Petra Holt's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The words hung in the air between them. Milo stared at the yellow clover in his hand. Nola Jasper took another step back and found something urgent to do with her apron strings. Petra's heart hammered against her ribs. She had said it. Now he had to say something back, or the silence would become the answer. A screen door creaked across the lane. Mildred Patterson stepped out onto her porch in her purple cardigan, watering can forgotten in one hand. The old woman had lived next to Petra's workshop for twenty years. She had watched Petra carry two mugs down that path every morning for ten of them. She did not pretend to look away now. She met Petra's eyes and gave one small, firm nod. Go on, girl. Finish it. Petra swallowed. "Not here," she said to Milo. "Come with me. Ten minutes. Then you can say whatever you need to say." Milo nodded once, dazed. He set the clover on the gatepost beside the cold mug. Nola did not stop them. Petra walked him down to the boathouse by the lake. Weathered planks, sloped roof, the door hanging open on still water. No one came here in the mornings. She had built half of it herself, three summers ago, while he handed her nails and talked about nothing. Inside, she pulled a wooden heart-shaped box down from the shelf above the workbench. She had carved it two winters back and never given it to him. Her hands shook worse now than they had at the gate. "I made this for you," she said. "I kept losing my nerve." Milo took the box. He turned it over in his palms like a man reading a letter. Then he lifted the lid. Inside was a folded paper she had put there and forgotten. A sketch. Her own face, freckles and all, drawn in careful pencil. She had found it slipped inside one of his shirts a year ago when she mended a cuff for him. She had never asked. She had put it in the box because she did not know where else to put it. Milo went still. He recognized his own hand. "You drew that," Petra said. "I found it. I didn't know what it meant. I still don't." He closed the box. He looked at her the way he had looked at Nola at the gate, and then differently — steadier, scared, his. "It meant I was a coward," he said. "Petra. I've been drawing you for years." He stepped forward and kissed her. Once. Quick. Like a man testing whether the floor would hold. It held. Then he pulled back, and his face crumpled. "But Nola came back yesterday," he said. "And I told her I'd give her an answer by tonight. Before you said anything. Petra, I already promised her I'd try."