She gave him a distrusting look. The house no longer held the same meaning for her as it had when Warren was alive, but she thought maybe this would help her in some way.
She said, “I’d only come every now and then, maybe leave some flowers, if that’s all right.”
Butch said, “Sure, sure. No problem.”
Rae Lynn pondered this while he returned her gaze with a bland one of his own. She chose to trust him.
Later on, in the truck, Cornelia said, “Maybe he’s changed? ”
Rae Lynn said, “Wonders never cease.”
Through long winter days, she and Cornelia did the outdoor work quickly and came back in to cook hearty meals in the kitchen. It was in mid-February they had an unexpected week of warmer weather, and the daffodils and forsythia went into an early bloom. Rae Lynn hadn’t been to Warren’s grave in months, so she cut some of the forsythia branches and daffodils and snipped off a lock of her hair, which had grown past her shoulders again.
She stuck her head in the back door and said, “I’m going to the old place!” as she’d come to call her previous home.
Sudie May was in the kitchen, “Okay.”
Cornelia was washing dishes and said, “Want me to come?”
Rae Lynn said, “Nah, I won’t be gone long. I’m only going to put some flowers out there.”
As she drove, she’d hoped for solitude and was dismayed to see Butch at the door as she pulled up. He disappeared back into the depths of the house, and relieved, she got out and went around the side of the house, toward the headstone. She stood a moment looking. Ida Neill Cobb’s stone and Warren’s were situated in the shade of the trees. She was about to set the flowers on Warren’s when Butch spoke from behind her. He was close. Too close.
“Ain’t nothing ever gonna be different for me, Rae Lynn.”
His proximity made her draw up.
“I ain’t gonna be here but a minute or so, and then I’m gone. Leave me be.”
“Like before. Just gone. I don’t think so. You owe me. Even more so now, after what I done for you.”
He grabbed her the way he had before, his arms like a vise while professing his love for her all over again. She reacted violently, struggling to break free, and somehow, in the chaos of the moment, she freed her arm and when she did, her elbow hit his nose. He let go of her so fast, she fell back, stumbled, and twisted her ankle.
“Damn it, Rae Lynn!” he hollered.
She felt stupid for trusting him. He’d only been pretending, biding his time till she was alone.
She said, “I don’t feel the same about you, Butch. I ain’t ever going to feel like that. I mean, is this what you want? Trying to force me to feel something for you I don’t?”
“It’s ’cause a him, ain’t it. That new feller.”
“He ain’t got nothing to do with it.”
“But . . . I bought this place on account a you.”
“Like I said before. I ain’t never given you one reason to do none of this.”
“I could change my mind, tell Eugene my version, you know.”
Furious, she said, “Go on ahead, but I think he’d find it mighty peculiar you bringing it up after all this time. Maybe he’d think you shot Warren. Matter a fact, maybe that’s what I’d tell him, and say you wanted this place all along.”
They glared at each other, his eyes glassy with pain and anger, hers unwavering, determined. After a few tense minutes, his body sagged, the fight seeping out of him like the blood dripping from his nose.
He pointed at her with a shaking, bloody hand and said, “It’s best you don’t never come back here.”
It was true. She thought it could have worked, this little arrangement, but she could see it wouldn’t. Facing the gravestone, her eyes traced Warren’s name, the dates. She took in the sunny yellow of the flowers against the white marble and committed it to memory.
She said, “I agree.”
As she hobbled off toward the truck, Butch yelled, “Not never again!”
She didn’t let on she’d heard him.
Back at the farmhouse, she was careful to walk as normal as she could into the kitchen, except she couldn’t get anything past Cornelia.
She said, “Were you just now limping?”
Rae Lynn waved a hand through the air in a dismissive gesture, reminiscent of Warren, and said, “I’m all right. I stumbled, turned my ankle.”
Del said, “They said you went to the old place this morning?”