Scarlett Rose's Arc

Chapter 49 of 57

Sunday morning Scarlett took the cedar box down from the shelf above the stove. The rosemary had dried. The tomato blossom had curled brown. The signed page with the twins' names still leaned against the salt shaker where she'd left it. She sat at the table and opened the clasp. Something was wrong. The box held proof, but it didn't hold Clayton. She wanted a keepsake he could open in twenty years and know exactly what she'd felt this week. Right now it read like a doctor's file with a leaf on top. Clayton came in from the barn with mud on his boots. He saw her frown at the open box. "What's it missing?" "Him," she said. "You. I put in the babies and the greenhouse and the doctor. There's nothing of you in it." He looked at the box a long moment. Then he pulled out his wallet and set the county fair receipt on the table. The one she'd found in the truck the morning of the wedding. Faded ink. His name printed wrong on the top line, the same way he'd once said hers. "Put that in," he said. She laid it beside the doctor's page. The box looked closer. Not finished. She went to the bedroom and came back with the shirt pocket note she'd written him on their wedding morning. Rose had returned it folded in fours. She set it in the box. Then she added the small stub of pencil Clayton kept on the windowsill, the one he used to mark feed bags. He watched her without asking why. "One more thing," she said. She took her scissors from the drawer and cut a square from the cuff of his oldest work shirt, the plaid one hanging by the door. He didn't flinch. She folded the square and laid it under the receipt. "Now?" he said. "Now it's us." He pulled a chair beside her. He picked up the pencil stub and turned it in his fingers. "Write their birthday on the lid when it comes," he said. "Inside. Not outside." "Inside," she agreed. She closed the clasp. The bone latch clicked. The weight of the box had changed. It wasn't heavier. It sat differently in her hand, the way a full bucket sits different from an empty one. She carried it back to the shelf above the stove. Clayton put his boots by the door and his hat on the hook. The kitchen smelled like coffee and cedar. "Rose called," he said. "She wants to bring the crib frame Tuesday. Said the nursery's not done." Scarlett looked at the shelf. The keepsake was finished. The room the babies would sleep in was not. She reached for her phone to tell Rose yes, Tuesday, and to ask what still needed building.