“You know, I used to work at a little store not far from here,” Claire says, mixing her melty whipped cream into the last of her milkshake. She wishes she’d gotten two—it’s been too long since she had a treat.
“So you weren’t always a homemaker?” Jackie says. As if she can read Claire’s mind she scoops up a spoonful of ice cream and banana, offering it across the table to Claire. “Try this, it’s amazing.”
Claire takes the spoon, and Jackie is right—it’s delicious. She hardly thinks about the fact that she’d ordinarily never share cutlery with anyone, even Pete. “Pete asked me to quit and stay home not long after we got married. He was tired of it interfering with my duties at home, and it’s a long bus ride to get all the way out here.”
“And he didn’t want you to get a license,” Jackie says.
Claire nods. “I loved working there, though. It was the sweetest little art supply shop, over on Cochrane Avenue. Anita always treated me like family.”
“Is it still there?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t been this far into town in years,” Claire says. “Anita very well might have retired by now.”
Jackie hums thoughtfully around her spoon.
Claire bites her tongue before the rest slips out—that she felt so guilty about quitting that she hasn’t even been able to bring herself to call Anita and catch up, and now here she is ten years later, having lost touch with someone she once loved like a second mother. If the shop has closed, or god forbid something has happened to Anita, Claire would have no idea.
She spent almost her whole adolescence there, stocking shelves and helping Anita decorate the little art studio in the back room. When Anita bought a pottery wheel, she taught Claire how to throw clay. Claire is sure she still has the vase Anita made as a wedding present in a closet somewhere—it was beautiful, but Pete hadn’t wanted to put it out on display.
Claire doesn’t think much of it when Jackie takes them on a different route home leaving the malt shop, but whenthe Mustang makes the turn onto Cochrane Avenue, Claire’s suspicion mounts.
“I thought we were going home?” Claire says.
“There are multiple ways to get there,” Jackie says slyly. “Point out where the store was for me?”
Jackie slows the car as they pass familiar shops. There’s the pet store that Claire used to visit on her breaks to pet puppies. Next to it is the little sandwich shop that often gave Claire free lunch in exchange for her drawing some nice designs on their daily menu board. And two storefronts down, with theOPENsign that Claire once lovingly painted still hung in the window, is the Crafty Corner.
The door chimes when Jackie strolls through it, with Claire trailing behind her. The same nerves that have kept her from giving Anita a call all these years sit in her stomach like a rock. The store smells the same as it always did, like new paper and acrylic paint, but the layout has changed a bit. There’s more art on the walls now, some with price tags fixed underneath and others seeming to belong to the store.
Immediately Jackie gravitates to a piece on the far wall, near the cash register. “Oh, Ilovethis. It looks just like our tree, doesn’t it? Yellow is my favorite color, you know.”
Claire is just filing that new piece of information away when she steps around a shelf to see which piece Jackie is talking about, and all her breath escapes in awhoosh.
It’s Claire’s painting.
She’d completely forgotten about it, until this moment. It’s the one she painted just before she quit her job here, a month or so into her married life with Pete. They’d just moved to Acacia Circle, and Claire had been quite taken with the tree that was clearly the street’s namesake. She’d spent one of her first days as a proper housewife doing it. Pete had come home, and upon seeing supper not on the table yet he’d made it clear what hernew priorities needed to be. Claire had thrown out most of her art supplies not long after.
Claire knew that Anita kept it, but she never expected it to be hung in the store. She’s never considered herself an expert with oil paints, but she’d been proud of the way she managed to capture all the different shades of green and gold and butter-yellow in the flowering tree. Even now, looking on it with older and less kind eyes, Claire can see that it’s not a bad painting.
And Jackie likes it.
The door to the studio behind the register swings open. Claire hears a familiar pleased squeak.
“I’ll be damned—if it isn’t Claire Fields.”
Anita is older and more lined than Claire remembers. She even seems a bit shorter. More stooped, maybe. Her hair is longer, gathered into a messy grey pile on top of her head. Her apron is covered in paint stains, her hands are caked in clay from her pottery wheel, and she’s absolutely beaming.
“Anita,” Claire says, in a rush of warm feeling. “It’s Claire Davis, now. Remember?”
“Sure, sure,” Anita says, waving off the mistake. She hurried forward, clasping Claire’s hands in her own wrinkled and clay-crusted ones. “Oh, it’s so lovely to see you. And all grown up, look at you! I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again after you ran off to get married to that boy.”
Claire should never have been nervous about seeing Anita again. She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. Claire doesn’t even mind getting clay on her hands. “I was nineteen when I saw you last. Not exactly a child.”
“Close enough,” Anita says, winking. She turns towards Jackie. “And who is this young lady?”
“This is my friend Jacqueline,” Claire says, gesturing Jackie over. “She’s an artist, too—a photographer. Her work is wonderful.”
“Claire is being very generous,” Jackie says, offering her usual brassy handshake to Anita. “It’s lovely to meet you.”
