Scarlett Rose's Arc

Chapter 25 of 57

The dress was back in its box by Wednesday morning. Rose sat at the kitchen table with a fresh notebook and tapped her pen against the rim of her coffee cup. Scarlett came in from the porch with a hand pressed to her lower back. The nausea had eased, but the doctor had been clear. No long drives. No planes. Not at six weeks along, not with how sick she had been. "Honeymoon," Rose said. "We haven't touched it. You leave the day after the wedding or you don't leave at all. Which is it?" Scarlett sat down slow. "I want to go somewhere. I just don't know where." "Rules first," Rose said, pen ready. "How far?" "Two hours by car. That's what the doctor said. No more." Rose wrote it down and underlined it twice. "Beach is out. Mountains are out. What's left?" Scarlett stared at her coffee. She had pictured a real trip once, before the pregnancy. Somewhere with an ocean. Now the map shrank to a small circle around the ridge, and inside that circle she could not think of a single place that felt like theirs. A hotel in town felt wrong. A cabin she'd never seen felt worse. She wanted somewhere that meant something to both of them, and she did not know where that was. Clayton came through the door with the mail. He set a seed catalog on the counter and looked at the notebook. "Honeymoon," Rose said before Scarlett could speak. "Two-hour radius. She's stuck." Clayton took off his hat and hung it on the hook. He poured himself coffee and leaned against the sink. "What about your grandmother's place," he said. Scarlett looked up. "The greenhouse?" "The whole place. The glass house. The cottage. I proposed there. You said yes there. It's ten minutes down the ridge." He took a slow drink. "Nobody knows we're there. Nobody calls. I hang a sign on the gate and we don't come out for a week." Rose set her pen down. Scarlett felt it settle in her chest, clean and immediate. The place he had rebuilt for her, one pane at a time, over a whole year before she knew. The place he had asked her to marry him. Ten minutes from the doctor. Ten minutes from the barn if anything went wrong. "Yes," she said. "There." Clayton nodded once. "I'll hang the sign Friday before the wedding." Rose wrote it in the notebook and drew a box and checked it. Then her phone buzzed on the table. She looked at the screen and her face changed. "It's Mama," she said. "She says Aunt Lorraine is flying in tomorrow. She wants to stay at the cottage." Scarlett set her cup down. The circle around the ridge had just gotten smaller again.