Tracy's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Tracy took the long way home and did not sleep well. By morning the news had beaten her out the door. At the bakery the bread woman leaned across the counter and said someone had seen John invite a girl to the hives. She did not know it was Tracy. She said a name Tracy knew from the harvest party, a girl who wore bracelets that clattered when she walked, and said that girl was already picking flowers to bring him before noon. Tracy paid for her bread and stood on the step. Her meeting with John was tomorrow, not today. If someone else reached him first with a gift in her hand, tomorrow would not matter. He would be kind to that girl. He was kind to everyone. That was the problem. She went home and opened the drawer where she kept things she could not throw away. She took out a small oval locket, painted with red flowers and blue ones and a gold vine. Her mother had given it to her. Inside she pressed a note, folded twice. Coming tomorrow, as promised. Save the frames for me. Tracy. She closed the locket and held it until the metal warmed. A locket alone could be lost, or handed off, or explained away. She needed a second thing, in another hand, so the message could not be undone. She went to the garden and cut a pink wildflower with a bud still tight on the stem. She pressed it flat between two sheets of waxed paper and tied it with thread. She knew the old man who kept the goats near the path to the hives. He waved at her every morning and never asked her anything. She walked to his gate with the pressed flower and asked him, in a voice she barely recognized, to give it to the tall beekeeper when he passed by at dusk. Tell him Tracy sent it. Tell him she is coming tomorrow. The old man took the flower in both hands and said he would. Then she walked to the hives. She did not go into the clearing. She set the locket on the flat stone at the edge of the path, where John stacked his empty jars. She placed a pebble on the chain so the wind would not take it. She left before the butterflies found her. Walking back, she passed the girl with the bracelets on the road, arms full of cut lilies. The girl smiled at her the way strangers smile. Tracy smiled back and kept walking. Her hands were empty now. Two tokens were already ahead of her, one on the stone and one with the goat keeper. Whoever reached John first, her name would reach him twice before any other name did. She went home the short way, the old way, past the fence. For the first time in two years, the quiet route felt like a route she had chosen.