One- Part 1

A thin square of paper, caught under the leg of the bench, fluttered exitedly in the wind as a gust blew past the building. The bench is worn grey wood, of the park-bench style, one we had dragged all the way up the hill into our woods from a green in town when they where replacing all the benches a couple of years ago. We propped it in front of our small shed of a cottage and where very pleased by how quaint it made the place look, and resolved to sit out in front of the house whenever the outside temperature was pleasant enough. Now it looks as weather-worn as the wooden slats of the house it sits in front of; our little oasis, the tiny cottage of our dreams, placed in the woods far from town and other people-but not too far- growing old and ravaged by the elements that Scarlett and I had neither the know-how nor the funds to protect it from.

I was sitting on that bench darning a dress, while S was digging up the earth on the vegetable patch that runs around the side of the building. It was one of the first warm days of the spring, and it was such a quiet moment that the sound of the fluttering paper near my feet thundered above the rustling leaves. Engrossed in the fabric in my hands, I didn’t take any notice of S turning from the soil to look over to me. The paper on the floor caught her attention, and she sat on the bench next to me, bending to dislodge the paper from between the bench-leg and the earth, turning it over in her hands, her forehead crumpling into a frown.

What’s this?

God, how am I supposed to know. I didn’t even look up from the needle as I tried to pull together a hole worn in the dress in my hands.

Dee, look at me. What is this and how did it get here?

Daisy?

From the corner of my eye I peeked at what it was that she was holding and immediately hoped hoped hoped that my cheeks weren’t going to flush pink with recognition.

Oh shit I don’t know Scarlett, some rubbish blown up from the town?

We were too far from town for that to be true, and she knew it. I knew that she knew it as soon as the words left my lips and floated up to her. I wanted to grab the words from the air and eat them back up, swallow them down, hope she hadn’t heard them. But they had left my control as soon as I said them, I couldn’t get them back. She knew it.