Page 168 of Morally Black Betrothal

My own conscience spoke as I watched Simone offering a treat to the calf’s mother. The light in the barn was dim, but she seemed to glow here with belonging. Just the idea of losing that light made my chest constrict again.

Why in the fuck had I been so cavalier when asking for a change in our relationship?

I didn’t want to “see how this goes.” Date casually while maintaining a farce to the outside world.

I wanted her for life, not just for dinner. Wanted the ring on her finger to be for real.

I was head over fucking heels in love with the woman.

And right now I was finding it difficult to breathe.

Because just as quickly, another realization hit me: I loved her, but I was also going to destroy her. Or, when she realizedwhat I’d done to her beloved home, I was going to break her heart.

We spent a bit more time with the cows before Simone wanted to show me around the house. Just like the rest of the farm, it was obvious that once upon a time, this place had been loved with generations-spanning plank floors, kitchen cabinets that might have been just as old, and tall ceilings and leaded windows that let in the light of spring.

Ryland settled onto a faded floral couch in front of a TV to watch the Sox game.

Simone looked confused. “Dad, don’t you have work to do? One of the barn doors needs welding, and I noticed the north fence needs to be patched.”

Ryland waved over the back of the sofa. “It’ll wait. I want to check the score.”

She frowned, then turned to me. “Come on. I’ll show you my room, and then we should probably go look at some of that stuff for him.”

Once again, taking care of everyone else’s problems for them.

She toured me around the rest of the modest farmhouse, through a room with robin’s egg blue walls that she once shared with her sister, past a bathroom and a study that seemed to have been untouched for the last eighteen years, and then through an abandoned garage and into an adjoining building that was half brick, half the same clapboard siding. The windows, however, were larger than the house’s, and the walls were lined with metal shelves and commercial-grade kitchen equipment.

“Mom’s kitchen,” Simone explained as she closed the door behind us. “Over there is where we baked. And on the other side, we made cheese. There’s an industrial fridge beyond that door, although it hasn’t been used in years.”

It was as if someone had frozen the building eighteen years ago and never returned. The industrial ovens were cold andsilent. The stainless-steel surfaces were muted by the cobwebs stretching between them. There were still recipes pinned to a corkboard near the entry, and even a bit of flour decorated the corners of the workspace.

Simone swiped a finger through a surprisingly light layer of dust on the counter before picking up a rag and spray bottle in the corner.

“He never cleans in here, so I try to do it when I come home,” she said as she started wiping down the great wood table in the center of the room. “He can’t bear to come in. I think he still expects her to walk through that door and start a batch of sourdough.”

Considering how I felt the first time I’d seen Simone bake, I understood how Ryland might have felt.

I was pretty sure that once she left my apartment, I’d never walk into that kitchen again.

I’d probably have to move.

A picture next to a white cast-iron sink caught my eye.

“You do look like your mom.” I crossed the room to pick up the framed photo of a beautiful blond woman and two identical twin girls, all of them laughing while they tossed a sheet into the air. The girls had blue eyes, but the woman’s were brown. Even so, it was obvious she was their mother.

Simone finished cleaning the table and came to stand next to me. “That was taken just before she got diagnosed. We were outside helping her hang the laundry. Well,Iwas. Selena usually preferred to run through the sheets and pretend she was a ghost.”

“You were happy here,” I observed. “After she died, too?”

Simone shrugged as she took a seat on a stool. “Less so, but yeah. I didn’t want to leave.”

“Why didn’t you come back after Selena left Boston, then?”

“I thought about it, but by that point, I’d been in Boston for over a year. And when I did come home, it was like living with a ghost. My dad had fallen deeper into”—she waved one hand through the air—“whatever he’s in, and I was so obviously not enough to pull him out of it. Maybe I even make it worse, since, as you noticed, I do resemble the woman he can’t stop mourning.”

I studied the picture again, trying to imagine the qualities that made Mary Ann Bishop so extraordinary that her husband fundamentally couldn’t live after she was gone.

All I saw in the photo was joy. But I was willing to bet that if she were here today, she’d be disappointed in her husband for not doing whatever he could to live well without her. Or make sure his daughters did too.