Any way you cut it, the vase was a true find.

Not that Katie was looking for a vase. She’d entered the thrift store on a mission to find a replacement carafe for their old coffeemaker, George. They didn’t make ’em like George anymore. Of course, she knew there were much better coffee pots on the market. Those that could be set to run themselves, to grind the beans, to maybe change your socks, if so inclined. But she loved George. His simplicity. His rustic charm. His smile. Yes. She believed that George smiled at her every morning. No. She knew it.

“Let’s see your fancy coffeemakers do that,” Katie said to her boyfriend each time George smiled. Her boyfriend rolled his eyes. She knew that he longed to banish George to a landfill. This was not a quality she liked in her boyfriend. Along with his overuse of the word ‘dude.’ There was a time and place.

She was having no luck finding a new carafe for George. Although she knew she would eventually, Katie was left momentarily bereft at this admission of failure. Thus, the vase.

It was ‘tall glass of water’ of a vase. Long and slender with smooth, beguiling shoulders. Even if you weren’t into shoulders, you couldn’t deny that this vase had a winning pair. Katie ran her fingers along the right shoulder and felt she may be bordering on violating it. Which was a weird thought. Even for her. She stared at it awhile, pulled in by its cerulean glaze that sent her adrift on an imaginary sea. She blinked a few times and then noticed there were patches of imperfections in spotted browns and greens that brought to mind algae growth. She touched it again.

“George would love you,” she said, if more to convince herself that she would need to bring it home. That way, if her boyfriend questioned her, she could throw George under the bus. She wasn’t above doing such a thing. Chances are, the dude wouldn’t even notice the vase. He wasn’t much of a noticer.

And so she purchased the vase and promptly named it Louise. Louise was only $11. A steal. Especially given Louise’s pedigree.

Louise had travelled only a short way before landing on this Goodwill shelf in East Texas. Her former gig was at the Parkerson Funeral Home, just six miles up the highway. There she had dutifully held a variety of flowers; mostly white lilies, blue hydrangea, and yellow roses. All flowers associated with death; though the yellow rose is also a Texas thing. Whatever the case, the journey to the funeral home had also not been a long one. The funeral home had actually been gifted Louise by an eccentric woman twenty years before who’d insisted that the funeral home was too drab and needed a spot of color. Unclear on the vibe most funeral homes were trying to achieve, she also suggested kerchiefs in every hue be draped over the lamps. The owners felt this gave it a boudoir feel that was wholly inappropriate for a funeral home. So she relented.

Now, how the eccentric woman came to acquire Louise is not entirely known. Sometimes objects travel on haphazard trajectories that defy reason or logic. The eccentric woman defied these as well. So perhaps it was kismet that brought them together. More than likely though, an older relative of the eccentric woman had had Louise in his/her possession before handing it off to her. One thing was known for certain. Louise was born in a small French town in the 1920s at the hands of a young ceramicist. And one of some repute, though no one at the Crockett Goodwill was familiar with her name. Thus, by the time Louise landed on that shelf and drew Katie’s attention, nobody knew of her true monetary value.

Nobody also knew that she’d been purchased by royalty at one point and held poppies and peonies in a palace. Or that she’d found her way to Poland in the hands of a trader, where she adorned the shelf of a small kitchen that smelled of boiled potatoes and sauerkraut and where the flowers she held softened the earthy, dirty foot scent of the cabbage. And certainly no one knew she had been smuggled out of Poland in the late 1930s with the family that fled to the United States.. just in time. Or that she would then settle in Teaneck, New Jersey, until a series of meandering events would land her in the eccentric woman’s home just outside Crockett in East Texas and then the Parkerson Funeral Home. Thus, when the eldest Parkerson passed, and none of the younger Parkersons wanted the too-morose family business, Louise ended up on a shelf at the Goodwill.

But Katie knew nothing of this. Nor did she care. The value of the Louise was apparent to her in her smooth lines, her soothing color, and just how delightful a sister she would be to George.