The land's devil

She was humming softly something that sounded like a lullaby, and he kept thinking she had a great voice. Peter liked nothing else about her, but a neighbor had introduced them and he had been too shy to refuse. Then he had been too cowardly to step down from the relationship when he realized he wasn’t attracted to her. Around here, everyone would get married around the age of twenty five. He was already twenty seven when they met. He felt like he was running out of time, even if everybody around him told him that God had no clock.

Maybe that was his mistake, in the end.

Still he never meant to be a bad husband, and so he wasn't. To say he was a great one was probably pushing it, but he liked to think he was there. On the weekend he’d invite friends over and help her take care of the house. She never asked anything of him. He couldn't tell why. Still, he was relieved. Their arrangement was one of necessity from his part, but it still worked. Loving her was easy because it was without expectations, and so he had no difficulty lying out loud to his family and friends. In restaurants they’d put other couples to shame by how harmonious their marriage looked. He could hold her hand across the table, buy her a new dress. He’d take it off without appetite and until now, it hadn't been a problem.

Until she failed to get pregnant after two years of marriage.

Tick tock.

He started feeling pressure again.

But finding solutions was his job, and so he sent out on a quest. She didn't say a thing, just went back to baking an apple pie. Soon enough, they stopped hosting on the weekend and started visiting orphanages. He usually did most of the talking. She’d look around with gentle eyes, and play with the children. The only time she got stubborn was the day she met them. One child was busy drawing circles of different colors, the other was busy staring at the first. Peter was a bit annoyed by them at first, because he hated to be ignored. But the children were everything they had hoped for, and soon enough they bought the twin beds that had been Peter’s childhood dream for their second bedroom. He remembers thinking he was set for life now.

But then, everything went to shit.