Scarlett Rose's Arc

Chapter 55 of 57

The ten minutes on the porch held for a week. Then the twins hit their second growth spurt and the nights ran together. Scarlett stopped putting the sunflower dress on. She stopped brushing her hair before bed. She caught her reflection in the hall mirror one morning and did not know the woman there. Her middle was soft. Her chest was sore. Her shirt had milk on the shoulder. Clayton kissed her forehead in the kitchen and she turned her cheek before his mouth found hers. He noticed. He did not say so. On Friday she skipped the porch. She told him Azure was fussy. He nodded and went to the barn. She sat on the nursery floor between the crib and the changing table and cried without sound. She did not want him to see her like this. She did not want him to touch her and find someone new under his hands. Saturday morning he came in from the barn early. He set his hat on the hook and stood in the nursery doorway in the good shirt with the red yoke. The one from the porch. "Rose is coming at ten," he said. "For the whole day." "I didn't ask her." "I did." She looked up from the rocker. Skye was asleep on her chest. "Where are we going?" "Ten minutes up the ridge. The old cabin on the twelve acres. I cleaned it Wednesday." "Clayton. I can't." "You can sit on the porch. You can sleep. You can eat what I bring. That's the whole plan." She put Skye in the crib. She washed her face. She did not change her shirt. He drove her up the ridge in the truck and carried her over the cabin threshold the way he had on the honeymoon. She laughed for the first time in a week and then she cried again. He sat her in a rocking chair on the wraparound porch and brought her coffee. He sat in the other chair. He did not reach for her. "I feel like a stranger in my body," she said. "I can't let you see it." "I've seen it. I was there." "It's different now." "It's the body that carried them. I'm not scared of it. You are." She looked at him. He was telling the truth the way he tells it, flat and without decoration. "Ten minutes," she said. "On the porch. Right here." "Ten minutes," he said. "Then a nap. Then a sandwich. Then home." She took his hand. She let him look at her in the morning light without turning her face. He kissed her mouth on the rocking chair and she did not flinch. The distance closed by an inch she could feel. At three she nursed Azure in the cabin loft while Clayton read on the bed beside her. He did not look away. She did not ask him to.