Scarlett Rose's Arc

Chapter 9 of 57

Scarlett set the iron down and looked at the dress on the bed. Navy cotton, three years old, a small stain on the hem from a church potluck. She had planned to wear it. Now she couldn't. Clayton had waited a year to sit across a table from her. She would not meet him in a stained hem. She opened her closet and pushed through every hanger. Work shirts. Two funeral dresses. A sweater her sister had knit wrong. Nothing said the woman he'd been picturing. Nothing said her. Supper was at six. It was already past two. She called Cora. Cora didn't pick up. She called Maya before she could talk herself out of it. "I have nothing to wear," Scarlett said. "I know how that sounds." "It sounds like every woman I know." Maya's voice was calm. "The shop by the crossroads. Tell the owner I sent you. She keeps a rack in the back she doesn't put on the floor." "I don't have time to try things on and be wrong." "Then don't be wrong. Trust her. I'll call ahead." Scarlett drove with both hands tight on the wheel. The shop sat between a feed store and a shuttered bakery. The owner met her at the door with a measuring tape around her neck and pulled her straight to the back. "Maya said crimson hair and curves and a man who's been waiting." The woman didn't ask questions. She held up a dress and Scarlett stopped breathing. Deep teal. Fitted bodice with a sweetheart neckline. A full skirt that would move when she walked. Gold stitching along every seam like a hand-drawn line. A cowboy hat and boots waited on the shelf beside it, the leather warm brown, tooled in a pattern that matched the stitching. "Try it," the woman said. Scarlett went behind the curtain. The dress fit like it had been cut for her body. The bodice held her without pinching. The skirt fell right at the knee. She stepped into the boots and they took her like she'd worn them a year. She looked in the mirror and saw the woman Clayton had been talking about at every holiday. Not a costume. Her, sharpened. "I'll take all of it," she said. She paid without checking the total. In the parking lot she sat in the truck a long moment with the bag on the seat beside her. Her hands were steady. Her jaw was set. At home she washed her face, did her makeup slow, and pinned her hair loose down her back. She stepped into the dress and the boots and set the hat on the dresser to grab last. She checked the clock. Five forty. She drove to the cottage bar with wildflowers along the shoulder blurring past. Warm windows glowed through the dusk. Clayton's truck was already there. She parked, set the hat on her head, and got out.