past.

  Her attention finally snagged, CS looked over. The reflected light shimmered in her eyes, making them glow as she smiled down at Madison. She did not take her hand away.

  “Thank you,” Madison started, but couldn’t decide how she wanted to complete the sentence. For walking me home? For taking me inside when I was frozen and heartbroken? For making me feel at home here? For the way my heart skips when you look at me like that?

  “You’re welcome,” CS whispered in reply.

  She was standing close, but Madison wanted to be closer. She took a step forward, bending her neck back to maintain their eye contact. CS’s hand was so warm in hers. It wouldn’t take anything at all for Madison to close that distance. To press forward and let their lips touch.

  CS took a step back, letting Madison’s hand drop and swing in the night air. She took another step back and smiled. “Good night, Madison. Thank you for having dinner with me.”

  She turned and disappeared into the night.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Ever since she started ceramics, Madison had loved the hollow, scratching sound of stacking fresh pots in the kiln to be fired. She couldn’t help herself from scraping them along the shelves, just to hear it. Once one shelf was full, she set the four spacers and seated the next shelf. It sat perfectly, just an inch or so above the first layer, closing the low bowls she’d made a few days ago into the depths of the oven. They were the first things she’d made since Kacey left and she had never been prouder of anything she’d done, not because of their perfection, but because of the struggle it took to bring them to life.

  Madison was still getting used to the weather patterns here in western Oregon. The nearly constant winter rains meant plenty of moisture in the air. She’d have to account for that when timing her firing. She was nearly certain they were ready, but there was a science to ceramics as well as an art and that lead to uncertainty.

  She ran a finger gingerly along the tall vase that was part of her top layer. It felt right, and she had a strange sense that this was going to work. Call it intuition. The pots she was in today, still considered greenware because they hadn’t been fired yet, needed to be at the bone-dry stage of the curing process so that they would cook rather than steam on this first round in the kiln. After this she would paint and glaze them before giving them the final fire that would make them safe for use. And add them to her portfolio.

  The bisque firing was Madison’s favorite step. This was where heat on an almost unbelievable scale turned simple clay into ceramic. It started slowly. She’d warmed her kiln through the day, bringing the heat up slowly. Then the pots were loaded, placed like puzzle pieces so they covered as much of the surface as possible without touching. The superheated air, getting up
to over seventeen hundred degrees Fahrenheit in the final stage, needed to flow freely around the pieces so they dried evenly.

  The process was delicate, prone to disaster, but also the moment when the most beautiful pieces of art were forged into permanence. Over the course of several hours, the temperature rose in a closely marked schedule. The pot fully dehydrated, then the chemical nature of it changed. The molecules locked. The pot sintered, its disparate bits of clay coalescing into the material known as ceramic. A hearty material, stronger than the clay that bore it, but porous enough to be glazed or painted. Strong enough not to break, and open enough to be made more beautiful.

  It was dangerous, though, to risk the pots by firing them this way. Exposure to the extreme heat rooted out every imperfection, no matter how small. Water would steam inside the clay and they would break. Break wasn’t exactly the right word. They would shatter. Explode. The pieces shot across the crowded space inside the oven, and inevitably destroyed the pieces near them. Madison had lost some of her favorite pots to this quirk of chemistry. Not by mishandling the piece itself, but because the pieces around them ruptured and took her favorite with them. Collateral damage.

  That wouldn’t happen this time, she told herself as she set a timing cone in the lid and turned the switch. The motor hummed into life. She watched it for a moment, willing it to be a good batch.

  Madison’s cell phone blared into life with an electronic cacophony. She trotted out into the kitchen to retrieve it, answering just before it went to voice mail.

  She eyed the rain pounding against the living room windows. “Hello?”

  “Hey yourself.” Jada’s liquid voice was smug and silky tonight, a sure sign that she either had good news or was deep into her first martini.

  “Almost missed you. I was just starting the kiln.”

  “At this hour? It must be…” There was a rustling as Jada tried to check her watch. “My god is that the time? Why am I calling you so late?”

  “It’s an hour earlier here.”

  “That’s right, I forgot.” Madison heard a cabinet open in the background and the tinkle of glass on granite. “Heaven love that man, he left me a shaker of martinis in the fridge. If he wasn’t snoring so damn loud I’d go kiss him.”

  “He’s a keeper.”

  “He’s a slob and a child, but I love him, god help me. Anyway, enough about my husband. You know what happened tonight?”

  Madison’s stomach tied itself into knots, but she forced herself to be patient. “My opening.”

  “Your opening.”

  The line went quiet for a long time. Long enough for Madison to waver back and forth between abject fear and unbridled happiness approximately seventeen times. She finally blurted out, “Well?”

  Jada left a heartbeat of silence, just to drag out the drama, before nearly shouting, “It was incredible!”

  “Oh god!”

  “You know I’m trying to be a detached professional here, Maddie, but I just can’t.” She paused for a second to sip her drink. “It was a huge success. You saw the photos I sent?”

  Several hours ago, when the gallery was about to open, Jada had emailed her a few shots of her show. Madison had taken a few landscapes of the vineyard and had them blown up to black and white banners, hung behind the pedestals holding her pots. Her art was the only color in the stark white room. The effect was breathtaking, even seeing stills of it rather than being there, and Madison cried with delight at its perfection.

  Jada was an expert at staging, drawing out every ounce of melodrama from a piece to entice her buyers, and her prowess was on full display with this show. The tall vase with the relief work she’d spent so much time on during the harvest was the centerpiece. Madison gasped when she saw the staging.

  “Your best work yet, Jada.”

  “Your best work. It deserved nothing less from me.” Another pause to sip her drink, but also, knowing Jada, for dramatic effect. “Everyone loved it. You should have heard this gallery during the show, it was buzzing. Literally buzzing.”

  “So they liked it?”

  “Liked it? I had two clients nearly in a fistfight over the relief vase. It sold for a disgusting amount of money. Of course, you’ll receive a check for slightly less disgusting amount within thirty days.”

  “What about the blue amphora? Did it sell?”

  “For a fine amount. To an anonymous bidder though, it’ll probably end up in some CEO’s outer office in New York.”

  “That’s fine,” she said with the sort of happy disappointment of a parent whose child was moving away for college. “As long as someone wanted it.”

  “They wanted everything, Maddie. You sold out.”

  “What do you mean? I sold out at the opening?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “That doesn’t happen.”

  “It does if you have a fantastic dealer showing your work. In fact, I had people begging for more. One of my best clients bought two vases and asked about your next show.”

  Panic started to set in. “But I don’t have anything more. Nothing ready yet. I’ve been throwing, but it’s been really rainy. I’ve been ignoring the shop here on the vineyard and throwing gallery pieces, but nothing’s ready.”

  “Calm down, Maddie. Make yourself a cup of tea and listen to me.” Madison heard Jada pour herself another drink and appreciated the break. “You don’t need to do anything yet. We’re going to wait on another show for you for a long while.”

  “We are?”

  “We are. The more people crave something they can’t have, the more they want it. I’m going to leave a few of your catalogs around the gallery with big sold stickers on them. By the time we have another show for you, these people will be drooling at your feet.”

  Madison couldn’t sit still any longer, she popped off the couch and padded barefoot across the living room to the windows. The rain was falling in slow sheets, occasionally gusting against the glass with a puff of wind. She pressed her face to the cool surface and let the chill run through her. Her cheeks burned with her smile.

  “Maddie? You still there?”

  “I’m here. I’m just…”

  She couldn’t come up with the words, and she didn’t need to. With another quick congratulation and a gentle reminder that she should move back to Denver with the proceeds, Jada hung up. Madison dropped the phone to the rug and pressed the rest of her body against the glass, spreading her arms and her legs out for as much coverage as she could manage. The cold seeped into her limbs. She could feel the rain and the wind through the glass as though it were on her skin. Her smile was too wide to ever go away.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  When the doorbell rang, it broke Madison’s focus for the first time in hours. She looked up from her wheel, blinking into the shimmering early daylight over the hills in the distance. The sky was clear of clouds for the first time in ages. She pressed down on the pedal and bent her head over the wheel again.

  When the doorbell sounded a second time she growled in frustration. Taking her foot off the pedal, she looked over her shoulder. A sharp snap of pain shot through her neck and shoulders. She stood and her body screamed in protest. She couldn’t quite remember what time she’d come in here last night, but she hadn’t left since. She stumbled out of the room, her body adjusting to movement slowly as she made her way to the front door.

  When she got the door open Boots was stepping down off the porch, and turned at the sound of her arrival. Fortunately, she looked down before she rushed to follow him. A massive basket, brimming with all manner of things and covered in a layer of cellophane, sat on the mat.

  “Good morning!” Boots said in a cheery voice from the lawn. “Sorry to wake you, but you have a delivery.”

  Madison knelt to pick up the basket, but it weighed a ton. She grunted as she lifted it, cutting a jokingly mad look at Boots as he laughed at her struggle.

  “Late night, Denver?”

  She settled the basket on the ben
ch by the door and slipped on a pair of flip-flops to go outside. “That depends on your definition. I haven’t been to bed yet.”

  He scowled. “Not brooding over Kacey I hope?”

  “No way.” She brandished her dirty hands. “Working.”

  She followed him into the yard, noticing the vineyard was even more bare than normal. The explanation lay in Boots’ cart, piled high with vine cuttings. Gnarled and twisted, and looking more like roots than branches.

  He followed her gaze and explained, “We’re pruning back the vines. Cutting out the dead growth so next year’s can come in stronger. Been at it since first light.”

  Madison picked up a piece of vine. It was surprisingly light and covered with a papery bark and tiny side branches, all snapped off close to the main branch.

  “What are you doing with it all?”

  “Taking it to compost on the far end of the property. We have a chipper set up. I just stopped on my way out there to make your delivery.”

  The cutting in her hand had so much character, so much life, it made her infinitely sad to think it would soon be wood shavings on a compost heap. This was the artery that brought life to the grapes that made the best wine she’d ever tasted. The foundation of CS’s special blend that she longed to drink again. It deserved a better resting place.

  Boots was climbing back into the cart when she grabbed his arm. “Can I have some?”

  “You want the cuttings?”

  “Not all of them.” She eyed the groaning cart, giving herself time to talk herself out of it, but the madness had taken her and she was determined. “Just a couple of loads. I’ll help.”

  He shrugged and hopped down. “Where do you want ’em?”

  They decided on a spot on the other side of the porch, tucked away out of sight behind the chimney and almost under the kitchen window. Madison said it was to keep them out of the way until she decided what to do with them, but it was also so people wouldn’t see. She didn’t want to have to explain that she couldn’t explain why she wanted them. She hated playing the “because I’m an artist” card.