26. Scarlett
— ? —
Scarlett
He’s standing at the bottom of my stairs when I open the door.
I haven’t seen him for two weeks. And now, he’s just standing there with an envelope in his hands, looking up at me like he’s bracing for a blow.
He looks like hell. Stubble darkening his jaw, shadows under his eyes, his hair a mess from running his hands through it.
He’s wearing jeans and a flannel shirt buttoned wrong, one side higher than the other, and I want to fix it.
I want to walk down those steps and put my hands on his chest and straighten him out.
I don’t move.
“You came,” I say.
“I said I would.”
The morning light catches the tired lines around his eyes, the gray at his temples. He’s lost weight, his cheekbones are sharper, his shoulders seem narrower in a way that makes me ache.
“Are you coming up?”
“I need to tell you something first.” His voice is rough. “Something I should have told you two weeks ago.”
He’s been silent for two weeks, and now he’s standing at my stairs with something to confess.
“Then tell me.”
He takes a breath. “I went to see my mother. The day Camille gave me the letters.”
“You told me you confronted her.”
“I told you part of it.” He looks at the envelope in his hands, then back at me.
“I didn’t tell you what happened after. How she cried.
How I sat there and-” He stops. Swallows.
“I held her hand, Scarlett. She tried to end our marriage, and when I confronted her about it, I held her hand while she cried.”
The words land like stones.
“That’s why I couldn’t come to you,” he says. “That’s why I’ve been driving to Dallas and sitting in the parking lot and never getting out of the truck. Because I couldn’t figure out how to tell you that my mother actively tried to destroy us.”
I grip the railing. “You can’t tell me because you chose her again. When things got hard, you went somewhere else and dealt with someone else’s feelings instead of coming to me.”
“That’s not-”
“Isn’t it?” I start down the stairs. One step, then another. “You spent two weeks hiding from me because you couldn’t figure out how to say it.”
I’m on the landing now, three steps above him. I can see his pulse jumping in his throat, the way his hands have gone white-knuckled on that envelope.
“I went back,” he says. “Yesterday. I told her the seating charts stop. The schemes stop. If she wants to be part of Josie’s life, she earns it on your terms.”
“My terms.”
“Whatever you decide.”
“And if I decide she never sees Josie again?”
“Then she never sees Josie again.” He meets my eyes without flinching. “I’ll back you completely. Whatever you say.”
I want to believe him. I want to take that envelope out of his hands and invite him upstairs and let this be over. But there’s still a knot in my chest, still something that hasn’t been said.
“Why did you choose to tell me now?”
“Because I was ashamed.” His voice cracks. “Because I didn’t know how to face you carrying that. Because every time I tried to walk up those stairs, I could hear myself telling you and I couldn’t stand the way you’d look at me.”
“The way I’d look at you.”
“Like I’d failed you again.” He takes a shaky breath. “Like you’d finally realize I’m not worth the trouble.”
The words hang between us. I watch his face, looking for the performance, the careful management. All I see is a man who’s terrified of losing me.
“If you go out there again,” I say slowly, “and let her talk you out of what you know is true-”
“I won’t.”
“Let me finish.” I step down to the stair above his. Close enough now to touch him, though I don’t. “If you go out there and hold her hand again. If you let her cry her way back into your good graces. If you choose her comfort over our family-”
“Scarlett-”
“Don’t come back to my stairs.”
He flinches like I’ve hit him.
“I won’t,” he says. “I promise you. I won’t.”
“Prove it.”
“However long it takes.”
We stand there, one step apart. I can see him breathing, can see the way his chest rises and falls, can feel the heat coming off his body even with this small distance between us.
“There’s more,” he says. He holds out the envelope. “Salt Fork is sold. The money’s in a trust for Josie. I don’t touch any of it. And this…” He presses the envelope into my hands. “Twenty-three pages. Everything I did wrong. Every lie, every absence, every time I chose somewhere else over you.”
The envelope is heavy. I can feel the thickness of the pages inside.
“You don’t have to read it,” he says. “But I wanted you to have it. All of it. The parts that make me look worst especially.”
I look at the envelope, then at him. He’s standing there with his hands empty now, nothing left to hide behind.
“Is this you asking for something?”
“Yes.” He takes a breath. “I’m asking you to come home. To Lone Elm. I’m taking Salt Fork apart myself, board by board, and I’m bringing it back and putting it where it should have been from the start. Your barn. The real one.”
My heart is hammering against my ribs.
“Come look,” he says. “That’s all I’m asking. Come look, and tell me what you want the rest of it to be. I’ll build it however you say.”
I think about his mother’s elegant handwriting, her careful schemes.
“When?” I ask.
Hope shows in his face. And relief that I haven’t told him to leave.
“Whenever you’re ready. Next week, next month, whenever. I’ll wait.”
“And if I decide I don’t want any of it?”
“Then I’ll stop building and you’ll never have to see it.” His voice is steady now. “But I don’t think that’s what you’ll decide.”
“You sound very sure of yourself.”
“I’m not sure of anything except that I love you.” He holds my gaze. “And I’m done pretending I don’t need you.”
The words go through me like electricity.
“Go home, Beck.” I say it quietly, without anger. “Go take apart that barn. And call me when it’s ready.”
“You’ll come?”
“Since you’re asking nicely.”
Joy breaks open in his expression, something that makes him look younger than he has in months.
“Yes ma’am,” he says.
He turns and walks to his truck. I watch him go, watch the way he moves, loose-limbed and certain, watch the way he looks back at me once before he opens the door.
I stay on the stairs until his taillights disappear.
Then I go inside with twenty-three pages of his failures in my hands, and I sit down at the kitchen table, and I start to read.