16. Gracie
— ? —
Gracie
The church fair is chaos in the best way, string lights and cotton candy and children running between booths, every pickup in Cedar Hollow parked along the road under a late-autumn sky that’s just starting to fade from blue to pink.
Mal walks beside me like he’s waiting to be asked to leave.
“Stop that,” I say, without looking at him.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re walking like a man about to be executed.”
“I’m not-” He catches himself. Shoves his hands in his pockets. “Old habits.”
June finds us within thirty seconds. She looks Mal up and down, then looks at me with eyebrows that could signal aircraft.
“So this is happening.”
“It’s not a date.”
“Uh-huh.” She’s already grinning. “You want lemonade? I’m selling lemonade. Commemorative cups.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“Haven’t decided yet. Maybe tonight. Maybe right now.” She winks and disappears into the crowd.
We don’t make it ten feet before Betty Carmichael materializes in our path with a plate of lemon bars and a look I know too well. Half the bake-sale table turns to watch, because Betty at full volume is the town’s second-favorite entertainment after the dunk tank.
“Well.” She beams at Mal, then at me, then at the careful foot of space between us. “Isn’t this a sight. The Kochs, back together. I always said a marriage like yours doesn’t just-”
“We’re not back together, Betty.”
I say it easy. Pleasant, even. Loud enough to carry to the three women pretending not to listen over the cash box, because if the whole town is going to write the story, they can write the true one.
“He’s working my farm and staying in my bunkhouse, and he’s here because I’m letting him be here, and that’s all it is.” I pluck a lemon bar off her plate and take a bite, unbothered as Sunday. “These are wonderful. Is it more lemon this year?”
Betty’s mouth opens and closes. Beside me Mal has gone very still, and I feel the flush climb the back of his neck without even looking.
He doesn’t argue, because he doesn’t get to.
He just stands there and takes it, the way a man takes a bill he ran up himself, and some small hard knot in me loosens at the sight, because for years I was the one who stood in public and swallowed whatever the room decided we were.
Not tonight. Tonight the record is mine to set.
“More lemon,” Betty manages faintly. “Yes. The zest.”
“Thought so.” I smile at her, and I take Mal’s silence with me like a prize as we move on into the crowd.
The fair is the usual small-town spread: ring toss, cake walk, a bake sale run by the church ladies with a competitive streak that would make Olympians nervous. There’s a pie-eating contest that Denny is absolutely going to win, and a guess-the-weight booth with a prize pig named Butterbean.
And at the far end of the field, by the old oak tree, there’s a dunk tank.
“What’s that for?” Mal asks.
“Roof fund.” I’m reading the hand-painted sign. “Five dollars a throw. All proceeds go to fixing the leak in the sanctuary.”
“Huh.” He studies it with the same intensity he brings to everything. “Who’s getting dunked?”
“Pastor Williams, usually. Sometimes the mayor.” I glance at him. “Why?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s still looking at the tank, his jaw set hard the way it goes when he’s thinking through a plan he hasn’t said yet.
“Mal.”
“What if I did it?”
I stare at him. “What?”
“Got in the tank.” He says it like he’s proposing a minor schedule change, not public humiliation. “Raised some money. Let people-” He gestures vaguely. “You know.”
“Let people dunk you.”
“Yeah.”
“You. The famous painter. In the dunk tank. At the Cedar Hollow church fair.” I say each piece slowly, waiting for him to hear how it sounds.
“For the roof fund.”
I’m still staring. “Why?”
He finally turns to me, and his eyes go soft and serious, like he’s seeing through to the bones of me.
“Because they’re your people,” he says. “And I hurt you. And if they want to throw things at me for it, seems like the least I can do is give them a target.”
I don’t know what to say to that, or to any of this, the soup, the sketches, the way he washed my hair like I was precious, the way he’s standing here now offering to be dunked by an entire town that hates him.
“Fine,” I hear myself say. “Do it.”
He nods, takes off his jacket, and hands it to me.
“Mal.”
“Yeah?”
“That’s your good shirt.”
“I know.” He’s already walking toward the tank. “It’s about to get wet.”
The next five minutes are a blur of confusion and crowd gathering. Pastor Williams looks thrilled to have a volunteer. Mrs. Patterson looks like Christmas came early. Denny materializes from nowhere with a chalkboard and a piece of chalk.
“Official scorekeeper,” he announces. “Someone’s got to document this for posterity.”
“What’s going on?” June’s appeared again, lemonade in hand.
“The artist is getting in the dunk tank.”
June’s face lights up like a slot machine hitting jackpot. “Oh my God.”
“Yep.”
“Oh my God.”
“I’m taking bets on how many times he goes down,” Denny says. “Current odds are twelve.”
“Twelve?” I’m watching Mal climb into the tank, his ridiculous shoulders barely fitting through the opening. “That seems low.”
“That’s before anyone’s thrown anything.” Denny grins. “Want to put money on it?”
I don’t answer. I’m too busy watching Mal settle onto the metal seat, test the trigger plate, look out over the crowd with an expression of perfect calm.
The town goes silent.
Then, slowly, it goes feral.
“Five dollars a throw!” Pastor Williams is calling. “Five dollars to dunk Malcolm Koch! All proceeds to the roof fund!”
There’s a rush for the line. It’s a hair short of a stampede.
“Gracie.” June’s at my elbow, pressing a bill into my hand. “Here.”
It’s a twenty.
“What’s this for?”
“Change.” She’s grinning so wide it looks painful. “You’re going to want change.”
I look at the twenty, then the tank, then Mal, sitting there in his good white shirt, water lapping at his ankles, waiting.
He catches my eye. Raises an eyebrow.
I walk to the line.
The crowd parts for me. Actually parts, like I’m Moses and they’re the Red Sea.
“Gracie Tate,” someone whispers. “Oh Lord, here we go.”
“Someone get a camera.”
“I’ve got my phone.”
“Get a better phone.”
I reach the front of the line. Pastor Williams takes my twenty, gives me four baseballs.
“Good luck,” he says, and he’s trying not to smile.
I don’t need luck. I spent my entire childhood throwing rocks at fence posts. I was varsity softball two years running. My arm has been called, by people who would know, a municipal weapon.
Mal looks at me from the tank. His mouth stays flat, but his eyes are smiling.
“Gracie.”
“Malcolm.”
“Nice arm you’ve got there.”
“Thanks.” I test the weight of the ball in my palm. “I’ve been practicing.”
“On what?”
“Fence posts, mostly.” I wind up. “Sometimes I pretend they’re you.”
I throw.
The ball hits the target dead center. The seat drops. Mal plunges into the water with a splash that soaks the first three rows of spectators.
The crowd screams.
I mean screams, full-throated, hands-in-the-air, years-of-repressed-rage-finally-finding-an-outlet screams. June is doubled over laughing. Denny’s chalking a giant “1” on his scoreboard. Mrs. Patterson is actually applauding.
Mal surfaces, gasping, hair plastered to his forehead. He climbs back onto the seat.
“Again,” he says.
I throw again.
Splash.
“Two!” Denny bellows. “Two dunks! The vet isn’t messing around!”
Mal surfaces. Climbs back up. He’s grinning now, that real grin, the one that shows his crooked bottom tooth.
“Your form’s good,” he calls up, wiping water out of his eyes.
“I know.” I roll the next ball in my palm, taking my time, letting him watch me take my time.
“Really good.” He’s stalling, and we both know it, and the crooked grin says he doesn’t care. “You’re enjoying this.”
“Immensely.” I don’t even try to hide it. After years of feeling like a ghost in my own life, there’s nothing on earth like the sight of Malcolm Koch, famous painter, dripping wet and grinning at me from a dunk tank because I put him there.
I throw again.
Splash.
“Three! Three dunks! Someone get this woman a medal!”
By throw five, June is selling commemorative lemonade. “Official Dunk Tank Memorial Cups,” she’s calling. “Two dollars! Get them while they’re cold!”
Somewhere around throw eight, a chant starts. I don’t know who began it, but it’s spreading through the crowd like wildfire: “Gracie! Gracie! Gracie!”
Ten throws in, my arm is starting to ache and I don’t care.
Twelve throws in, Mal is a drowned rat and he’s never looked happier.
“You’re enjoying this too,” I accuse, winding up for thirteen.
“I’m raising money for the roof fund.”
“You’re getting dunked by your wife in front of the entire town.”
“Estranged wife.” He grins. “And yeah. I’m enjoying it.”
Splash.
“Thirteen! Baker’s dozen! Someone alert the newspapers!”
I’m laughing, and I notice it distantly, like it’s happening to someone else, actually laughing, my stomach hurting with it. And it’s not the babies. It’s not nausea or exhaustion or any of the things that have been flattening me for weeks.
It’s joy. Pure, stupid, ridiculous joy.
I throw again.
Splash.
“Fourteen!”
Again.
Splash.
“Fifteen! Is there a record for this? There should be a record for this!”
Mal surfaces. He’s breathing hard, water streaming down his face, his good white shirt now completely see-through. He looks up at me from the tank, and his eyes-
His eyes are looking at me like I’m the entire sky.
I wind up for throw sixteen. My arm aches. My face hurts from smiling. The crowd is a wall of sound around us, but I barely hear it.
I look at Mal.
He looks at me.
My face warms, and I turn back to the tank so he can’t see it.
I throw.
Wide. Wide by a mile. The ball doesn’t even come close to the target.
The crowd boos, but it’s a happy boo, warm and loud with laughter and applause.
Mal climbs out of the tank. Water sheets off him, pooling at his feet. He walks over to where I’m standing, dripping, shivering, grinning, and wrings his shirt out onto my shoes.
“You missed,” he says with great satisfaction.
“Slipped,” I say, examining my nails.
“Sure.”
I shrug. “My arm was tired.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It was the sun. In my eyes.”
“The sun set twenty minutes ago,” he says, deadpan.
“Then it was the moon.”
He’s standing too close, soaked to the skin, the wet shirt gone see-through and clinging to every line of him, and I make the mistake of looking.
Water sliding down his throat, catching in the dip of his collarbone, running the ridges of a stomach I used to fall asleep against. My mouth goes dry.
My pulse trips. I drag my eyes back up to his face and find him already watching me look, and the grin he gives me then is slow and knowing and does absolutely nothing to help my situation.
“Come on,” I say. “You’re going to freeze to death.”
“Worth it.”
“Shut up and get in the truck.”
I drive him home soaked and shivering and grinning. The heater blasts. He’s left a wet patch on my passenger seat that I’ll have to clean tomorrow, and I don’t care.
At the farm, I pull up to the bunkhouse. The engine idles.
“Gracie.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.” He says it simply, like it’s the truest thing he’s ever said. “For tonight.”
“I dunked you fifteen times.”
“Sixteen, counting the one you missed on purpose.”
“I didn’t miss on purpose.” The lie comes out thin. We both hear it.
“You threw varsity softball.”
I keep my eyes on the windshield. “Maybe I’m rusty.”
“You’re not rusty.” He’s looking at me again, that look, the one that makes me feel like I’m standing in direct sunlight. “You missed because you wanted to.”
And then he reaches for me.
It isn’t much. His hand lifts off the gearshift and moves toward my jaw, slow, the way he used to when he’d tuck my hair back before he kissed me, and for one traitorous second I want it so badly I can taste it.
I catch his wrist before it lands.
“No.”
He freezes. Then pulls back like I’ve burned him, both hands going up, palms out. “I’m sorry. That was - I read it wrong. I’m sorry.”
“One good night doesn’t undo five years.
” I keep my voice even, because if I let it shake he’ll hear everything underneath it.
“You don’t get to laugh with me at a church fair and then touch me like you have the right.
You don’t have it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
That’s mine to decide, and you don’t get to reach across the truck and decide it for me. ”
“You’re right.” He puts his hands back in his lap, deliberate, like he’s locking them away. “I got ahead of myself. It won’t happen again.”
And the worst part, the part I don’t say out loud, is that I’m not angry he tried. I’m angry at how much of me wanted him to.
“Goodnight, Gracie.”
I don’t answer. I just watch him go.
He gets out. Walks to the bunkhouse. At the door, he turns back, raises a hand.
I wave back.
Then I sit in my truck in the dark, hand pressed to my stomach where two tiny lives are growing, and the warm thing in my chest refuses to fade.
It’s just the sun, I tell myself. Just adrenaline. Just the lingering high of public revenge.
But I’m smiling when I walk inside, and I’m still smiling when I brush my teeth, and I’m still smiling when I climb into bed.
I can’t remember the last time I laughed like that.