Chapter 18 - A Table Set for Two
By Friday, the house on Fourth Street didn't look like an abandoned warehouse anymore.
The front porch had been scrubbed clean. The harvest-gold cabinets in the kitchen gleamed under three coats of warm, cream-colored enamel paint that Aaron and I had applied by hand late into the night. The hissing radiator in the ground-floor bedroom had been fitted with a new brass valve, humming with a quiet, obedient warmth that filled the room with the dry scent of fresh pine shavings we had scattered in the hearth.
In the backyard, six raised garden beds stood straight and true, their cedar boards glowing reddish-gold in the late afternoon sun. Inside them, dark, rich loam cradled forty-eight tomato seedlings, their delicate green leaves shivering slightly in the evening breeze.
I stood in the kitchen, slicing yellow bell peppers on an old wooden cutting board.
On the stove, a pot of simple marinara—made with canned plum tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and fresh basil—simmered with a gentle, fragrant bubbling. It was a peasant’s meal. In Bloomfield Hills, I would have sneered at it, insisting on black truffles and dry-aged beef flown in from Chicago. Tonight, the rich, earthy scent made my stomach growl with genuine, unpretentious hunger.
The back screen door slapped shut.
Aaron walked into the kitchen, carrying an armload of split cedar firewood for the living room hearth. He had showered after finishing the fence, his dark hair still damp, wearing a clean, faded blue flannel shirt with the sleeves pushed up to his forearms.
He set the logs down in the iron basket beside the pantry, wiped his hands on his jeans, and stood in the doorway, watching me stir the sauce.
I looked over my shoulder, smiling. "Dinner’s almost ready. Ten minutes."
Aaron didn't answer right away. He walked across the narrow linoleum floor, stopping right behind me. His presence was warm, massive, comforting—an anchor in a world that had tried to blow us apart.
He reached around my waist, his hands resting gently over my stomach, and pulled my back flush against his broad chest. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, breathing in the scent of garlic, steam, and my lavender soap.
I leaned my head back against his shoulder, letting out a long, contented breath, resting my hand over his large, rough fingers.
"Do you know what today is?" he murmured against my skin.
I frowned slightly, searching my memory. "Friday? The day the county approved the parcel deed?"
"It's April twenty-fourth," Aaron said softly.
My heart stopped for a beat.
Twelve years ago today, on a brilliant, sunny afternoon in an episcopal church in Birmingham, Michigan, I had walked down an aisle covered in white rose petals to marry Aaron Vance.
I had forgotten.
The guilt surged up again, swift and sharp, but before I could apologize, Aaron turned me around in his arms.
He looked down at me, his blue eyes soft with an emotion so tender it made my throat ache. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, worn velvet box.
"Aaron..." I whispered, my eyes widening. "You didn't... you shouldn't have spent money on jewelry—"
"I didn't," he interrupted gently.
He opened the box.
Inside, resting on faded white silk, wasn't a sparkling, five-carat diamond designed to impress the women at the country club. It was a simple, unadorned band of hand-forged rose gold, its surface slightly hammered, rustic and imperfect.
"I took my mother's wedding band to a jeweler down on Michigan Avenue yesterday," Aaron said, his voice dropping to a low, intimate tremor. "I had him melt it down and re-forge it. It's not worth five thousand dollars, Claire. It’s worth about eighty bucks in scrap metal."
He lifted the ring from the velvet cushion.
"Twelve years ago, you married a man who was trying to become what you thought you wanted," Aaron whispered, taking my left hand in his. "And I married a woman who didn't know who she was. We broke that marriage. We broke it into pieces on the floor of that banquet hall."
He slid the hammered gold band onto my ring finger. It was warm, solid, and fit so perfectly it felt as if it had grown from my own skin.
"I don't want the old marriage back, Claire," Aaron said, looking deep into my soul with an honesty that brought me to my knees. "I want to start a new one. With the woman who defended me in a greasy diner. With the woman who has dirt under her fingernails. Will you stay here with me?"
I couldn't speak. The tears flowed freely down my cheeks, hot and bright with redemption.
I reached up, cupped his bearded face with both of my rough hands, and pulled his mouth down to mine.
The kiss tasted of salt and home. It was the first true kiss we had shared in ten years—a kiss stripped of vanity, stripped of fear, bound together by the scar tissue of everything we had survived.
"Yes," I wept against his lips, wrapping my arms tightly around his neck. "Yes, Aaron. Forever."
May you like
The marinara bubbled softly on the stove behind us. Outside, the dusk settled over the garden, wrapping our small, honest house in the quiet safety of the Michigan spring.
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