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You still don’t know where Tyra came from.
Oh, you know she was your unplanned girl, your three-pregnancy-test check, the last straw in a bad relationship. He was tall, with far-seeing eyes, but that’s all he gave you: twice over, in the daughter he left when she was five years old.
You’re not fool enough to try marriage again, after him—though for a long while, Mindy wants you to. You just can’t stomach it, for one thing. For another, you threw away your wedding dress already, and you can’t afford a second one. (You couldn’t afford the first one, really, but you were young and you wanted it so bad.)
You’re a fool for a lot, now that you’re pushing middle age, but you don’t need the reminder that a cheap gold ring becomes over time.
He’s gone, and you’re a fool, but that’s not Tyra’s fault.
Tyra and Mindy: two pretty, butterfly names for two tough-as-nails girls. Other than the toughness, they couldn’t be more different from each other. Mindy’s like you. Fun-loving, quick to cry.
Tyra’s angry, and Tyra’s fierce, and Tyra only cries when she’s heartbroken, or when she watches old movies, side-by-side with you under the covers.
You don’t know where she got the idea that you’d let her go, except—
You do.
You try to explain.
Always, you try to explain. You love fighting. You love loving. You love cheap drinks and big hair and you absolutely love the way a man looks at you for the first time across a room. You wish it could always be the first time, not all the crap that comes after.
Tyra’s not quite the age you were when you got pregnant with Mindy, but she’s close. She’s old enough to understand that men are easy to follow, hard to follow up.
In the field with the truck broke down, you try to explain again. You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to do anything. You threw the wedding dress away, and you never left Dillon again, and you want a cheap drink. You want an old movie. You want to crawl into bed and never come out. Isn’t that sensible, when you’ve tried as hard as you’ve tried to live a life?
Tyra is so young and so strong, and you love her, but you don’t know where she came from. Loving you and pushing you over the cliff of the unknown all at the same time. It’s not going to work.
(She’s going to make it work.)
You’ve seen Buddy Garrity before and you never cared a bit about him, because he never saw you. He may be a bit of a talker, and sure, he isn’t handsome, but when you are where you are in life, none of that matters so much.
What matters is that he’s smiling, and he’s looking at you for the first time.
You hope Tyra understands, no matter what happens. You don’t want to lose her again.