He Married the Farmer Who Taught Him to Live Again novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wipe Count
Daniel Silver marries the farmer his grandmother chose, planning to make him quit by Friday; Johnny dismisses every servant in front of the family and locks the bedroom door to learn the fourteen-step bath.
The photographer asked Daniel Silver to hold his wedding ring up to the light, and Daniel wiped it first.
He took a disinfectant cloth from the case in his breast pocket, wiped the ring, looked at it, and wiped it again.
"Two," he said.
"Two what?" the photographer asked.
"Wipes. It needed two."
In the front row, his mother laughed into her glove.
Every Silver relative had come to the estate hall to watch him get married, and not one of them had looked this happy in fourteen months.
Daniel was not happy.
He was twenty-six, he was sitting in a wheelchair under a chandelier, and he was about to marry a man he had never met.
His grandmother had arranged it with one phone call and no appeal.
"Donna Brownie's grandson," she had said. "Twenty-three. He farms. You need someone who will get you out of that room."
"I like the room," Daniel had said.
"You've been in it five months. Nobody likes a room that much."
Now his uncle bent over the chair and squeezed his shoulder.
"Not a single worry today, nephew," his uncle said. "I've been signing the company papers for you since spring, and I'll keep doing it. You never have to read another page."
"Thank you," Daniel said.
He did not remember agreeing to that, but he was too tired to ask.
His uncle patted him and moved off to shake hands with the guests.
On the wall above Daniel's desk back in his room hung a hand-lettered card that said NO VISITORS. It was in his own handwriting, and he had taken it down from his hospital door the day he left.
His mother had told the nurse only, "He asked to keep it."
Now she crouched beside the chair in the side room with her veil crooked.
"Say you'll try, Danny. Just try."
"I'll say yes," Daniel said. "I'll say yes and I'll be impossible. He won't last until Friday."
"Daniel."
"The bath takes fourteen steps. The sheets get changed every day. He farms. He'll be gone by Friday, and then everyone can stop looking at me like that."
The door was open a hand's width.
A man stood in it holding a clay pot with a green stalk in it.
He was broad in the shoulders and sunburnt across the nose, and his sandy hair had something in it that looked like a leaf. His good suit was a size too small across the back.
"Sorry," he said. "I knocked. Twice. Where do I put the tomato?"
Daniel looked at him.
"What tomato?"
"This one. She's yours. She's a wedding present." He held the pot out with both hands.
There was soil under every one of his fingernails.
Daniel's own hands went to the pocket with the wipes.
"On the side table," Daniel said. "Facing the wall."
"She likes the window."
"The wall."
Johnny Brownie turned the pot to face the wall with great care and said to the tomato, "Sorry. It's just till you're settled."
His mother made a strangled noise and left the room.
Daniel's face stayed perfectly still.
Then the hall doors opened and everyone stood.
The vows took four minutes. Daniel said his in a flat, clear voice that carried to the back row.
Johnny said his in a voice that cracked on "husband" and then went on without apologizing.
When the officiant asked for the ring, Johnny took it from Daniel's palm and slid it onto Daniel's finger himself.
His hand was warm and rough, and his thumb pressed the inside of Daniel's wrist and stayed there.
Daniel's pulse jumped under it.
Johnny felt it. His eyes came up, and he said, very quietly, "Fast."
"It's the lights," Daniel said.
"Sure," Johnny said, and did not move his thumb.
"Do you, Daniel Silver, take this man?"
Daniel could have said no.
His grandmother's cane was tapping the floor, and his father was holding his mother's hand, and his uncle was smiling.
So Daniel said, "I do."
The hall roared.
At the reception, Johnny stood on a chair and tapped a spoon on his glass.
"Where are the people who take care of my husband?" he asked.
The five private servants and the private nurse stepped out of the line of waiters, looking pleased.
Johnny shook each of their hands and thanked them.
"You're finished," he said. "As of tonight."
The nurse's smile went away. "Mr. Silver's care plan is very detailed."
"I'll do it," Johnny said. "All of it. The bath, the pills, the bed. Give me the card."
She handed him a laminated sheet.
Johnny read it, and folded it into his pocket.
Daniel's father said, "Finally," into his champagne, and the family applauded until the chandelier shook.
Daniel's uncle clapped last.
An hour later Johnny pushed the chair into the east wing and shut Daniel's bedroom door behind them.
He turned the lock.
Then he knelt in front of the chair, in his too-small suit, and took Daniel's shoe in both hands.
"Fourteen steps," Johnny said, looking up. "Hold still, husband. I plan to learn every one."
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