I turned around
And the water was closing all around
Like a glove
Like the love that had finally, finally found me
Then I knew
In the crystalline knowledge of you
Crystal, Stevie Nicks
The shortest distance between two people is a story.
- Patti Digh
Chapter 16
Just as the future seemed altogether bleak, Rhett came in one day before noon with a renewed pep in his step and a bright glint in his dark eyes.
"Get dressed and put your snowshoes on as soon as you can," he directed Scarlett. "The children too."
Scarlett looked up from the fire she was tending as Wade whooped, beyond excited that they would all go out together on the snowshoes.
She proceeded to prepare the girls after they hurriedly finished the mid-day meal.
"I found a place," Rhett went on, practically vibrating as he drummed his fingers on the door jam, his fine mood infectious. "It's just what we've been waiting for."
He wouldn't tell her anything else and helped bundle Bonnie and Ella as Wade dressed himself. Scarlett grabbed a burlap sack on the way out the door.
She carried Ella and Rhett carried Bonnie for what seemed like ages, the snow and leaves crunching under their feet. The girls asked to walk and they let them, even though it meant slower going, which appeared harder on Wade than anyone.
"Are you ever going to tell us what this is about?" Scarlett grumbled.
"We're going south," he said.
"I realize that," she tried not to snip. "And there's east and that's west," she gestured as well as she could while holding Ella. " Behind us is north, so we must be going south."
He looked at her in appraisal. "And how do you know that?"
"I grew up in the country and lived in the woods as much as my mother and Mammy allowed until I was thirteen. I know how to watch the sun and shadows. And there's no moss growing on this side of the trees."
Rhett gave her an appreciative glance before continuing.
"Right over that hill," he pointed. "Where the sun hits the most and it's been logged out. I've found another road that will likely melt faster than the one we traveled upon, but that's not what I want to show you at the moment."
Scarlett put a fussing Ella down and slogged along with the child balanced on the tops of her snowshoes, as Rhett did with Bonnie on his. When the girls began to falter, Rhett easily pulled them up, one on each side, humming a tune the entire time in an almost annoyingly chipper manner.
Scarlett stumbled slightly on a root and he didn't pause a bit. She shot her husband a scathing look and he merely grinned back.
"And here it is," he said moments later as they crested the hill.
Scarlett gazed before her at the cleared space in the lone sunny spot on this mountain, with green growth peaking through the bare snow, surrounded by timber grove on three sides, and the fourth open to a majestic, although still wintry, pinnacle view.
A meadow, bordering on spring and magnificent in the morning light. She caught her breath and tried not to gape.
Rhett walked down the hill and set the girls in the center, free of stumps.
"The sun hitting the mountain in this particular manner makes all the difference and they took out the timber here first because it's the warmest," he explained. "I think the loggers may be planning to build another cabin because it's more pleasant with the sun, which is why this one spot is cleared so thoroughly."
Ella and Bonnie immediately began to chatter and clamber about while Wade took off his snowshoes and walked the perimeter, looking all around for whatever boys will forever seek to find.
Rhett removed his snowshoes as well and picked Scarlett up before she could protest and sat her on a fallen tree, where he proceeded to remove hers, and retired her boots for her while he was at it. She watched him. He wasn't the least bit out of breath despite the hike and all the time in the wilderness had sculpted every inch of his body even more than she'd thought possible, although she tried not to stare.
His hair trailed down his neck and he'd let his beard grow out an inch or so again to save soap and blade. It suited him, particularly how it grew darker in places and brought attention to his dimples, both in his cheeks and that one in his chin she'd become so fond of—not that such features needed attention brought to them, she reminded herself sternly.
He then propped one long leg up on the tree, those thigh muscles bunching under the fabric of his pants. Scarlett's eyes trailed the line of said thigh up to where she knew those pants hid a deep v, a v that led to … her cheeks pinkened, but saints help her, she couldn't stop.
Rhett's eyes followed hers and he gave her a sidelong smirk before he continued.
"That trail going down the mountain," he gestured to the other side of the clearing, "will melt first. I don't know where it would come out but it will doubtlessly be easier to maneuver than the one we traveled here upon. That's how we'll get out of here eventually, even though it's still weeks away."
Scarlett barely heard him as she surveyed the bounty and beauty of the mountain meadow. There were clear places in the snow, large ones, and greening, just a hint, with snowdrops blooming—actual flowers blooming!
The wintergreen leaves were also turning from red to green, a most welcome sight. All she could see outside the cabin walls had lacked color for so long.
She spied something else red, something globe-shaped a mere few feet away, and she stood up and stepped closer for a better view. Crabapples! They hadn't been depleted by wildlife, not all rotted either; though fully ripe and frozen solid.
She took her eyes off this compelling sight to look up and see even more crabapples still hanging from the branches, and something else, something nearly inconceivable, and her excitement rose in her chest, excitement and hope.
For there were chestnuts—she was fairly sure they were chestnuts—nestled in the boughs of mighty trees.
She looked back down, struck speechless with wild expectation as she examined the ground closely, bending and brushing aside fallen leaf clutter in a near frenzy.
And yes, yes! Amidst the crabapples were the spikey hulls that would rip bare feet to shreds, that had torn her feet up at Tara so many years ago. Slowly, as if afraid it somehow would not still be there, had disappeared, she looked again up to the strapping chestnut from which the fruit had sprung.
And there they hung—a rich glory of hulls, all ripe for the taking.
Scarlett almost fell to the ground and wept. This was a treasure, a boon indeed. Dilcey had spoken of how much chestnuts were worth to her kith and kin, how many uses they provided to her people; and therefore when they were so desperate during and right after the war, Scarlett and the others gathered the fall and winter harvest whenever they could at Tara.
She knelt, picked up a prickly hull, and peeled it off, holding her breath. There was a chance, a mere yet sound chance, that they were fit to eat. She quickly revealed the bark of a single chestnut and sighed in relief at the fruit's healthy appearance. They were usually ripe in October at home, probably later here, so they might have been still fresh enough.
Scarlett put it in her mouth and gingerly bit down on the outer layer of the meat that was just barely thawed, closing her eyes in thankfulness as the slight crunchy bitterness with a hint of sweetness hit her tongue.
Still good. The chestnut meat was still good.
We could have kept the horse if we'd known. But she put that thought right out of her mind. They hadn't known, and yet here it all was, quite ripe for the taking.
The crudely constructed pantry shelves and root cellar were nearly empty, the apples, turnips, and potatoes long gone, the canned limes finished. They'd been living on almost game alone for the last few meals and she had tried not to think about it constantly, though the thoughts intruded unbidden. But this find! Chestnuts were meaty and like bread, would fill their bellies when they were sick to death of meat.
Its unfairness struck her, as did its serendipity. The land around Tara had been heavily hunted during the war and after, yet this land remained largely rich and untouched, other than what the loggers took.
She could serve the chestnuts in a variety of ways, and also grind them into flour, much better than acorn flour, which meant Wade could have his gravy and she could thicken all manner of dishes, and make biscuits, too. She would make crabapple pie with the maple syrup she'd been hoarding, perhaps even jelly. Her mind whirled with all the new possibilities.
The chestnuts and crabapples gave her hope. There were enough of both here to last for weeks, almost certainly until the snow melted enough for them to make their way home. Scarlett felt uplifted, high on this knowledge, and the expansiveness of her surroundings only buoyed her spirit more. She could float right off the edge of this pile of rocks and drift away on a breeze!
"We will be alright," she whispered to herself.
Yet her mood dipped again. Digging in the dirt and tree mast reminded her, reminded her too much of those hard times at Tara and the sadness of it, and the desperation tears lurking at the back of her eyes trickled down her cheeks and she couldn't stop them.
She heard a twig snap and looked up to see Rhett standing right before her, his eyes fixed on her damp cheeks.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she blinked back the tears furiously. She couldn't let Rhett see her weep, and over foraged fruit, no less.
He knelt on his haunches beside her and lifted her chin with his index finger.
"Tell me," he said, in a tone that brooked no argument.
"Chestnuts," she offered the obvious. "And crabapples. They're still good."
He nodded once, never taking those dark eyes from hers.
"We're almost out of everything and we can't survive on meat alone and well," she gestured to the bounty around her and the children frolicking a short distance away, their laughter filling the air. "And we have this now."
"Have I not been providing?" he asked, and she heard the damnable affronted male pride in his voice. "Have I not brought more than we can eat home nearly every day?"
Home. "Yes. Yes, you have, but …" she flailed her hands in frustration and glanced at the children. "Oh, Rhett, you know I'm not saying anything about that. Call the children over, they can help me gather and I don't want to argue in front of them anyway."
"They're not listening, let them play."
Scarlett glanced at her brood, who were just close enough to watch, but not enough to hear their conversation. Wade busied himself constructing what appeared to be a fort, displaying the confidence and decisiveness that he'd been sporting since spending so much time alone with his stepfather.
The girls were kneeling in the greening bald spot, deep in chatter and lost in a world together. A wrinkle formed between her eyes at the closeness between the two, the bond that increased daily and lately meant one rarely wanted to be away from the other.
"It's something isn't it," Rhett said in a nearly wistful tone. "How different they are, yet so tightly connected. Siblings born to the same parents are rarely as close."
Scarlett wondered for the thousandth time if Rhett resented losing such a considerable portion of Bonnie's complete devotion and attention to Ella, yet he showed no outward signs of emotional distress over it, as usual.
"I never had such with my sisters." She pressed her lips together. "Or anyone."
'Nor I."
Both were silent as they watched the child's play, Bonnie's infectious laugh and Ella's tinkling one filling the air. Wade seemed perfectly content to work on his own and Scarlett realized he'd become stronger over the time they'd been there, lifting branches and discarded logs half his size. He'd certainly grown, as she'd had to let the hem out of his pants twice, and there was no room to let out anymore.
"They'll sleep well tonight after the hike and being outside for so long," Rhett observed. "It's a good thing we took our, ah, assignation last night at the smokehouse, considering how you carried on."
Scarlett stopped her gathering and whipped her head in his direction, green eyes sharp and flashing. Surely he wouldn't speak of all that out here in the middle of the day and on a family outing.
"The way I did what?"
"My dear," he said in a maddeningly self-satisfied tone, dark eyes full of mischief and tinged with absolute glee. "You bellowed with all the cadence and measure of a dying water buffalo."
Her mouth dropped open, which only made his grin wider.
"And I should know," he continued, tilting his head as if to hide his amusement, a completely futile gesture. "I've heard such a creature do just that, in Argentina, as I recall. Although I think that poor animal may have been more melodious in its caterwauling."
"Caterwauling?" she all but screeched. Oh, she'd show him some caterwauling!
"Hush. You know you did, why bother to deny it? Would you like me to perform a rendition?" He paused merrily for effect and took a deep breath as if to proceed.
"Oh, do shut up," Scarlett grumbled, certain her heated cheeks were the color of ripe plums. "You made some noise yourself."
And he had, too, after she'd grabbed his face in both her hands at a particularly well-timed moment, buried her fingers in the aforementioned dimples, and kissed those perfectly cut lips softly until urgently, flicking that chin dent with her tongue and then licked the salt off his jaw for good measure, before biting down in just the right spot with unmitigated enthusiasm.
He'd moaned and then given a deep, protracted groan of unexpected release, the surprise at such an unprecedented and pleasurable event evident in his eyes.
It had been risky and perhaps ill-advised, seeing as how she'd caught him off-guard, and the possible ramifications of doing that in such a moment. But she'd surprised him.
How she loved to surprise him. How she'd learned the myriad of ways to do just that, the different, unexpected places to touch and caress just so, how doing so unnerved him despite his best efforts to hide it, and therefore gave her power. A power he was so very loath to admit, but she knew to be increasing as time went on.
She had to increase it because the power he'd gained over her stupefied her with its magnitude when she allowed herself to think about it. She'd all but given up on ignoring the carnality she sensed in nearly every movement he made. It was a battle she'd lost, but she remained determined to win the war; as was he. And what a pleasurable war it had become.
"You're just trying to distract me," Scarlett muttered after a moment, lost in the recollections.
"Perhaps I am because I have tried to tell you that we are alright and we will be alright. I said when we arrived that there are different ways to starve." He settled in the kneeling position, his mouth going from a grin to a straight line. "I realize how seriously you take your meals, Scarlett, but truly, this constant vigilance, although admirable, is too much."
"Yes, I take them seriously, and your exact words were 'Enough is a feast when you're starving.' Yet everyone is hungry for something, are they not?" She shot back, barely realizing the ambiguity of her statement.
"Everyone is hungry for something," he repeated, and she couldn't quite interpret the glint in his eye.
She felt the tears prick again and inwardly cursed as she blinked them away, hard.
"Don't cry," Rhett frowned.
"I'm not crying."
"Certainly not." He reached for a cigar that wasn't there and sighed, averting his head toward the children, who were still busy and paid them no heed.
"You don't understand," she lamented and then stood up, stick straight.
"You're right, I don't understand. Why would you be sad?" He tapped a finger on his thigh, the only sign of unrest. "We've found this lovely place and we will not starve, although the hunger you speak of," his eyes raked her form. "Well, I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon, and we will learn to live with it."
Oh, he would have to joke, wouldn't he, and keep the conversation earthy to rile her, knowing all he had to do was look at her a certain way, let alone trail the mere tips of his fingers against her hand and she would be lost.
Yet how could she explain that even considering the happiness they had experienced, even with that joy, how the empty shelves and their tattered clothing and bare-knuckle existence often reminded her of the past so deeply, of the people she had sometimes spied on the side of the road as she and Will rode into town not that many years ago, the people others whispered about, the ragged, poor, starving people. She could never bear to be one of them; how could she tell him when he would never be one of those people, but she, she had been one and she'd hated it and hated anything that reminded her of it.
She inwardly straightened her spine. That didn't matter, she told herself. Survival was all that mattered and she'd crawl on her belly for it. They would get through this all, and go back to their privileged and refined existence, she knew. What would await them there, though, was another matter entirely.
Scarlett swallowed and steeled herself, turning on him.
"How can you remain so unaffected no matter what happens? Why, even back in Atlanta during the war you never got upset no matter how dour and bleak our situation, even the night of the siege. And after we married you were so often unpleasant or mocking, but never upset."
Rhett stared at her for a protracted moment and then blinked. "Getting upset doesn't fix anything."
She didn't attempt to contain her snort.
He sighed again. "And you never assumed when I was, ah, terse or curt with you that I might be upset? Although I prefer the term perturbed."
She pursed her lips in irritation. "Well, if being terse or curt meant you were perturbed then you would have been perturbed most of the time … "
She trailed off as she caught the expression on his face.
It couldn't be. She looked again and he raised his eyebrows. Had all those critical and scathing comments hidden hurt feelings behind anger? The spiteful and mocking asides that stung so harshly?
She knew the answer, she'd done it herself. Being hurt felt weak, so anger was better, being angry felt justified. If he knew he'd hurt her it gave him power. Anger turned it around.
Rhett could be gentle, even tender at times. Never weak.
"But you were downright nasty. And you kept yourself away for so long," she sputtered. He lifted an eyebrow again and she raised a hand in defeat, she wasn't going to get into all that with him, it would be suicidal and it was in the past, at any rate. Another fear haunted her, one that would soon become very real.
"What if when we get back things are the same as then? What will happen to us?"
"Not like you to underestimate your considerable charms, my lovely wife. Surely our, ah, experiences here will lighten the detente we've been locked in for the past couple of years."
She gave him a stony glare and he relented.
"What will happen indeed? As I told you before, I won't return to our previous stalemate. But you are correct to assume that there is more to consider." He turned the corners of his mouth down and she made a huffing sound.
"Yes, there is more. People love to malign me and I have had to live with that. For the last year or so you banked on it—oh, don't pretend you haven't," she said hurriedly at his expression.
Scarlett swallowed as she allowed herself to let go of her pride for the moment. "And it's painful. I pretended like it was not but I'm tired of pretending. It is painful to be haunted, painful to watch your husband use the hate of others against you."
She paced and then walked behind a small grove of trees for more privacy and he followed, taking the opportunity to stand closer.
"What if when we get back we can't make it work even if we do share a bed?" There, she'd said it.
"I'm sure it will all work," He wrapped his arms around her from behind and nuzzled her ear.
She pushed him away and turned her head. "You know what I mean. You can't wait to get back. I see you looking out the window, I'm not a fool."
"Debatable, but I will let that statement slide for now." He took a step away and she regretted pushing him. Smoothly he raised his arms and grabbed the limb of yet another chestnut tree, swinging forward against it. She tried not to smile at the boyish move, for Rhett would never be a boy again.
"And I most certainly want to leave, but I don't want to go back at all." Rhett regarded her in almost a weary manner. "Don't you want to get back to your parties and, for want of a better term, shall we call them friends?"
"Not If you go back to saying such nasty things and spending your evenings—" her pride wouldn't let her mention that creature's name again. "Other places."
He stepped away, his face bland once more.
"I see. You fear we will fall into the ruts and grooves of our previous existence, that it will all come back to how poorly we've treated one another in the past, and we will therefore fall into old habits of quibbling and taking aim at one another," he looked away. "And perhaps seek solace elsewhere as we resume the habit of living under the threat of looming arguments and the weight of thwarted expectations."
Scarlett fell silent. She hadn't imagined all that, but once he'd expressed the situation with his usual eloquence she felt that very weight pressing down.
"I suppose we'll be in Atlanta soon enough and we will certainly find out then," he offered with a sudden tightness in his jaw. "We'll do better than most; we always have," he added almost as an afterthought and gave her a crooked smile.
"Don't say that. That's what you said when—" Scarlett swallowed. "Just don't say it again. Ever."
"You're the one expressing concern, my darling," and she'd lost something with him, all the lightness had gone out of the conversation and he was the old Rhett again, and she felt the coldness immediately. "I'm merely informing you that it's not a problem. I'm not worried, yet it happens to some couples and there are measures to take. I told you I wouldn't go back to sleeping separately, and I won't. If in the far distant future, we find we no longer care for each other's company, my sweet, I'm sure we can make arrangements for my companionship and satisfaction. As for yours, well—"
"That's exactly the point. You can always go to others and I never knew what I was missing," she snapped, more sharply than she intended. She felt her stomach plummet at what she'd revealed and she wanted to take it all back. How did they get into this muddle, going around in circles, and it not being what she wanted at all?
She waited with a sinking heart for him to pounce on her mistake, to rub it in.
Instead, he tilted his head again and examined her face anew.
"Much to my surprise In all ways that matter, neither did I." His tone changed as he continued. "What we have, what is between us, what is us, you understand—is not common. On the contrary, it is highly unusual, this alchemy of ours."
She wrinkled her brow at the unknown word.
"Affinity," he amended. "Yet more than just an attraction of like to like, which is why I compared it to chemistry and a melding of elements and energy. I have never had it before either, with anyone. I suppose you need to know that," he uttered this last lightly as if his words were of mere passing consequence; for once, she knew better.
Scarlett could attract a man with no effort at all, and even if she didn't completely understand them, there had never been a man she couldn't get if she put her mind to it. Yet she'd never been as unsure of a man's devotion as she was of Rhett's, and it irritated her to no end. She swallowed and squared her shoulders, looking him directly in his dark eyes.
"Do you love me truly and not just for–what I mean to say is—do you need me, other than in that way?"
"I have stated it repeatedly."
"Only when we are intimate and you always say you 'wish to hell you did not' any other time."
He swore softly, pulled his arms from the tree branch, breaking it in the process, and stared off into the distance before turning his head back to her with a hot determination in his eyes.
"You need it in front of you in four-foot letters, do you? Fine, then. Yes, damn it. I love you, and I need what we've managed to create here out in the middle of nowhere. Beyond reason, beyond all practicality; and no, I don't wish to hell I didn't. Not anymore. Are you satisfied?"
"Almost," she whispered, her heart swelling and threatening to burst.
"As long as we have dispensed with all dignity I suppose I should return the question. Do you need me?" he inquired offhandedly as if the answer didn't matter to him at all.
She gazed at him in dismay. Impossible man. "Of course I do. I want you to know it isn't a fleeting thing with me. I would care for you if you were poor or old or both. Or if we didn't have—affinity."
A flash of vulnerability or something close to that crossed his face, too quickly to call.
"As you did for Ashley," he said, and the spell broke.
Scarlett huffed in frustration.
"Ashley was dreams and shadows and—and memories. I don't know why I ever saw it as more."
"Yet you sought out his presence whenever you could."
"I suppose I did, and you did the same with—her." She glanced at his demeanor, which was inscrutable once again.
It was her turn to sigh. "Ashley remembers the best of me and thinks I'm a lady no matter what I do, and there's a selfish comfort in that. It is—soothing. I don't imagine you'd understand."
Rhett barked a sudden, choked laugh.
"It's not funny," Scarlett frowned.
"Oh, I don't find it funny," he said but revealed no more. His face settled into more serious lines, the corners of his mouth dipping down. "And the time he lost control? Did he treat you as a lady then?"
"It hardly counts at the present moment," she snapped back. "Do we not need some mystery between us? You've done much more, and repeatedly, since we've married."
"Tell me," he said again, and she knew she could put it off no more.
She took a moment to gather her strength and with one last glance at the children, she pulled him further behind the tree grove so that she could be absolutely certain they were completely out of view and hearing.
"We were all so very weary of the deprivation and endless labor at Tara right before I visited you at the jail and—oh the times were so bleak, Rhett, you remember," her eyes grew misty as she recalled that hopeless existence. "I'd gone to find him, to ask help of him with the taxes. He was in the orchard fixing the broken fence, or trying to fix it, badly."
Rhett nodded, his eyes never leaving her face.
"He held my hands and said each scar and callus was beautiful, the same hands that you jeered at a mere few days later—" Something in his expression stopped her and she gulped before continuing. "He stood in front of me battered and thin and his britches torn at the knees. And he couldn't help me, Rhett, or perhaps he wouldn't, he only wanted to speak of useless things, Grecian urns and lost civilizations and some such nonsense, so I told him I wanted to run away with him to Mexico, run away from everyone and everything and he—he— "
They heard a noise and both peered through the branches. With newly-acquired spirit, Ella tossed a handful of rotten crabapples at Wade's half-built fort while he loudly demanded she cease. Bonnie chortled and grabbed her belly in delight at the spectacle.
Rhett uncharacteristically ignored the amusing child's play.
"Pray continue, Mrs. Butler," and there was no mistaking the near-menace in his voice.
She knew she'd pushed him. 'Good,' she told herself as she girded herself to go further. 'It's good that I did.'
"He kissed me, hard, desperately, and said he wanted to pull me down in the dirt and the only thing stopping him was the thought of Melly—"
Rhett grunted but she kept going in a rush of words, wanting to get it all out and be done with it.
"He said he loved me—after I forced him to say one way or the other—even said he loved my stubbornness and 'utter ruthlessness'—but then he said he couldn't make me understand how he could never act on it, that he wanted to take me in the mud—"
Rhett made another guttural sound here but she forged ahead—"and forget about his wife and child but he would not do it, we would not—he kissed me again and shook me until I thought my neck would snap and I knew," her brow furrowed again at the recollection, "at that moment I knew that if he burned for me until the day he died he would never do anything about it, that there was an—integrity in his soul, and that was what I valued about him the most. Oh, Rhett, I knew it."
She gazed at him with true regret. "I don't know how or why I forgot it. I suppose because I never let myself think about it again, not until today. His honor was his only armor, and I would never get past it." Her heart dipped again as the knowledge of what she had wasted sank in.
"I knew that day, and I'd forgotten, for so long. How could I forget? I am sorry, Rhett." The remorse and hurt in her eyes were real.
"Go on," he muttered, but there was no sharpness to it.
"I told him it would never happen again, and it did not."
Silence reigned for a moment.
"And that was it? That was the extent of his loss of control?"
"Yes and as I said, I wasn't married. Days later I went to Atlanta and spoke with you at the jail, and, well, you know what happened then."
"From Ashley to me to Frank," he all but snorted. "What a romantic debacle you created, my darling. Can't say I relish my part in it."
"I was rather short on options if you recall. You were so nasty in the jail. I couldn't think of a way to get the money other than what I did. You were a closed book to me then." Still are. "I feel bad about it, in retrospect."
He gave her a doubting look.
"I do," she insisted. "Well, now I do. You think we're just the same but I still have a conscience and you don't."
"Which you ignore ninety-nine times out of a hundred," he pointed out. "Hardly a virtue, and so what would be the point?"
"The hundredth time, I suppose," she offered quietly, and he had no answer to that.
"Don't beat yourself up too badly," he said after a moment. "I panicked that I had tipped my hand and then had to double down to try to hide my feelings by any means necessary. For, ah, several years afterward. Until we arrived here, as a matter of fact."
"Yes, and I feel it bears repeating," she returned dryly. "Good job."
He gave a courtly bow and she had to laugh. "We were friends when I was married to Frank. You were kind then and never tried to do anything inappropriate. Well, other than your usual behavior."
He grew quiet. "I knew how miserable you were and may have felt slightly-—but only slightly, mind you—responsible for it."
She recalled his proposal and their brief, disastrous years as a married couple. "And you only showed me you cared once we were stranded on this mountain."
"The unexpected segue gave me pause for a new strategy. I figured we would probably die and it seemed like a safe bet."
Jests, always with the jests. Scarlett fleetingly thought of Ashely and his armor for one last time before turning her complete attention to the man before her and his own.
She'd hurt him, had been hurting him for years, and never knew it. She grimaced as she searched for the words, unaccustomed to expressing such feelings, and could not find them though she needed them desperately. Again she felt the urge to give him a gift and here in the wilderness, her words would have to suffice.
"Whatever you're trying to do, for God's sake stop," Rhett quipped after a moment. "You're getting worked up and I'd hate to see you strain yourself."
She ignored him and began.
"We've been here so long and while we've been despairing at times, I never felt that dire, hopeless despondency, even with the worries and what we've done without. It was never like Tara, even though it reminds me at times and the memories make me miserable."
Her emotions threatened to engulf her, oh, he would surely make fun of her for the next part.
"You say that we have affinity and al—al—"
"Alchemy," he supplied helpfully.
"Alchemy," she repeated. "Which is why I think you'll understand what I want to say, and why I want to say it if you can be quiet long enough for me to gather my thoughts."
He waved a hand in her direction. "Consider me intrigued."
"I think I needed to think of Ashley the way I did to get through, to keep going for some reason that after all that has happened and here with you before me—oh, I don't know how to say it."
"Try," he said, looking through the branches toward the children again.
"I don't like being reminded of my poverty, but even though we are living in reduced circumstances, I want you to know I have never felt poor here, and it's because of you."
He turned his head toward her at that.
"I know you didn't pay any attention to it before when I said I would love you if you didn't have money, but it's true." A tiny frown furrowed her brow.
"Because there is a richness here. There is luxury and decadence," she locked her eyes with his, "merely in being with you. In everything you are, in everything you do."
Rhett regarded her with a strange gleam in his eyes, that of a man watching his long-awaited ship come in, yet at the same time not quite certain it's going to make it the last few meters to dock.
She went on. "We have peace between us—you called it equanimity, and more. And I don't want to lose it, don't want to—"
Little did she know she had never looked more beautiful, standing in the woods with the breeze in her silky, straight hair and the rare earnestness in her face, and how he would remind himself of that moment, time and time again until they were both old and gray.
"Hush," he said, his voice almost a caress. "Do you think I don't worry that I will miss the same things, that somehow the luxury of having you the way we are now will be gone?"
She turned her gaze then, eyes flashing, voice rising. '"If you're lying, or use what I've said against me Rhett Butler, I swear I'll—"
He tried to shush her again and she jerked away. "I mean it, you skunk of a man, I will make you regret it if it's the last thing I do."
"I told you there's no need in you getting into a tizzy over all this," he said as he drew her nearer. "You're thinking too much."
"If you try to make me feel stupid or ignorant or silly—"
"Shhh." Rhett gathered her in his arms, pressing her face to his chest and his chin in her hair. "You will be the death of me, my dear, and the irony is you still don't realize it." He leaned back and tipped her chin up with his finger. "It's not like you to look back, and you know full well it's not like me. To the devil with regret. We have here and now, and if it harelips hell I vow we will make it sweeter for the waiting."
She searched his face and caught her breath at the flicker of wild openness in those piercing eyes before he dropped his hand and pulled her head back into his chest.
"Scarlett O'Hara," he said. Something in his tone, something deep and primeval, made her stop her momentary struggling and lean into him.
"There will be no others," he continued, and his voice had never been lower, nor filled with such dark promise. "For you, or for me."
It's more than a vow, she thought dazedly. More of a prophecy.
"Not here," he pressed his index finger to her forehead, then his own. "Not here," he laid a hand over her heart as if in prayer, cushioned between their bodies.
"Or here," and more lightly than she expected he grasped her hips in both hands and tilted them up to his with delicate and expert precision.
He held her close, and before the winter sun went behind the clouds for the day and the cold returned, they knew a moment of spring.
OOOOooooOOOOoooo
Fun facts:
'The history of The American Chestnut and its relationship with humans is a tale of bounty, tragedy, and ultimately, of hope and redemption.
The American chestnut, Castanea dentata, once dominated portions of the eastern U.S. forests. Numbering nearly four billion, the tree was among the largest, tallest, and fastest-growing in these forests. For thousands of years, the original inhabitants of the Appalachians coexisted with the American chestnut. (Read Indigenous Words for Chestnut.) The nuts provided an abundant food source, and Indigenous Peoples responded in kind by managing the landscape to improve habitat for chestnuts. Humans benefited not only from the chestnuts themselves, but from the immense opportunities it created for wildlife.
Chestnuts are dense with calories, rich in vitamin C and antioxidants, and the leaves contain higher levels of essential plant nutrients than other local tree species. This made the chestnut beneficial not only for the humans of an ecosystem, but for every level of the food chain. Chestnut leaves were favorites of detritivore insects who, by breaking them down, enriched the forest floor with nutrients. Insects feeding on chestnut leaves were then eaten by fish or birds, and other larger animals would feed directly on the chestnut mast like squirrels, deer, bear, and turkeys.
All of this began to change in the late 1800's with the introduction of a deadly blight from Asia. In about 50 years, the pathogen Cryphonectria parasitica reduced the American chestnut from its invaluable role to a tree that now grows mostly as an early-successional-stage shrub. There has been no new chestnut lumber sold in the U.S. for decades, and the bulk of the 20-million-pound annual nut crop now comes from introduced European or Asian chestnut species, or from nuts imported from Italy or Turkey.
- The American Chestnut Foundation
The loss of the American Chestnut has been referred to as 'the greatest botanical catastrophe of our country' somewhere, but I can't remember the source. Barbara Kingsolver in her novel A Prodigal Summer laments at how people rushed to log chestnuts when they realized they were disappearing, another reason why they are almost completely gone in the wild today.
When I was a little kid fifty years ago I played under a huge, prolific American chestnut my grandfather had planted when he built the house in the 1940s. He placed our swing set underneath it which I always thought was mean as hell. Those hulls hurt on bare feet and we were always bare-footed in our own backyard back then.
That tree was still there in 1976 when my grandfather died. I visited in 2001 and the house was for sale so I toured the backyard but don't remember seeing the tree. I was too concerned with the beloved swimming pool being filled in and the magnificent wall of fig trees my grandmother had treasured so dearly, that the last owners had mowed down. I have been thinking of making a trek to MS this fall when the weather cools, and I'll let y'all know if that chestnut still stands.
FYI just yesterday I was on FB Marketplace and a local man posted homegrown chestnuts for sale in Weaverville twenty miles north of my home. I messaged him and asked him if it was from an American chestnut and he said yes. I'm going to pick up a bag tomorrow and we'll see. Another man posted some chestnuts in Johnson City, TN, about an hour from here, so apparently there are chestnut-producing trees here and there.
A/N It's been a minute, eh? I thank you for your infinite patience this summer, which has been highly trying for me. I have been ill with a gastro complaint, not to bore you, but I haven't felt like living, much less writing since it started in April, after three rounds of antibiotics to kill a stubborn UTI, which is TMI I know. I drank kombucha (ugh), took prescription probiotics, had test after test, ct scans, etc. and even then they couldn't tell me what was wrong.
The good news is that in the meantime I decided to start volunteering a couple of hours a week at an organic gardening school/community garden near my house in order to get outside and try to feel better. The additional perks were bags full of organic veggies every week to take home. I made salads until I couldn't salad anymore, then I started making vegetable soups with bone broth and having them at noon and night. After several weeks of this, I started feeling better again. So I think I am going to be ok, at least for now. But I have to eat clean, folks. It looks like that's my only hope. Hard for a foodie like me to give up meat and dairy and sugar but the fact is, I may need to do just that. We'll see. I do honestly think the organic diet saved me. It's been a long time coming.
Anyhow, I am back to writing! This chapter was a complete bear to write. I worked and worked on it and it got longer and longer so I had to stop and save the rest for the next chapter. Which I hope to post in a MUCH more timely manner. Just so you know I have used the line 'bellowed with all the measure and cadence of a dying water buffalo' before in another story years ago, but since I coined the phrase, I figured it was mine to recycle.
Drop me a line and tell me what you think and how you feel, and let me know you're still with me! Again, I am very sorry for keeping you waiting so long for an update. Just like Rhett and Scarlett, I tried to make it sweeter for the waiting. Peace, misscyn