Chapter 2: Playing the Role
The wedding was small and quiet. Just the two of us, a justice of the peace, and two of Evelyn’s old friends as witnesses. I wore a secondhand suit she bought for me. She wore a simple cream-colored dress and smiled the entire time like she genuinely meant it.
We moved into her house on the edge of town. I slept in the guest room for the first month. Evelyn never pushed for anything more. She treated me like a guest who had nowhere else to go but was still welcome to stay as long as he needed.
I played my part carefully.
I fixed things around the house when they broke. I drove her to doctor appointments. I sat with her in the evenings and listened to her stories about her late husband and her children who lived far away. I smiled at the right moments and held her hand when she seemed tired.
At night, after she went to bed, I would sit on the back porch and count the years until she would be gone. I told myself I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was just being realistic. She was old. I was young. This was how some people survived when they had nothing left.
But Evelyn made it hard to stay cold.
She noticed small things about me that no one else ever had. When my boots started falling apart, a new pair appeared by the door one morning with no explanation. When I once mentioned that I liked peach cobbler, she started making it every Sunday. She never asked for thanks. She never made me feel small for needing help.
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Sometimes, I would catch her watching me when she thought I wasn’t looking. There was something soft and sad in her eyes that I didn’t understand. I told myself it didn’t matter. I just had to wait.
But the longer I stayed, the harder it became to look at her without feeling something heavy in my chest.
