I turned to face my fiancé with a smile. “Yes,” I murmured. “I know I’ll love it.”
He grinned. “Good. Now let me show you the place where you’ll always find me if I’m not in the house.”
“Where’s that?” I asked as he draped an arm across my shoulders.
“My range.”
The driving range was behind his house, beyond the back deck, which consisted of a built-in firepit and cushioned chairs beneath an exotic-looking pergola.
“It’s several acres of turf with three greens and four bunkers,” Roland said as we stood at the start of the course. “We’d need the golf cart to see the whole area, but I won’t break it out on your first day here.” He laughed. “Maybe I can teach you how to golf one day, though.”
I smiled up at him. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” I faced the range again, taking in small hills and curves and the waving flags planted in the holes of some of the nearby bunkers. There was a small station not too far away with a slanted white roof above it. From the turf on the ground that I could see, and how it dipped and rose, it reminded me of a miniature golf course. He probably did a lot of putting there—he’d talked about that often. Benches were built into one of the walls of the station, which probably made it a place where Roland could take a break after being on the range.
I looked to my right, and not too far away was a burgundy shed. I frowned at it. There were two windows on either side and a rocky path led to it. It didn’t look too well-kept, which made it feel like it didn’t belong there. The wooden shutters next to the windows appeared to have had too much sun and the roof was fading and covered in leaves. Naked tree branches hovered over the shed like witch fingers, gently tapping the side of the house and the roof as the wind blew.
“What’s that for?” I asked, pointing at the shed.
Roland looked with me. When he didn’t answer right away, I faced him again. He was staring at the shed, his jaw clenching. “Melanie’s,” was all he said and I frowned, confused. “It was her she-shed. Her go-to place. It’s where she did a lot of her hobbies.”
“Hobbies? What all did she do?”
“She designed clothes,” he said through a sigh. “Read a lot. Wrote.”
“Those are cool hobbies.”
“Hmm. Yeah. All of her things are in there. My mom put it all in there when she passed. I didn’t have it in me to do it. I tried calling her sister to come and pick it up and go through it, maybe sell some of it, but I couldn’t get in touch with her, so it all just sits in there.”
“Oh.” I chewed on my bottom lip. I wanted to ask him if his mother had put any photos of him and Melanie in there too, but thought against it. I’d just gotten there, and I didn’t want our first night together in his mansion to be filled with tension.
“Come on. I’ll order us some lunch and then we’ll get you settled in.” Roland grabbed my hand and turned toward the mansion and I walked with him, but I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder at Melanie’s shed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It took no time to settle into my new home. All of my things were delivered the next day and Roland helped me unpack and unload it all. By the third day I was acquainted with every room of the mansion.
We immediately began discussing the wedding. He’d called a pastor who had agreed to wed us, and then Roland took me on a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Sageburg to Denver to shop for wedding gowns. I didn’t want him to see the dresses, so he went to find a place that could fit him in last minute for a tuxedo.
It felt nice trying on dresses, but also lonely. I wished that I’d had someone else to share this moment with, like my mother or even Shelia or Kell, but I had refused to tell my brother about my relationship with Roland, and even if I’d told Shelia, she wouldn’t have been able to drop everything to come be with me. We were going to get married that following weekend.
* * *
Before I knew it, the weekend had come and as Roland said, our wedding ceremony was very simple. It was only us and a pastor named Reverend Taylor, a kind, older Black man with russet skin and graying hair. Dylan was also there, as well as a woman who I came to know as Yadira, who was Roland’s personal chef and part-time housekeeper of eight years. She was nice, didn’t really talk unless spoken to. Roland’s mother was there via FaceTime. She didn’t smile much, and I had a feeling that I didn’t need to take that personally. His first wife died three years ago and he was getting married again to a woman he’d only known for half a year. She probably thought it was too soon for us.