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...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
•✦─Spring, 1946─✦• Sally Jean, age 8
"Mama, when will Daddy get here?"
"Any day now, honey. Any day now."
•✦───✧✦✧───✦• Summer, 1946 Sally Jean, age 8 •✦───✧✦✧───✦•
"Mama, is Daddy okay? They sure he ain't lost or somethin'? Simon and Hank Mayberry got back. Surely Daddy should be back, right?"
"He's comin' back. He'll be here."
•✦───✧✦✧───✦• Autumn, 1946 Sally Jean, age 8 •✦───✧✦✧───✦•
"Mama, are you sure Daddy's comin' back? Rudy said he should be back by now and that—and that if he's not back already, then he might not ever come back. What does that mean? Do you think he'll be—"
"Shut it, Sally Jean! Daddy's gon' come back. He will. He promised he would in his letters. He said he'd come back and build us a new house and we'd have more babies and be happy. He'll come back. He will."
•✦───✧✦✧───✦• Winter, 1946 Sally Jean, age 8 •✦───✧✦✧───✦•
Sally Jean wasn't sure her daddy would ever come home, despite how much Mama believed that he would.
She'd heard from Hank Mayberry that everyone was supposed to have already returned home from war, and that those who didn't were either dead or missing.
Sally Jean liked to think of her daddy as missing because it didn't feel right to think of him as dead.
She often thought a lot about where he could be, picturing him in different situations each time. Sometimes he was stuck on an island somewhere, other times he was lost in a jungle.
But in every scenario, he was always trying his hardest to come back to her and Mama, because that was what he promised in his letter.
And when he would come back, he'd give Sally Jean brothers and sisters, and maybe with her daddy being back, she wouldn't have to care for them as much as she did Anne.
Mama could take care of the babies, and Sally Jean could play with Clyde during the day and then come home and have supper with her family at night, crawling up into her daddy's lap afterward to get him to tell her one of his stories like he used to before the war.
