I was eighteen—barely out of high school, still smelling faintly of library books and cheap strawberry shampoo. Walter was sixty. A widower. A man whose hands were permanently stained with soil and whose back bent like an old oak after too many storms.
They whispered in the grocery store.
They stared in church.
Some said I was after his land. Others claimed he was after my youth.
They were wrong.
I married Walter because I had nowhere else to go.
My mother had died when I was fifteen. My stepfather made it clear I wasn’t welcome once I turned eighteen. College was a dream I folded up and tucked away. The only steady job I could find paid minimum wage at the diner off Route 6.
Walter came in every morning at 5:30 a.m.
Continue on the next page:
