He looked up to notice the gloom descending with dusk; he’d forgotten to turn on the lights. Only the dim, setting sunshine that limped between the curtains lit the room now. Betty Ann had pulled back those curtains earlier. Betty Ann. What had Jake gotten himself into? For the past hours since Betty had left early, he hadn’t gotten a lick of work done. He’d sat in his depressed state, his mind going on a merry-go-round about “the Betty issue,” as he’d started to think of it. Simply put, it was this. He was beginning to care for her, and that was wrong. Wrong, because he could never marry her. Even if he could somehow bring himself to move past his own wariness of marriage—and having a wife and probably children to support—it would be wrong, just wrong to ask her to throw in her oar with him. Betty Ann was everything he was not. She was friendly, outgoing, cheerful, and generous.
