Romantic - Enemies to Lovers - Forbidden Love
•✦───✧✦✧───✦•
In the peacetime following World War II, Jean Ward loses everything and is sent to live with her best friend, Clyde Mayberry, and his brood of brothers on his family's cattle ranch.
For a...
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•✦─Spring, 1944─✦• Sally Jean, age 6
Springtime on Mayberry Ranch meant chirping birds, flowering fields, and babies. Tons and tons of babies. Chicks burst from shells, piglets suckled to their mamas, and calves grazed alongside the heifers in the pasture.
Sally Jean liked the chicks the best, always convincing Clyde to sneak into the coop with her so they could play with them. They would only get a few minutes to play before Petunia, the meanest hen, would nip at their ankles and chase them out.
Once they were booted from the coop, they would try to go see the piglets. They couldn't play with the piglets like they could the chickens—because the mama pigs didn't like that—but they could stick their hands through the wooden slats of the pig pen's fence and pet them.
Sometime around then, one of the older boys or Mr. Mayberry would give them work to do, like collect eggs, feed the pigs or chickens, or fill up water troughs.
Sally Jean didn't mind the work. She liked it much better than the work her mama gave her at home.
Mama still had the sadness, but Sally Jean had gotten used to it. She spent most of her time with the Mayberrys because she knew Mama would want her to help with Anne if she was at home.
Anne had started walking and talking, and got into everything her chubby, little fingers could reach. She made listening to the radio and writing letters and praying hard for Mama to do, so Sally Jean was usually tasked with watching the baby when Mama was busy.
Sally Jean always tried to stay at the ranch until sunset, when she had to go home and help Mama cook dinner. She liked helping Mama with dinner but didn't like when Mama would yell out instructions from where she sat on the couch and make Sally Jean do all the cooking. Mama did that when she was in a bad mood.
She was in a bad mood a lot.
Sally Jean was dreading going home when she and Clyde tried to kill time before Mrs. Mayberry rang the brass dinner bell on the back porch.
They were climbing one of their favorite trees—a blooming magnolia tree that stood big and tall—when Clyde asked her a very important question.
"Do you wanna marry me, Sally Jean?"
Sally Jean frowned from where she was climbing up the bark below him. "What? Ew, no, Clyde! Why'd you ask me that?"
"'Cause Mama was talkin' 'bout marriage and stuff 'cause Simon said in his letter that he's gonna marry a girl he met in Australia when the war is over."
"Simon's gonna get married?" Simon was the eldest Mayberry boy. All Sally Jean remembered about him was his pale hair and quiet demeanor.
"Mhm," Clyde said. "Mama ain't happy 'bout it. She said their marriage ain't gonna last because they barely know each other. She said that you gotta make sure you're good friends with your wife before you get married so that you stay married a long time."
