Scarlett Rose's Arc

Chapter 40 of 57

Rose set the coffee down. Scarlett stared at the phone. Clayton had the note, the shirt, the breakfast. He had the vows too. She had folded them into his shirt pocket last night, four pages of her lifelong love written plain, and she had never once asked him to read them before he stood in front of her. "He didn't say anything about the pages," Scarlett said. "Just the note." Rose frowned. "So?" "So he might not have found them. That shirt has two pockets. If he reached in for the note and stopped, the vows are still folded where I left them." She set her cup down. "He can't hear them for the first time at the altar. Not those words. He needs a minute alone with them first." "Call him." "He'll ask why. Then he'll open them standing in the tack room and I won't be there." She thought a second. "His dad's walking him out at six. That's twenty minutes." She picked up the phone and dialed the ranch line. It rang four times. Clayton answered on the fifth, breath short, like he'd come in from the yard. "You said one sentence," he said. "Check your shirt pocket. The other one." A pause. Fabric moved against the receiver. She heard paper unfold. "There's four pages here." "Those are my vows. I put them there last night. I need you to read them before you leave the barn. Not at the pavilion. Now." Silence. Then his voice, closer to the phone. "You want me to read your vows before you say them." "Yes." "Why." "Because I spent eleven years not saying them out loud. I don't want the first time you hear them to be in front of your mother." He made a sound that was almost a laugh. She heard him sit. She heard the chair take his weight. "Stay on the line," he said. "I don't need to—" "Stay on the line, Scarlett." She stayed. She listened to him breathe and turn a page. She listened to him turn another. Rose stepped out of the kitchen without a word. Four pages. Six minutes. She counted the seconds against the wall clock and did not speak. He cleared his throat. "Alright," he said. "Alright." "I'm keeping these in my jacket pocket. The inside one. Against the tie." The white jacket was hanging on the tack room door. She knew the shirt underneath was purple and the tie was pale blue. She had picked them herself. "Okay," she said. "See you under the flowers." He hung up. Scarlett set the receiver down. Her hands were steady. He had heard her before the aisle. He would stand under the pavilion in a white jacket with her words folded against his chest, and when she reached him she would not be starting from silence. She would be finishing something already begun.