“I’ve helped run it twice.”
Something moved across her face that I couldn’t quite name. She went quiet for a moment, pressing her lips together, and then she picked up the next post and carried it down the linewithout saying anything more. But I noticed she was smiling to herself.
By early afternoon we’d replaced eleven posts and restrung two full sections of wire.
We were both dirty in an honest way, soil on our knees and sweat darkening the fronts of our shirts.
I sat down in the grass and leaned against the last finished post, and she dropped down beside me, close enough that our thighs touched.
Neither of us moved away, even as fire sparked between us.
Pulling off her gloves, she said, “That was the most fun I’ve had in over a decade.”
“Your life’s been pretty boring then, hon.”
I opened the cooler I’d brought and pulled out the wine and the two mason jars I’d packed. It was a bottle of Holt’s elderberry wine, and I wasn’t sure Mallory had ever had it before. He’d only started selling it commercially a few years ago.
She held hers up. “What are we drinking to?”
“Loretta,” I said.
She laughed and took a sip. “Oh. My. God. Whatisthis?”
I grinned at her. “Something you’ll only ever find here on Red Oak Mountain.”
Mallory pulled out the bottle and examined the label. “Holt makes wine now? I thought he worked in the hubcap factory.”
“That’s old news. He and his wife, Ellie, have a little winery now. Best elderberry wine in the Ozarks.”
We both stared out at the field, grasses and weeds swaying gently in the breeze while the sun beat down on us. It was perfection.
“This could be yours every day, if you want it,” I rumbled, and I meant for it to come out easy and light, but I didn’t quite manage that.
She leaned her head against my shoulder, and every muscle in my body tightened as if she’d just lit a fuse.
“I couldn’t see it when I was young. I thought small meant less. Leaving felt like the only way to be something.”
I grunted in response.
She was quiet for a moment. “I can see it now. The way people know each other here. The land feels like it belongs to you and you belong to it.”
“And nobody locks their doors,” I said. “When something breaks, three people show up to help fix it before you even have to ask.” I paused. “It’s a good life, Mallory.”
“I know,” she said softly, and the weight of those two words pressed down on both of us.
She lifted her head from my shoulder and looked at me. The sun came out from behind a cloud right at that moment and lit her up. I was done for.
Quietly she said, “I’ve spent twelve years wondering what would’ve happened if you’d asked me out back then.”
Her words seared through my soul.
“You were always one step ahead of me, Mal. Ready to conquer the world.”
I was a small-town guy, and I was comfortable with that. I couldn’t have a woman always looking over her shoulder, wondering what bigger life was waiting for her out there.
“Maybe I would have stayed if you’d asked.”
Did she really want to go there?
