Chapter 54

Smitten

The afternoon is too hot and sticky for anything but sitting in the porch’s shade, where Chance and I talk.

“Think on it,” I tell him. “Those veterans were on opposite sides of this country’s war against itself, and now they’re together, jawing down like long-lost kinfolk.” I don’t mention Grandpa, and neither does Chance.

At supper, he smiles across the table, and I nearly choke on a biscuit. No reckon about it, I’m downright smitten.

I carry dishes to the kitchen and offer to wash them, but Mrs. Grome shoos me away with her apron. “Go on and visit with your young man.” My young man! She called Chance my young man.

Going out through the patched screen door, I sit on the back steps. I run my fingers along the wood step’s peeling paint. How comfortable I feel in this place so far from Rebecca’s Branch.

At the far edge of the yard, where grass is high, shadows of critters scurry about in the fading daylight. Other critters sway the stalks in the corn patch.

As I think about Chance, he comes around the house.

“I thought I’d find you here,” he says, sitting beside me. He takes my hand and traces his finger along my palm. “It’s hard to believe we met only three weeks ago. Back then, I had my life planned out. Go to college, travel to Europe, become a teacher.”

“I reckon it’s nice to have your future settled. I don’t know about mine.”

He squeezes my hand and looks into my eyes. “My plan was three weeks ago. Now when I think of traveling, I don’t think of doing it alone.” His eyebrows go up like little roofs. “I picture you there, seeing it with me.”

My mouth goes dry like Rebecca’s Branch in the drought.

“Is it too forward of me to say that?” he asks.

I know my voice won’t work, so I shake my head.

“You said you like for me to speak my mind, so I am.” His finger moves from my hand and strokes my cheek. “I enjoy our time together, and don’t know how I can go home and not be with you.”

“Me, too,” I say with a croak. I laugh a hoarse, dry laugh before I croak out more words. “I reckon if I want to talk, I’ll need Mrs. Grome’s cough syrup to soothe my throat.”

“Then don’t talk.” Chance leans toward me and kisses me. Not like Gerald’s rough kiss that was all about Gerald’s wants, but a sweet, lingering kiss shared by both of us.

He leans back and blushes some, looking around to see if anyone saw. I look too, but the only witnesses are the evening’s first fireflies and whatever critters prowl the corn patch.

We go back to talking, hands clasped. Chance tells me about France and other places he wants to see, and I wonder out loud about the veterans in the Camp. Neither of us talks of going home and not being together. When we stand to go inside, he takes me in his arms and kisses me again.