Scarlett Rose's Arc

Chapter 7 of 57

Morning came clear. The creek had dropped enough to walk, not drive. Clayton stood on her porch with coffee in his hand and said he wanted to show her something before he tried the crossing. Scarlett pulled on her boots. She still felt the shape of last night in her chest, his hand across the table, her own words hanging out in the open air. She knew the boy who delivered that calf. She did not know the man beside her now. If they only talked about fences and weather, this new thing between them would starve. He led her along the fence line toward a stand of dogwoods at the back of her pasture. She had walked past it a hundred times. Behind the trees stood a small glass house she had never really looked at, its panels shaped like wings, the paint faded to soft green and pink. Her grandmother's, half forgotten. "You built onto this," she said. The hinges were new. The broken pane above the door was new. "Last fall," Clayton said. "I saw it from my side. Figured somebody ought to fix it before it caved." "You never told me." "I was going to. Then I kept not telling you." He opened the door. Warm air moved out. Inside, someone had swept the floor and set two crates upright like stools. He sat on one. She sat on the other. Their knees almost touched. "Ask me something," he said. "Anything. I've been three feet away for a year and you don't know me yet." She took a breath. "Tell me the worst decision you almost made." He told her about the second property. The debt that would have tripled. Duke off his feed for a week. How he talked it out loud in the barn until he heard himself and stopped. She asked about his mother. He asked about her father. They traded small hard things across the crates for an hour. He laughed once, dry, at something she said about her sister. She learned he counted listening as his best skill. She believed him. A flicker moved between them. A butterfly settled on the crate by her hand. Its wings opened slow. Each wing carried a shape the color of a bruised rose, curved at the top, pointed at the bottom. A heart, plain as print. Neither of them spoke. Clayton looked at the butterfly, then at her. "That's ridiculous," she said. "It is." He leaned across the small space between the crates. He gave her time to move. She did not move. His mouth met hers, careful, then sure. His hand came up under her jaw. She held the front of his shirt and kept him there. The butterfly lifted and drifted toward the glass roof. When he sat back, he kept hold of her hand. "I'll come at six," he said. "Tomorrow. Not for a fence. For supper." "Six," she said. She knew him a little now. She wanted the rest.