Noble ran another hand through his hair, mentally calculating what he could say about this — the right balance of telling Ford enough that he felt he'd given up some of the story, but also not so much that he would realize that Daff had been on the property a few weeks ago. He sort of regretted saying anything even before he'd tried to confess, but he didn't really do anything that was messed up enough to cover this up, so — he was going to have to try.

"Before Papa died," Noble said, adjusting his hands on the mug. He was watching Ford carefully, but otherwise mostly expressionless, trying to flatten all of it out of himself.

"There was a girl. And — I was going to try to marry her. And then when we found out, I wasn't, obviously, and I ended it. But — " he couldn't tell Ford that he had tried to find another way to make it work because that was a betrayal of the family, but "I see her around. And seeing her is — terrible." Now he was assuming, because he hadn't actually seen Daff in the last two weeks, but — yeah, he was pretty sure it would be terrible. He was remembering the tears on her face and he adjusted his hands on the coffee mug again.

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