Scarlett thought nothing of the knock at the door, thinking that Mr. Alderson across the street was finally making do on his promise to take a look at her leaky faucet and save her from springing for a plumber. But when she opened the door in the foyer, her breath left her body in one big whoosh and she grabbed at the door to keep her steady.
Rhett stood on her front porch looking absolutely wrecked. There was no other description for his appearance. His clothing was wrinkled, his eyes bloodshot, his swarthy skin blotched from distress. "I tried to tell you," she said, the words ripped from her throat.
"I know," he replied, his voice hoarse. "I know you tried, Scarlett. It's my own damn fault you couldn't succeed."
Scarlett caught her breath, surprised by the prickling of tears in the corners of her eyes. She'd imagined this meeting so many times, where they would be, how he would react, what words he would say as he begged for her forgiveness. But over the past four years, she'd become accustomed to his radio silence and thought less and less about him, focusing more and more on Cat. And now that they were finally face to face, all the sharp stinging comments she had planned to bring him to heel were nothing but wisps of smoke in her mind.
"Come in," she said softly. Really the only thing that could be said.
He followed her into the living room, which contained the few things she'd kept from the Atlanta house. The grand piano took up half the space, but the crimson sofa and the delicate ivory chairs tucked nicely into the nook by the windows. Rhett sat on the couch, and Scarlett took one of the chairs, folding one leg beneath her.
They sat in silence. Because where do you start after four years? Where do you begin with an ex-husband who left you pregnant and desperate for affection and ran off to who knows where with a young, two-faced, backstabbing little bitch? Who cares if he hadn't realized it at the time?
But then he spread his hands out, palms up, and whispered, "I fucked up, Scarlett. There is nothing else I can say. I destroy everything I touch. And I wrecked this before I even knew it existed. I am so, so sorry."
And what else could she feel but pity? She knew him still, so well. At his core, he was the same man she'd been married to for years. If he had been aware their frantic intimacy all those years ago had resulted in a child, he would have shown up on her doorstep much, much sooner. "I'm assuming you ordered your family to go no contact with me?"
He nodded. "And Rosemary took great pleasure in enforcing the rules. I'm sure Mama will have words for both her and me when all is said and done. And I want you to know," he said, his voice gaining a harder edge as his hands folded into fists. "That I've already let Mr. Marshall know he will never represent me or my family again. His behavior toward you when you tried to speak to him was completely unacceptable."
The statement, which should have brought long contained rage bubbling to the surface to explode with volcano force, made her chuckle instead. Rhett looked up from his hands at the sound. "So you don't agree with your lawyers? I didn't run out and get myself knocked up by a lookalike in some shady bar just to entrap you?"
"Scarlett," he started, but she stood up, still laughing lightly, interrupting whatever tirade was about to pour out of his mouth. They could discuss this mess later. "She's taking a nap right now, but I could show you a picture if you like?"
And the light that brightened his dark eyes at her words soothed her more than any balm. "C'mon," she said and led him back through the foyer and through the kitchen into her much less formal living room. Nothing from their old house in this room; she'd chosen stain resistant furniture and Cat's toys were scattered on the floor around their plastic bins. She had the fireplace going, to take the edge off the cool air. Aside from the mirror over the mantle, the only wall decorations were a set of four frames containing side-by-side photographs. Her favorite shots of Bonnie, framed alongside Cat wearing the same outfits. She could tell Rhett saw nothing in the room but the pictures.
"I wanted her to know she had a sister that I loved very much," Scarlett explained, looking over her two precious daughters with a soft smile. "My parents had that one frame with pictures of Sue and Careen and I all in that white dress, you know the one? I tried to do the same thing with Cat. She's quite a bit taller than Bonnie was, so I won't be able to do any more, but at least I have these."
"My God, Scarlett," Rhett murmured, ignoring the laundry on the couch and bracing his knee in the pile so he could peer closer at the pictures. His long fingers hovered over the glass. "She is the most beautiful little girl I've ever seen."
"She looks like you," Scarlett offered in return. "She has my eyes, but her features are all you."
Rhett stepped back, actually stumbling a bit, before moving over to the loveseat and sinking down with his head in his hands. "And to think, I missed all of this. And it's my own damned fault."
She didn't really have anything to say to that. She turned away from him and went back to folding the laundry.
He broke the silence a few minutes later, his voice less raspy, his face more collected. "Can you tell me about her? Henry gave me her name and your address and that was about it."
"Well, her third birthday is tomorrow, did he tell you that?" She saw his nod. "When she was born, the nurses put a little witch hat on her head; it was sweet. A Halloween birthday can be tricky with timing, but some friends and their kids will be over for lunch tomorrow as a party, and then we'll go trick-or-treating at night. I'm assuming you'll want to be there?"
"Of course. I rushed here as soon as I talked to Henry; I wasn't going to miss another birthday. Though I have to say this was about the last place I expected to find you. Portland?"
Scarlett shrugged, finishing folding the last pair of leggings. "I didn't know a single person here. Which made it absolutely perfect as far as I was concerned." She left the couch and settled into the armchair by the window, as far from Rhett as she could sit. Distance seemed smart in this scenario. "I'm sure Henry told you I sold all my assets in Atlanta. I used your divorce settlement to buy the house and started an accounting firm here. It's doing well, and so are we. Without you and Melanie, there was really no reason to stay in Atlanta. I didn't want Cat growing up around ghosts."
"You weren't lonely?"
She shrugged again. "Maybe at first, but I started going to church again, and it turns out I have some eighth cousins twice removed or something like that in the congregation, and they decided I was part of the family. I'm not sure how I would have managed the birth and these past few years without them."
"The birth?" He had his hands clasped tightly in his lap, and Scarlett had to look away from that piercing gaze.
"Her birth... didn't go well. I started hemorrhaging as soon as my water broke, and it turned out there was internal bleeding as well. I ended up getting six transfusions, which made surgery more complicated. She was transverse, so they had to do a C-section, and they removed my ovaries while they were at it to try and stop the bleeding, but there were just a lot of complications. She was fine," she said, looking up to assure him and finding him with his head in his hands. "Rhett, she was perfectly safe and healthy. It was fine in the end."
"Yes, in the end," he said, raising his head, his eyes glittering. "But from what you're describing, you could have died giving birth to my child, and I wouldn't have even known. Simply because I fled like a coward, just like always."
"Rhett," she said, voice scratchy in her throat. But they fell silent. The atmosphere pressed on Scarlett like the muggy afternoons she despised back in Atlanta. "How is Anne?" she finally asked, desperate to clear the air. "Should I be expecting her as well?"
"We're separated."
Well so much for lightening the mood. "It's why we came back from Europe," Rhett continued. "We were going through the motions, but neither of us could ignore the cracks that were forming. She started talking about children, but there was no way I was allowing a save-the-marriage baby. It only made the rift worse. And then—" Scarlett marked his hesitation. "Apparently I started saying your name in my sleep."
Once again, silence descended upon the pair. Scarlett gazed at him, aware of how heavy her chest was, every bit of her body throbbing for him. And his eyes, alight with something. Not the burning that she had identified far too late as love, but there was something there after all these years that was different from the cold disinterest he'd affected before that one last fateful meeting.
But thankfully, Scarlett didn't have to figure out to respond, as a sudden crash that she easily identified as the bucket of Duplos being upended rang out from upstairs. She pressed her hands against her knees and stood. "She's up. Are you ready?"
Cat's bedroom was off to the left at the top of the stairs. Rhett hovered in the doorway as Scarlett entered the room. It was meant to be shared with a sister, as it was close to the size of Scarlett's master and had two closets, but it just held one precious little girl and her impressive collection of toys. "Hey, Kitty Cat," Scarlett said as she settled down on the floor next to Cat who was focused on connecting her blocks. "Did you have a good nap?"
"Momma, I building a tower!" Cat's sweet little voice answered.
"I see," Scarlett replied. "It's a very nice tower. Did you wake up dry?"
"Yes, I dry!"
"Perfect. Did you get your treat then, because you woke up dry?"
Cat didn't need a second reminder. She climbed to her feet and ran over to her nightstand where a jar of skittles waited for her. As she pulled out a pinch and stuffed them in her mouth, she looked up and noticed Rhett. "Momma, who is this?"
If Scarlett thought Rhett looked devastated before, that was nothing compared to his face now. "Cat, sweetie," she said, voice as gentle as possible, more for Rhett's sake than Cat's. "This is Rhett. He's your daddy, sweetheart; someone who is going to be very important to you."
Cat looked up at him, and Rhett attempted a smile. The toddler smiled back and then turned and ran back to sit on the floor with her blocks. "C'mon, Rhett," Scarlett said, beckoning him to their side. "Help us build a tower."
Though he stayed fairly quiet, his mood seemed to lighten as he watched their daughter stack her Duplos and knock them over, helping whenever she handed him a block. His behavior stayed the same when they moved downstairs. As Scarlett put a pot of water on for pasta, he sat at the kitchen table and leaned against the partition to watch Cat play in the family room. Before long, she'd stuffed her doll stroller full of toy vegetables and started running it around the loop of connected rooms on the first floor, shrieking with laughter. As she tore through the kitchen into the foyer for the seventh time, he stood and moved over to watch Scarlett flipping lemon pepper encrusted chicken breasts in a large skillet. "Is she always this energetic?" he asked.
"Pretty much," Scarlett answered, looking up and smiling as Cat ran through once again.
He said nothing else after that, just stood close to her while watching their daughter. Once Scarlett had the child settled in her booster seat for dinner, he continued to watch as Cat dug into her angel hair and chicken. Though Scarlett attempted a little conversation, asking after Eleanor (she was fine and healthy and would likely be begging to come out and visit soon) and Rhett did respond with inquires after Sue Ellen and Careen (the first busy with yet another baby girl, the latter happily enclosed in her convent) speech fell flat. He could obviously focus on nothing but Cat. The little girl took his relentless gaze in stride, laughing and singing a little ditty about yummy pasta. And Scarlett gave in and let him watch in peace, thinking that if the situation were somehow reversed, she'd act the same way.
After dinner, he helped her clear the table and then excused himself to smoke. Dishes didn't take long, and Scarlett turned Little Baby Bum on the TV, figuring that Rhett would enjoy listening to Cat sing along to the children's songs. She slid the patio door open and found Rhett staring out over the backyard. She paused and inhaled.
Oh, but she'd missed this. Just breathing in the scent of the smoke soothed her anxiety. So unfair, that the man who could turn her emotions upside down was the only one who could so easily put them back together.
He spoke without looking at her. "How am I going to fix this, Scarlett? Where the hell do I even begin?"
Scarlett leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms. "Well, first you're going to stop moping and come in and listen to Cat sing along with the TV. And then once she's in bed, I'll have Rosa come over and watch her while you and I run over to Washington Square, and you can buy some ridiculously over-the-top toy to give her tomorrow to make yourself feel better. She's only three, Rhett. It's not too late. Obviously I wish that things had been different and that you'd been around earlier, but you're here now. So we'll just have to make the best of it."
He sighed and put out his cigar —just where had he gotten an ashtray?— and turned to face her, his old familiar smirk on his face. "So that's it? Just press on and try to forget the mess I've made?"
"What else can we do?"
He had no answer to that.
He cheered up as the evening wore on, especially during the bedtime routine when Cat let him carry her up the stairs and take a turn at helping her brush her teeth. And as she hopped her way down the hall to her room, loudly proclaiming, "I hop like a froggy!" he laughed, and Scarlett had to stop and close her eyes at the rush of longing that overcame her at the sound.
How was she going to survive this? Him, around the two of them? How could she bear it?
Tomorrow. There was no time now. She'd have to think about it tomorrow.
Because they were on a time crunch, introductions to Rosaleen were brief. But the look the woman gave Scarlett as she and Rhett left the house left no question that explanations would forthcoming, and Scarlett knew that the party the following day was going to be so awkward.
The reality of Rhett's taste in toys didn't sink in until they set a huge box in front of his rental. "You know," Scarlett said, fighting back a smile as he popped the trunk. "As beautiful as this car is, it wasn't really built for trunk space."
"Hush up," he told her, tossing her the keys. "And get in there and fold down the back seats."
She obeyed, and then scrambled back and forth, first to help him with the initial lift, and then back to the seats to help guide the awkwardly large package around his suitcase and into the car. "You know," she said, maneuvering the box over the lip of the seats. "I thought about getting her a dollhouse someday, but I was planning on getting her the cottage or the loft model. Not the mansion."
"The mansion has a garage," he pointed out as he piled in the additional furniture and accessories they'd picked up to go with the house. "And if her doll is going to go on adventures, she needs a car."
"And a horse? And a scooter? Too bad the helicopter was out of stock."
"Well, I need to save something for Christmas."
Scarlett giggled, and he started the car.
Something about this, about working together to do something as small as stick a box in a Jaguar, broke the ice that Scarlett had been floundering on all day. They talked on the way back to her house, mostly about Cat. Rhett was full of questions about when she'd reached her milestones, how she reacted to this and that, what foods she liked and disliked. And, as bragging about Cat was Scarlett's favorite pastime, she was more than happy to answer.
They were both laughing as they maneuvered the box into the house and set it down in the family room. Scarlett sent Rhett into the garage to find a screwdriver while she faced down Rosa's rigid stare. "Yes," she said, once she heard the door to the garage close. "He's here."
"Is his wife?" Scarlett hadn't realized how much venom Rosa could inject into her voice.
"Apparently they've separated. That's all I know right now. He showed up out of the blue this afternoon, so I'm still processing this. Though," she said, the thought coming to her mind for the first time. "I'm going to definitely have words with my attorney back in Atlanta for not calling and warning me that he knew."
"Perhaps your lawyer didn't expect him to come."
Scarlett scoffed and brushed past Rosa to enter the kitchen. "Henry knows Rhett. And how Rhett is about kids. He knew Rhett would be on his way to the airport within the hour."
"How will this affect you and Cat?" Rosa followed her, arms crossed and face dour.
"Oh, Rosa," Scarlett sighed, closing the fridge with a carton of apple juice in hand. "I just don't know yet. Give me a little time to figure this out?"
The older woman's face didn't lose its severity but she did nod. "Will you be at Mass tomorrow?"
"I don't know yet. Depends on how the morning goes. But either way, we'll see you at the party."
They both turned as Rhett reentered with a toolkit tucked under his arm. "Bets on how long this will take me to build?" he asked, raising his eyebrows and perhaps trying to diffuse the obvious tension.
"It looks like it will take you quite awhile, so I will leave you to it," Rosa responded curtly. She turned back to Scarlett. "I'll see you tomorrow, Mrs. O. Good-night."
Scarlett wished her the same and walked her to the door. When she returned the the kitchen, Rhett was still leaning against the package in the family room. "And that was?"
"Rosaleen Fitzpatrick." Scarlett pulled out a glass to pour her juice. "She watches Cat when I'm at work. And she's practically family; she and Colum were the only people there when I was having Cat."
"Colum?"
"Colum O'Hara. We're cousins, more or less. You'll meet him and everyone else tomorrow."
"And I take it they're not my biggest fans?"
"Well," she said, taking her glass into the room and setting it on the side table. "Imagine what kind of state I was in when I moved here. I wasn't exactly giving you the benefit of the doubt at the time."
"I see." The corner of his lip turned down. "And now?" He opened the toolkit and pulled out an exacto knife to cut the packages' tapes.
Well," Scarlett drawled with a playful wink, wanting to restore the camaraderie they'd managed earlier. "I guess jury's out on that one."
He chuckled and ripped open the lid.
They'd worked together like this before, putting together doll furniture for Bonnie. To distract herself from that thought, Scarlett flipped on the TV and fired up Netflix. She chose a British baking show from her queue. It made a nice background; she snickered along with the jokes as Rhett handed her pieces to screw together. "So this is what you're watching these days?" he asked, as the contestants reached the third challenge.
"I watch home improvement shows too, but I think this is the safer choice for the two of us."
"Well, judging by what I've seen of your house, your tastes have... dare I use the word improved?"
She shot him a look. "Need I remind you that you're the one who hired the architect? And the interior designer? Not my fault you chose pushovers."
He laughed. And then somehow they were smiling at each other, over an old hurt that had once seems like an insurmountable barrier.
For the rest of the night, they limited their conversation to comments on the show's bakers and requests for assistance as the dollhouse took shape. Close to half a season had passed by on the screen and the clock was pushing three when they both stood back to admire the toy. "She is going to adore this," Scarlett said, smiling in satisfaction. "I can't wait to see her face."
"Indeed," Rhett said, but Scarlett caught the edge in his voice. And, looking him over, she also saw the fists he'd made in his pockets. How had she missed all the tells before? They seemed so obvious now.
"Rhett, it's late."
"I know. I've got a room reserved. What time will she be up? I'd like to try and—"
"That not what I meant," she interrupted. She bit her lip and then just went for it. "We have a guest room. You can stay. She'll wake up between 7:30 and 8, and she comes to my bedroom every morning to get me up. We'll grab you on the way down, and you can see her with the dollhouse."
She'd surprised him. His jaw was clenched as he processed. "I hadn't expected—"
"Don't. It's late, and we're both tired. You're welcome to spend the night so you can be here for her whole birthday. We can worry about everything else tomorrow."
He nodded slowly, but she could see his shoulders relax. "Tomorrow. I never thought I'd see the day when I'd be thankful for your tendency to procrastinate. Thank you, Scarlett."
She shrugged. "Get your bag from the car."
Despite the late hour and the knowledge that Cat would be climbing onto her bed in a matter of hours, Scarlett couldn't drop off to sleep. Rhett was sleeping just one bedroom away. He was back in her house and back in her life. And, if she was being honest, back in her heart.
But he'd never really left the last one, had he?
What on earth was she going to do now?
Notes
I hadn't read Gone With the Wind or seen the movie since elementary school, but thanks to a vivid pregnancy dream full of hoop skirts and pretty dresses, I dove right back in to the fun! Had this idea around Halloween when I read Scarlett (which was full of lazy shortcuts and unrealized potential, but still not as bad as I was expecting) and decided to write this up! Wanted to have the Halloween chapter done by Thanksgiving, so now I will hopefully get the Thanksgiving chapter done by Christmas.
Wish me luck!
SJ