Ginny lunged at me, determined to tear the calf from my arms by force.
“Stop clinging to that beast and pretending to be insane! I don’t have time for your games. Where the hell is our daughter?!”
My eyes turned bloodshot as I screamed back, hysterical. “Don’t you dare touch my child!”
As the calf let out a frightened, pitiful moo, I clutched it tighter—and then, without warning, I bit down hard on Ginny’s hand.
She screamed, her face contorting in pain as blood poured from the wound. She stumbled back, cradling her hand in disbelief.
Steve gasped and immediately rushed to her side. “Ginny! Are you alright?!”
Before she could answer, Steve spun around and dropped to his knees in front of me, his forehead hitting the floor with a loud thud.
“Tom, this is all my fault. I never should’ve leaned on Ginny just because we were old classmates. I shouldn’t have turned to her during the hardest time of my life. I disrupted your family…”
“I shouldn’t have asked you to look after my child while I was hospitalized. It was my fault you lost control and lashed out. I was desperate when I saw my kid unconscious—I panicked and in my panic, I dragged Ginny into this and exposed everything. That’s why you were sent here for a month.”
“It’s all my fault. If you want to hit someone or curse someone, take it out on me. Ginny’s your wife—she’s only ever tried to help you. She doesn’t deserve this. You didn’t have to hurt her like that…”
I said nothing. So Steve kept bowing, again and again, until his forehead started bleeding. But even as the blood smeared across the floor, I stayed cold. Unmoved. At that time, my own daughter was only a month old. And as a father, I’d developed an instinctive tenderness for all small, fragile lives.
I treated Steve’s child like my own. I loved her deeply. But he had the heart to poison his own daughter—then pinned the crime on me.
“Steve, stop kneeling to him!” Ginny cried out, pulling him up and locking him in a protective embrace. “Tom is heartless. He won’t listen to reason. He doesn’t deserve your respect!”
She then turned her fury on me, her voice shaking with rage.
“Tom, are you insane? I’m your wife! You bit me like a wild animal! Is this your way of saying you don’t want to be married anymore?”
Just as she finished, a familiar moo sounded from the barn entrance. My ears perked up. My eyes lit with joy. I shoved past everyone and ran to the door.
“Honey, you’re back!”
Everyone—including Ginny—froze in stunned silence. It was a cow. A large, muddy, yellow cow.
Ginny blinked, as if hoping she had misheard me. “Tom… what did you just call that animal?”
I didn’t even acknowledge her. Instead, I leaned down and gently kissed the cow’s face.
“What would you and our daughter like to eat tonight?”
“Tom!” Ginny’s voice was practically a snarl. “I sent you to the ranch to heal for a month—and this is what I get in return? You pretend to be crazy and call a beast your wife to disgust me?!”
Under her furious gaze, I calmly filled a basin with warm water and knelt beside the cow, tenderly washing its feet.
“You've been working in the fields all day. You're covered in mud. If I don’t get you clean, you’ll dirty the bed again tonight.”
A collective gasp rippled through the crowd of relatives and friends.
“Ginny,” one of them whispered, “I think something’s really wrong with Tom. This doesn’t look like an act…”
Ginny took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. “Tom, stop it. If something’s wrong with your health, I’ll take you to the doctor right now.”
The moment the word doctor was mentioned, Steve stepped forward to block her.
“Let’s not rush into that, Ginny. Tom’s been eating fresh dairy, organic vegetables, breathing clean air and living in total peace and quiet here at the ranch.”
“Sure, he’s been a little isolated. But it’s only been a month. Tom… don’t act out like this anymore. If you keep going, people will only laugh at you—and at Ginny.”
