Scarlett Rose's Arc

Chapter 12 of 57

Three days after Clayton hung his hat by her door, Scarlett woke before him and stood at the window with her coffee. His truck was in the yard again. His boots were by the mat. She had spent eleven years believing this kind of love was something she kept folded in a drawer, private, unspoken. Now it was drinking coffee behind her in her kitchen. She did not know how to carry it in daylight yet. She called Maya at noon. Maya came over with two iced teas and sat on the porch rail in her denim jacket, braid over one shoulder. Clayton's sister always looked at Scarlett like she already knew the answer and was waiting to hear it said out loud. "You look like a woman with a problem," Maya said. "He's here. He's really here. And I keep waiting for the part where I hide it again." "Hide what." "Him. Us. All of it. I spent so long keeping it quiet, I don't know how to just have it." Maya sipped her tea. "Then stop keeping it quiet. Go into town. Walk down the street with him. Let people see." "That easy." "That easy." Scarlett showered and put on the green dress she had bought weeks ago and never worn a second time. She pulled on her boots. She set the brown hat on her head and looked at herself in the mirror. She did not look hidden. Clayton came in from the barn and stopped in the hallway. "Where are we going." "Town. Feed store. Coffee. Wherever." He looked at the dress. "That for the feed store." "It's for anywhere I want." He took his hat off the hook. "Then let's go." They drove in together. He parked on the main street and came around and opened her door. She stepped down and took his hand on the sidewalk. She did not let go. They walked past the hardware store and the diner. A woman she had known since school looked up from a bench and smiled, slow and surprised. An older rancher at the feed store counter tipped his hat to Clayton and then, after a beat, to her. "Miss Rose," he said. He got her name right. She felt the old habit rise, the urge to duck her head and shorten herself. She did not do it. She said good afternoon and meant it. Outside, Clayton loaded a sack of grain into the truck bed and paused with one hand on the tailgate. "You alright." "I'm not hiding anymore," she said. "That's all." "Took you long enough." "I know." He kissed her in front of the truck, in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of the street. She kissed him back. When they drove home, her hand stayed on his knee the whole way, and she did not think once about the drawer she used to keep him in.