Chapter 10 - The Ridge
Spring arrived on the ridge four months later with a explosion of white dogwood blossoms and green mountain laurel that covered the slopes like a bright carpet.
The old stone house had been rebuilt from the foundation up.
It had high, wide windows that let the sunlight pour into every room, a slate roof that would last a hundred years, and a wrap-around wooden porch that looked out over forty miles of West Virginia mountains, stretching all the way to the blue horizon near Bluefield.
It was three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon.
Down near the red barn, Johnny and Paul were riding two heavy brown quarter horses that Nathan had brought down from Pennsylvania three weeks ago, their loud, happy yells echoing off the timber slopes as Tom, the head gardener from the New York estate who had moved down to manage the land, walked beside them with a leather lead rope.
In the garden near the well pump, Aunt Clara was showing Lily how to plant sweet pea seeds in the dark, rich soil, both of them covered in dirt up to their elbows.
I stood on the front porch, wearing a simple blue cotton dress that had short sleeves, leaving my arms bare to the warm mountain sun.
I wasn't wearing the compression wrap.
The scars were still there—pale, jagged lines running down my left arm and across my shoulder blade, white against the tan skin I had gained over the last three months of working in the mountain garden.
I didn't cover them.
When the afternoon breeze came up the valley, blowing the sweet smell of pine and apple blossoms across the porch, the air felt warm, clear, and clean against my skin.
Nathan walked out through the screen door behind me.
He wasn't wearing a tuxedo. He wasn't wearing a gray wool suit. He wore an old denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his dark hair messy from working in the upper orchard all morning, a small smudge of dark soil on his left jawline.
He didn't say anything.
He walked over to where I was standing, reached around my waist, and pulled my back gently against his broad chest, his chin resting softly on my right shoulder.
His arms wrapped around my middle, his broad palms resting right over my stomach, where a tiny, steady pulse was beating beneath the blue cotton—a four-month-old heart that was beating at one hundred and forty beats per minute.
"They’re loud today," he murmured into my neck, his breath warm against my ear as we watched Paul try to stand up on his horse’s saddle down by the barn.
"They’ve always been loud," I smiled, leaning my head back against his collarbone. "You just weren't used to it in Manhattan."
"I was never used to anything that mattered until I met you," he said softly.
He turned me around in his arms, his grey eyes looking down into mine with that same deep, quiet reverence he had shown in the small stone chapel six months ago.
He reached up, his thumb gently tracing the pale scar tissue on my left shoulder—not hiding it, not pitying it, but holding it like a sacred mark that had brought us both to this porch.
"Mrs. Carter," he whispered, a small, dark grin playing at the corners of his mouth.
"Which one?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
"The only one who owns this house," he said.
He leaned down and kissed me right under the bright, warm afternoon sun, while down in the valley below us, the sound of three children laughing echoed off the ancient mountains, loud, clear, and free as the wind that swept through the high dogwood trees.
On the porch table behind us, resting beside a cold pitcher of sweet tea, was a thick brown folder tied with a dark blue shoelace.
The shoelace was untied.
May you like
The flap was open.
And the wind from the valley was blowing the white pages one by one into the blue sky, until there was nothing left inside the cardboard except the sunshine and the quiet mountain air.
