Black coffee. Two eggs. Wheat toast.
He always left a five-dollar bill under the saucer, even when the bill was barely six.
One morning, after I mentioned I was moving out with no place lined up, he looked at me for a long time. Not in a hungry way. Not in a leering way.
In a measuring way.
“I could use help on the farm,” he said finally. “And you could use a roof.”
That’s how it started.
Three months later, I was standing in front of a county clerk, wearing a simple blue dress, saying vows to a man four decades older than me.
And yes, it was true.
Walter needed me seven times a day.
But not the way the town imagined.
Continue on the next page:
