Chapter 33
Sawyer
My guesthouse is haunted.
Not with the ghost of Zach, the spectral new friend I had the genuine pleasure of welcoming into my life. Not even with Kennedy. The onetime love of my life is now, finally, nothing except ashes.
No, it’s not a ghost that haunts my pottery studio. Only a memory.
Stepping inside, I find myself wishing I could exorcise Morgan from this place.
I wish there was some ritual I could perform to forget the day we sheltered under the table—earthquake water soaking her clothing and tangling her hair—or to expel the many times she greeted me at her door, hair up and eyes bright, or to erase the nights I would help carry in her gardening supplies, hoping my understated humor might make her laugh.
Without her, the silence in the studio is punishing. The lack of joy is oppressive. The sunlight, which once reminded me of Morgan herself, now seems only to emphasize the room’s emptiness.
She left her purple coleus on the windowsill. I deserve that insult, I guess. That doesn’t mean I know how to heal from it.
I ignore the innocent plant. What would even be the point of moving it? The whole front yard is a cemetery of Morgan memories. My house, my refuge from the world, is now what I seek to escape.
My unease has led me out here into the studio. The guesthouse I couldn’t confront until now, so sparse without Morgan’s MacBook on the counter, her charger on the nightstand, her laughter in the daylight.
I’m glad she washed her sheets on her way out. I couldn’t bear the smell of her lingering where she isn’t.
I haven’t dared come out here in the five wretched days since I told her to leave, wrapped up in guilt, righteousness, and loneliness. Fuck, I don’t even know why I’m here now. I’m hurt. Confused. Lost. Fleeing from myself, I guess. With nowhere to go except this mausoleum.
Perfect conditions for throwing pottery, my subconscious has decided. It makes no sense. I avoided pottery for so long, and now, after losing Kennedy and Morgan in one day, I hope desperately art will somehow help heal the impossible wounds of my heart.
Moving mechanically, I pull the wheel out from the corner. Like when I showed Morgan, I can’t help remembering, then chastise myself. Not everything is about Morgan.
I sit. I put clay on the wheel, wet my hands, and breathe in deeply. I don’t know what I’m going to make. The best I can do is…follow my instincts. Let my hands show me what I need. I don’t even care what—I just need to create something, to shape something new. Instead of only wrecking everything.
Putting my foot to the pedal, I work the wheel steadily, rhythmically, watching nothing in front of me spin.
Then I place my hands on the gray form. The clay undulates under my grip, coating me quickly in residue the color of ash. Of earth. What everyone becomes in the end. What Kennedy is now.
I shape and sculpt, and it’s like crying the tears I no longer have. I’ve run out, leaving my eyes swollen and my head throbbing.
I let the wheel pick up momentum, spinning the clay under my hands with unnatural life. It’s hypnotizing, terrifying, thrilling. I could do anything. I could do nothing.
Like an exhale, I make my first choice, cutting into the clay with my thumb and my palm. Slowly, miraculously, nothing turns into something in front of me.
I close my eyes and let it ground me. Finding my way home to my craft, I start to imagine I’m not just lost. Not just stuck. Like I’m moving toward something. Some shining light, some nearing sun.
Like I felt with—
No. I focus on the clay, choosing to feel my way onward.
It helps. The pain lessens, just a little, as I’m forced to hold on to a shape I can’t see. Finally, my instincts stay my work, like phantom hands on mine—figuratively speaking, for once—pulling my fingertips from the thing I’ve formed.
I open my eyes.
It’s…not nothing at all. In fact, I recognize it instantly. Surprise rips through my sadness, because I know exactly what my subconscious has pulled from the earth.