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Chapter Ten
Tyler followed Amanda home. She should have expected that. Instead she’d opened her door to him and now he was in her upstairs apartment, talking to her, trying to calm her down but every word he said only made her more upset because he didn’t get it, he didn’t understand Marietta, or the shame that had shadowed her every day of her life.
Her mother’s family, the Scrantons, had been the poor white trash in Marietta. They didn’t own a house, or land. They lived in a trailer way back behind the railroad tracks, way behind the liquor store and gun store, living as far from the nice houses and nice people without actually being outside Marietta’s city limits proper.
Amanda didn’t want to know the family history. It was painful, brutal. The Scrantons didn’t really work anywhere. There was no career path, no steady respectable employment, no upward mobility in any size, shape or form. Instead they survived by doing this and that, eating this and that, dressing in this and that. They were what no one wanted to be.
No wonder Lt. Colonel Don Justice didn’t want his only son dating Julie Scranton. It must have made his skin crawl. It made her skin crawl just thinking about it now. Her poor, desperate mother trying to escape the ugliness of her world by falling in love with a handsome boy from the best part of town.
Amanda would never be able to look at Tyler now without remembering the past.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” she said hoarsely. “It’s not good for either of us—”
“Why?”
“You hate Montana—”
“I don’t hate Montana.”
“And I love it here. And I always want to live here.”
“What does that have to do with you and me?”
“You’re only here because Cormac’s company is here, and he’s bringing you on board. But if he didn’t, you’d be out of here so fast.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But neither do you.” Her voice broke, and she pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling. “This was never your dream to be locked down in Marietta, and I’m certainly not going to be the one to trap you here, either.”
“What if this wasn’t a trap, but the place I could see being home? What if I wanted to be here? What then, Mandy?”
Her heart was pounding and her stomach was churning and yet all she could feel was sadness. To think that Don had despised Mandy’s mother so much…
It was one thing to have someone like Carol Bingley say what was right with the Wright girls?, but to know there were others who’d said the same about her mother was shattering. Was being poor really so awful? Was poverty such a stigma?
Amanda closed her eyes, feeling how they stung and burned. Her chest burned, too. Everything inside of her hurt.
She’d thought she’d put the past in the past. She’d thought that working hard would distance her from the pain and shame, but suddenly the shame was alive and well, and it was burning her up.
It didn’t matter that she’d gone to college and earned a bachelor’s degree. It didn’t matter that she’d worked, and worked, and worked. It didn’t matter that she owned her own business now.
“Tonight was the wake-up call we both needed,” she said, arms crossed over her chest to keep herself from shivering, which was so weird because she was also on fire, also burning up.
Anger warred with shame. Pain shadowed everything. But beyond the pain was the fierce need to survive.
“There is no wake-up call, Mandy.”
“Maybe not for you, but there was for me. This isn’t going to work long-term. We’re too different—”
“You’re just upset, and I get it. Tonight was rough. Shocking. But there’s no need to make a knee-jerk reaction.”
“Tyler, we were never meant to be, let’s just end it here and now. Let’s end it while we can still be friends.”
“I don’t want to be your friend. I want you to by my girl, my love, my future.”
Hot tears scalded her eyes and Amanda went to the door and yanked it open. “I’m sorry. I’m done. I’m out. Please go now.”
“I’m not letting you go.”
“Don’t be like Kirk. Please?”
He flinched, his jaw jutting.
She hardened herself against remorse. She wasn’t going to feel, and she wasn’t going to care, and most of all, she was done apologizing for who she was, and where she came from. She couldn’t help her family history, or her past, and, to be honest, she was proud of everything she’d accomplished considering there hadn’t been a lot of parental input or involvement. She liked that everything she’d done had been because she and her sisters had banded together and become their own little tribe… a band of warrior girls. There was nothing wrong with them. They were the Wright sisters. They were right. They were perfect.
And if others couldn’t see, then that was their problem. Not hers.
“Enjoy your new job. Enjoy your new life here in Marietta,” she said, “but it’s not going to be with me.”
Tyler walked back to his grandmother’s with Amanda’s voice echoing in his head. Don’t be like Kirk.
The words drummed in his head, whipping his anger, but by the time he reached Gram’s house, his anger was replaced by fierce resolve.
He was not going to lose her like this, not over something that had nothing to do with them.
Despite the frigid wind blowing, he turned around and walked back to Amanda’s.
He was not going to let her break things off because of something that happened to their parents when they were just teenagers. Admittedly, it wasn’t the most comfortable discovery, but their failed relationship thirty-five plus years ago didn’t doom his and Mandy’s.
He knocked on her door, hard, and then again. He knew she was aware he was outside because he’d sent her a text already saying he was on her doorstep, waiting for her, and she’d answered, telling him she was busy.
I’m not going away, he texted her back.
It’s going to be a long night as I’m not coming down, she answered.
At least come to the window.
Why?
I want to talk to you.
We’re talking.
No, this is texting. Come to the window.
He waited a long minute, actually many long minutes, but then finally he heard the scrape of wood and he stepped off the porch. One of the tall windows on the second floor scraped open, and Mandy was there, leaning on the sill, face shadowed, her blonde hair pulled up in a high ponytail.
“Hey,” he said. “How are you?”
“Very funny.”
“No, seriously. How are you?”
“Fine. Never been better.”
But she wasn’t fine. She’d been crying. His chest tightened, tension returning. “Open the door, baby.”
“I can’t. And I can’t do this with you. I need time.”
“Time for what?”
“To think, sort things out for myself.”
“And what is there to sort out?”
“Who I am, who you are, and why we thought we had something together.”
He felt an ache deep in his chest. “Because we had something together, and we still do. If we didn’t, you wouldn’t be so sad.”
“I’m not sad.”
“Okay. Fine. Maybe I’m the only one sad, and I am sad, and worried about you, because you matter a lot to me and I hate that something thirty-five years ago is hurting you—”
“It wasn’t something thirty-five years ago! It was just a few weeks ago. You thought I was swindling your grandmother. You arrived in town certain I was taking advantage of her—”
“I discovered pretty quickly that that wasn’t the case.”
“But it’s still this thing your family has about being taken advantage of. Funny, my family doesn’t have that problem. We’ve never had that problem. Oh, I know why. It’s because we don’t have sterling reputations, or anything of value to stain or take.”
“Amanda.”
“You don’t get it. I’ve grown up with this and I’m over it. I’m so over it, and forgive me, Tyler, but I need to be over you.”
“It doesn’t have to go this way. You know that, don’t you?”
