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“Not yet, no. I guess it’s not a super common hobby anymore. All the pottery studios I used to go to when I was younger closed. They still have the places you can take kids to paint pottery, which is nice. But I want to actually throw some clay. Oh, I like your colors,” she said, looking over at my keychain. “I went a little crazy.”
Hers were all bright, happy colors.
That seemed like it might reflect her newly free mindset.
“You can use yours year-round with those colors, though. Mine is very fall-specific.”
We finished up the keychains as she told me more about what she was looking for in a studio one day, before moving on to the banners.
“I think this might have been the one craft I chose,” she admitted. “My room could use a little decor.”
“I just know someone is going to draw something obscene on this if I put it on the outside of my door,” I admitted, getting a twinkling little laugh out of Georgie.
“Boys,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“And a lot of alcohol around,” I agreed.
“Was that what was intriguing about being a biker? The parties?”
“Maybe it was a small part of it. Everyone wants to have a good time. And I’d still been reeling over leaving SWAT and the end of my marriage. I was looking for something… not so heavy, I guess. But I think what I’ve come to appreciate the most is the brotherhood.
“I had—or thought I had—that with my SWAT crew, but that paled in comparison to what I have now.”
“That sounds nice. And it seems bigger than that,” she said. “The girls…” She waved back toward the lot where we’d last seen them.
“Yeah. There are a lot of wives and kids. Even grandkids now.”
“Christmas shopping must be insane.”
“You have no idea. I start in the summer.”
“I haven’t done any Christmas shopping in years.”
“What? Not even for Perry?”
“No, Perry doesn’t like surprises. He bought himself something each year and if people asked, said it was from me.”
“What about for you?”
“He bought a piece of jewelry.”
Something about her flat affect made me imagine that the jewelry wasn’t what she wanted or wasn’t to her taste.
“He liked to be in control, huh?”
Her chest expanded as she dotted glue on the back of a felt acorn. She pressed it onto the felt banner, exhaling hard. “You could say that.”
We fell into easier conversation then—observations about the improvements The Hollow made since it reopened under new ownership. I went ahead and left out the fact that it was now owned by the mob and used to wash their money.
We left our crafts on the drying station and wandered around, picking out the best pumpkin for her to carve.
I wanted to drag it out, to offer to get her one more coffee for the road, but I didn’t want to come on any stronger than I already had.
“Thank you for… all of this,” she said after I loaded her pumpkin into her trunk. “I had a good time.”
“Me too. If you ever want to come back and try out the haunted woods, I’m available to protect you from the kids with chainsaws and machetes.”
“I just might take you up on that.”
