“Hey.” Wren looked up from the pot she was making. “What’s going on?”

“Thomas stopped by. He left a bag of butternut squash for you on the counter.”

“That was nice. Guess what we’re having for supper?”

Maggie smiled weakly. Mom wouldn’t be happy if she knew the kinds of dishes her daughter and sister were calling meals, most of which came down to a single thing in a bowl. “Want me to put one in the oven?”

“In a bit. Come check out what I’m making first.”

Maggie stuck her hands into her cardigan pockets and shuffled in. The aunt had never said the studio was off-limits, but until now, neither had she asked Maggie to hang out with her in here and chat. Hanging out and chatting just weren’t Wren’s thing, not even during mealtimes. They exchanged a few words, ate, and parted. This didn’t bother Maggie. The quiet held a comfortable quality. But Maggie would have liked to have spent more time in the studio as well.

It was a cozy place, dusty and redolent with something earthy, probably the clay. Though the downcast morning grayed the windows, the room was well-lit, and the metal equipment shone cheerfully. On the worktable, the aunt had three rows going, a series of roundish white pots, then a line of knobbed lids, and finally a row of what looked like miniature cooling towers. Spouts. “Teapots?”

“Yep. In porcelain.”

Maggie walked by the table. “Why don’t you do all of one thing at a time?”

“I probably could for the spouts, but you’ve got to measure the mouth of the body to get the right size for the lid. With these.” She picked up a long, two-legged tool. “Calipers.” The aunt returned the tool to the work stand. “No beachcombing today?”

Maggie bent to better examine an oddly shaped knob. “Too gloomy out.”

“You look good.”

She glanced up, smiled. “Thanks.”

Aunt Wren nodded slowly. “Rested for a change. A hell of a lot better than you looked last week. Did you have a nice time at the book club?”

“I did,” she said, and heard the surprise in her own voice. The meeting would have been worthwhile, even if it had just served as a diversion and kept her from remembering last year—and from thinking about Jane Cannon. But between that discussion about love and how funny Ran was, it had turned out better than she’d expected. The girls had even invited Maggie to go out with them afterward—to check out a friend’s new apartment.

She’d mumbled an excuse. She wasn’t ready for anything like that. But the meeting had been nice.

“Excellent,” Wren said. “Good to make some friends around here. You must be missing your old ones.”