Page 167 of Morally Black Betrothal

Simone ran straight up the steps and into them. Something in my chest constricted, as if I could feel her happiness too.

Fuck, was this what love did? Made all the feelings catching?

I barely had time for these new ones I was just starting to acknowledge.

“Who’s this?” the man asked once he let her go.

“Dad, this is Brendan. He’s my…fiancé. The one I told you about on the phone. Brendan, this is my dad, Ryland Bishop.”

It didn’t escape me how she stumbled over the word.

I hated that she was so uncertain.

I hated that she had to lie at all.

“Brendan. Pleasure.” Ryland’s handshake was firm and calloused from years of farm labor.

Simone made her father out to be a pushover, but I had a feeling that once upon a time, the guy was anything but.

“Good to meet you as well,” I said.

“And you. Simone’s told me a lot about you, son.”

I wondered what exactly she’d said. Probably not that I was the bastard who took advantage of his farm’s misfortune for profit.

He turned to Simone. “Well, you wanna see the girls? Delilah just gave birth last week.”

Simone’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Oh,yes.”

The “girls”turned out to be the dairy cows, and visiting them required borrowing a pair of heavy rubber boots kept in the great barn next to the farmhouse. We walked around the pastures where most of the herd was currently grazing, then made our way back to the barn, where the new mother and her calf were resting in a stall.

I could see what Simone had meant about her father’s depression. There was a listlessness to Ryland Bishop, a man going through motions. The only time he perked up was when his daughter spoke, but even then, another shadow entered his expression. A yearning that made me suspect Simone and her sister looked a lot like their mother.

“What did you name him?” Simone tenderly stroked the new calf’s ears.

“Five. He’s the fifth this year.” Ryland shrugged. “Names felt kind of pointless, you know? He’ll just go to the slaughterhouse or be sold to a breeder.”

Disappointment crumpled Simone’s face, but she quickly masked it with a smile for the calf.

“How about…Ferdinand?” she asked as he leaned into her touch. “You seem like a lover, not a fighter. Maybe we’ll keep you around.”

“No point,” Ryland said. “There are only two dairies left in Woodstock. No one left to lease a bull.”

“Dad, you have to go outside Windsor County,” Simone countered. “There are plenty of farms closer to Burlington or even in New Hampshire and Maine who would be interested. You just have to do a little bit of marketing. Let the vets know about this little guy. No one is going to lease a bull if they don’t know you have him.”

Ryland grunted. Simone rolled her eyes before she left to greet the other cows in the barn.

“How long since your wife passed?” I asked once Simone stepped out of earshot.

Ryland turned, like he’d just remembered I was there. “Twenty years this fall.”

Eighteenyears. Jesus. That meant Simone had been her family’s emotional support system since she was eight.

Christ, who put that kind of pressure on a child?

But also, who mourned like this for close to two decades?

Wouldn’t you?