Chapter Seventeen
Amanda spent the day by her mother’s side. Her mother was pleasant, quite talkative, and seemed well enough to watch all her daytime soaps.
She wasn’t acting sick. At all. The cook served all her meals in bed, and Amanda’s stepfather came in to fuss over her every once in a while.
Anne loved all the attention. Of course, she would.
That grated on Amanda. She couldn’t help but question whether her mother was “dying” like she claimed. She didn’t even look seriously ill. Anne hadn’t had so much as a little sniffle.
Anne had her appetite, had color in her cheeks, and certainly spent plenty of time on the phone, chatting with her country-club friends.
She drank lots of juice and took lots of trips to the restroom. Unassisted.
Every time Amanda asked her mother what she was diagnosed with, she came up with a different excuse of why she didn’t know—or couldn’t pronounce—the name of the illness. But she knew that it was—or at least, could be—fatal. Funny how the doctor hadn’t even called once to check up on her mother. And no hospice? Right.
Not that she wanted her mother to die, but Anne looked healthy enough to her.
As she sat next to her mother’s bed—Anne cloaked in a shiny gold nightgown like a queen—Amanda was getting edgy.
She had wanted to return to Miami so badly, and now that she was here…she wanted to go back.
Not only did she unbelievably miss Manning Grove, she missed a big, frustrating man in a blue uniform. And Greg too.
Norman peeked his head around the bedroom door.
“Amanda, there is someone here to see you.” His head disappeared, and a moment later the door burst open. Squeals of delight echoed through the room, making Amanda grimace.
Her three girlfriends bounded into the room, taking their turns hugging her.
Amanda didn’t fail to notice her mother’s sly smile.
“Mandy! We’ve missed you.” Meghan.
“We’re so glad you’re home.” Allison.
“It’s about time you wise up and get back here to reality.” And Darcie.
“Yeah, come back to the real world.”
As the three women chattered away, Amanda just stood there looking at her friends in amazement. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Why, Amanda, we heard you were home. You should have called us! We couldn’t pass up an opportunity to get together. Hello, Mrs. Bingman.”
“Hello, girls! Come, come, have a seat.” She patted the plush mattress. “You can sit on the bed.”
The three women plopped on the edge of the bed.
“How are you feeling?” Allison asked.
“Much better, now that you girls are here.”
Amanda eyed her mother, ice spreading through her veins. She could no longer deny that she had been set up. Was it so bad that she had held out hope that one day Anne might act like a real mother? A mother who could love her daughter no matter what? Why did she do this to herself over and over? A cynical voice in her head answered: because I am a fucking fool!
Darcie leaned toward Amanda. “Mandy, you have to go out with us tonight. We’re going clubbing!”
Meghan piped in, “You can’t say no. It’s Friday!”
“Yes, we won’t let you.”
“I’ve got Daddy’s limo,” Allison crowed. “So we won’t even need a designated driver.”
With all the seriousness Amanda could muster, she answered gravely, “I can’t. My mother is sick. I can’t leave her.”
“Sure you can, darling. I’ll be fine. You go and have fun.”
That was the exact reaction she had expected. For once, her mother didn’t disappoint her.
“Come on, Mandy, there’s a cool new club. It serves all kinds of specialty martinis.”
“You love those martinis. Remember when you drank four Godiva chocolate martinis in an hour and Carlos had to drive you home, because you—”
Amanda abruptly interrupted them, “Yes, I remember.” Though she wanted to forget. She didn’t need to be reminded of more of her stupidity.
“And Carlos is going to meet us.”
Another pawn in her mother’s game. She was surprised it had taken this long for his name to be mentioned. Actually she was surprised that he hadn’t “popped” in—maybe her mother realized that would have blown her performance immediately.
“Mandy, he misses you,” Allison pouted.
“Come with us.”
Amanda’s gaze bounced from her mother to her friends.
Her lips pressed together. “I’ll call you guys later. My mother needs her rest.”
The women were disappointed. Amanda didn’t miss the fleeting glances they gave her mother, who sat up in bed propped against numerous pillows as if she was the Queen of England. More like a drama queen.
Amanda deflected the last of their halfhearted attempts on getting her to join them. In the end they reluctantly left disappointed.
When the room was quiet again, Amanda spun on Anne. She worked hard on keeping her voice calm and even. “Who called them?”
“I had Norman call the girls. I thought it would be nice for you to get together with your friends.” After a pause, “And Carlos.”
Amanda smoothed the comforter with her hand, then pulled it up to her mother’s waist and tucked it around her with exaggerated gentleness. She softly asked, “Mother, haven’t you meddled enough?”
“Mandy, you know I only want what’s best for you.”
Amanda unclenched her teeth enough to say, “You keep saying that, but do you really mean it?”
“Of course.”
Amanda walked over to the sideboard that held juice, clean glasses, and some vials of pills, staring at them sightlessly. “Is that why you are faking this illness?”
Her mother’s answer took too long. Way too long. “I’m not faking.”
Amanda leaned her head over to sniff the pitcher of juice. She picked up the cut crystal container and lifted it to her lips.
The burn of vodka ran down her throat and heated her belly.
“Hmm. Vodka and orange juice.” She put the pitcher down carefully and slowly turned to face her mother. “Is that what the doctor ordered?”
Her mother looked pale at last.
“Darling…”
“Damn you!” Amanda whirled on her heels, storming out of the room. The pictures in the hallway rattled from the slamming door.
She’d heard enough.
She’d had enough.
She ran into her stepfather at the top of the staircase.
“Were you part of this?” Amanda accused him.
“What?”
“Never mind!” She shoved past him, trying to control her anger. Amanda curled her fingers into a fist, trying desperately to keep herself from pushing Norman down the stairs.
“Where are you going?”
She gave a dry laugh. “For a walk before I throttle her.” She paused on the steps. “And you too.”
Then she ran down the stairs and out the front door.
* * * *
Max pulled up the freshly downloaded contacts on his new cell phone. Amanda’s name was at the top of the list. He highlighted the listing and pushed the Send button. He hadn’t even left the parking lot of the Verizon store. That’s how anxious he was to talk to her.
After the second ring, he thought that he would have to leave a voice mail. He really wanted to hear her voice.
But finally on the third ring she picked up.
“Hello?”
“Hello?” he echoed back. Amanda sounded odd.
“Who is this?”
“Max, who else? Are you okay?”
“Max? Oh.” The bitter tone was instantly recognizable. “You’re that cop, aren’t you?”
That cop.
Anne. Amanda’s mother.
Damn.
“Where’s Amanda? I want to talk to her.”
“She’s none of your concern. She’s busy.”
His fingers painfully squeezed the phone, and he blew out a deep breath. “Where is she? Why do you have her phone?”
“She’s none of your business.”
How many times had he heard that from Amanda herself? But everything was different now. Things had been going so well. Or so he thought. “Yes, she is.”
“She doesn’t want to talk to you. She handed me her phone when she saw that it was you calling. She doesn’t want to see you anymore. She doesn’t want anything at all to do with you.”
“You’re lying.”
“No, she’s sitting right here. Amanda, do you want to talk to him?” There was a slight pause on the other end. “She’s saying no. She’s home to stay now. She’s where she belongs.”
“I want to hear it from her lips.”
“She refuses to talk to you. What’s that, darling?” A longer pause this time. “Oh, she wants me to tell you that she is announcing her engagement to Carlos.”
Max hesitated. He must not have heard correctly. “She wouldn’t desert Greg.”
“We’ll make sure he goes to a good home.”
A good home? Like a shelter animal? “She wouldn’t want…”
“Leave us—her—alone! She doesn’t want you anymore. You’re not good enough for her.”
The connection was cut off.
With an explosive curse, Max violently threw his new phone down on the floorboard. He smashed it with the heel of his boot into tiny jagged pieces.
* * * *
Everything around her was oversize. Oversize homes, oversize cars, and oversize tastes in general.
All unnecessary. All unneeded, except to impress.
She continued to walk for blocks through the winding streets of the gated community, trying to work out the anger she felt for her own mother.
She had fallen for her mother’s games. Stupid little fool.
She thought of Mary Ann and how selfless the woman was. Willing to help her anytime she asked. No strings. No games. Everything honest and up front.
Why couldn’t she have had a mother like that?
She thought about the difference between Carlos and Max.
Carlos: Disloyal. Spoiled. Wishy-washy. Easily manipulated by Anne.
Max: Solid. Powerful. Not an indecisive bone in his body. Okay, except when it came to them. But it had gotten better since they had called a “truce” last month.
He stepped right in whenever she needed him. He was a natural when it came to dealing with Greg. And Greg loved him too.
Greg loved him too.
She stopped walking and closed her eyes. What the hell. She loved him. She loved Max! She didn’t want to live without him.
She was going to go back to the house, pack her stuff, and go home.
Home.
To Manning Grove.
To Greg.
To Max.
There was nothing here for her in Miami anymore.
Nothing she wanted. Or needed.
Amanda quickly returned to the house. Every determined step she took was a step closer to going home.
As she quietly entered the house, she passed the sitting room. Her mother was there. Out of bed. In perfect makeup, dripping with jewelry, and wearing an elegant designer pantsuit, sipping what looked like…a cosmo!
She stepped into the room, the anger bubbling back up.
“Feeling better, Mother? Miraculous recovery?”
“Darling, you know I did it all for you. I was desperate. I had to get you out of that…that place. I needed to remind you of what you’re missing. To remember what you had given up. I don’t want you to go back. Look at what all that you can have here. Money, friends, a home with us, anything you want…”
Anything she wants.
She wanted nothing from her mother. Nothing at all.
Everything she wanted was up north.
Amanda cut off her speech. “Is that my cell?”
Anne looked down at the phone in her hand, almost as if she was unaware that she was still holding it. Her mouth silently opened and closed before answering. Then she lifted her chin like a defiant child. “It rang and I answered it.”
“Who was it?” she asked warily. “Was it Max?” She snagged the phone from between her mother’s fingers and checked her call log. It was.
“Is that his name?”
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him the truth: that you are home now. That he’s not good enough for you.”
“Mother, you wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you in the ass.”
Anne ignored her outburst. “I told him that you went back to Carlos.”
Amanda sank down on the sofa. She dropped her head in her hands.
“And what did he say?”
Anne was silent for a moment. Amanda felt the sofa sink down as her mother sat primly beside her. She placed a hand over Amanda’s as if trying to soften the blow. “He said good riddance.”
Good riddance. Amanda laughed hysterically. Good riddance! Those two words would never have come out of Officer Max Bryson’s mouth. He would have said, she can go to hell or no loss, or anything that ended with a curse, but never good riddance.
Suddenly her mother sounded desperate. “Amanda, it’s true. He said he never wanted to see you again. I’m so sorry, Mandy. I realize you had a crush on him, but it’s over. He appreciates the fact that you need more in your life. That you deserve only the best.”
“No…” Amanda faced her mother, heat crawling up her neck. “No. Greg needs me. I’m leaving.”
She ran up to her room and tossed her clothes into her suitcase. She called a cab, then scrolled through her cell’s phonebook to find Max’s name. She pushed the Send button.
His phone rang and rang. He wasn’t picking up. Max didn’t want to speak to her. She didn’t blame him.
She listened to his voice on his recorded greeting. She wanted to leave a message, but she was afraid to.
Her heart ached. All at once she felt so alone.
“I’m coming home,” she whispered before hanging up.
“There’s a fine line between love and hate,” Teddy had quoted to her once. Both were passionate emotions. She loved Max. She wasn’t going to deny it anymore.
She needed him. She needed to get back to Pennsylvania.
* * * *
She had a harder time finding a flight out of Miami on a moment’s notice than she had in Philly a couple days earlier. She ended up napping restlessly in an uncomfortable plastic molded seat at the gate until she could catch a red-eye.
Amanda couldn’t remember a more miserable flight in her life. Between the stomach-turning turbulence and being sandwiched between an enormous man with extremely bad halitosis and another who continually hit on her, she was at her wit’s end. She guessed that the wannabe suitor didn’t understand what the “evil eye” meant—that she wasn’t interested. Now her “evil eye” was twitching.
As tempted as she was to purchase a cocktail from the flight attendant, she couldn’t make herself spend eight bucks on a measly four-ounce drink. And anyway, she would need ten times that amount to calm her down. Or knock her out.
With her luck, she would have become belligerent and the air marshal on board would have had to take her down forcefully. She just seemed to get that type of response from law enforcement recently.
The second they landed, she tried calling Max again. Still no answer.
Either his phone was off or he was ignoring her.
Because of his job, she knew he never turned his cell off, so it was apparent that he didn’t want to speak to her. Desperation and despair boiled up inside her.
While she impatiently waited for her luggage to come off the plane, she called three more times.
As Amanda dragged her bag through the airport, dodging numerous people, her bag twisted and a wheel popped off. She watched helplessly as the small black plastic, piece-of-shit wheel shot through the crowd, never to be seen again.
Damn!
She slammed the expandable handle back into the suitcase, grabbed the side handle, and lugged it down to the nearest seat. She collapsed into the chair, dropping her head into her hands.
She would not cry. She would not cry.
She would not cry.
Some rude person sat next to her, jostling against her. This was the last thing she needed. She was sure there were plenty of other seats that this person could have flopped their fat ass into. Why next to her? Couldn’t they see she was having a crisis?
She sat back, pushed her hair out of the way, and looked at the blurry figure sitting next to her.
Damn the tears!
She blinked, trying to clear her sight. She was going to give them a piece of her mind. When she rubbed her hand across her eyes, the person grasped her wrist.
“I didn’t know what to think.”
Amanda opened her mouth.
Max interrupted her. “No, let me speak. I didn’t know what to think. You left Greg with my parents; you just took off. It hurt me that you could just leave without letting me know what was going on. I thought you felt something for me.”
Did he not get all her messages?
“I do.” Her sight cleared, and her own anguish was reflected back at her in his face.
He dropped his head and shook it slowly. “But you don’t show it.”
“I do!”
With frustration, he scrubbed his palm over his short hair. “I tried to call you, but your mother said…”
Amanda groaned, wiping her running nose. “I know. I know what she told you. It wasn’t true.”
“No?” He grabbed her left hand and raised it to study her ring finger. “Empty.”
She squeezed his hand, never wanting to let it go. She wanted to make sure that it was real. He was really there, and that it wasn’t her imagination running away with her. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“I was heading to Miami to bring you home. To bring you back to me. I wasn’t letting you go without a fight.”
“But how did you find me here? This airport is huge; there are a million people…”
“By accident. A small wheel bounced off my shin. I should have known it was yours. My Amanda, always causing trouble.” He gave her a crooked smile. “I’m sure I’ll have a bruise.”
Fate.
It was fate.
“Max…”
He placed a finger over her lips. “Wait, I’m not done.” He brushed a lone shimmering tear off her cheek with his rough, warm thumb. “Amanda…I love you. I wanted to deny it…but I can’t. I love you, and I want you to come back home with me.”
“Home…” The thought of a real home—creating a real home with Max—made a few more hot tears escape. She was not a crier!
“I know you’re not happy in Manning Grove, it will never be the same as Miami. It’s a sacrifice you will have to make…”
“It’s not—”
“But I promise to make you happy. Hopefully, it will be enough.” He lifted her left hand again and kissed her ring finger. “I’m so glad you aren’t wearing Carlos’s diamond.” Without releasing her, he slid to his knees in front of her.
With his free hand he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small black box. “It’s not going to be as big a ring as Carlos can buy you. But…” He opened the lid.
A beautiful petite diamond sparkled from its velvet place setting.
“It was my mother’s first engagement ring. If it’s not big enough, I’ll buy you a larger one later.”
“Max,” she whispered. “It’s not the size that matters.” She blushed and laughed. “You know what I mean.”
Max laughed too. Then he got serious. “Will you wear it?”
What kind of proposal was that?
But before she could ask, he smothered her lips with his own, tilting his head to possess her mouth fully. She pushed him back down. “We’re in public!” she complained in a whisper.
“I don’t care. I want everyone to know you are mine. That I love you.” He turned his face up and hollered, “And, yes, I want you to marry me!”
A hard tap on her shoulder made her turn her head to look at a small, elderly lady behind her.
“Say yes, dear,” and with that she gave Amanda a smile and hobbled away with a cane.
He was asking her to marry him at the Philadelphia International Airport among hundreds…no, thousands of strangers.
“Please?” he begged.
Amanda looked down at the man she loved, the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, the man she needed desperately…the man who was squatted down on a filthy terminal floor between her thighs.
“Holy shit,” she murmured.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said and slid the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly.
It was impossible, she thought, there was no way he knew her ring size.
Fate flashed through her mind again.
She was meant to be with this man. As much as they had fought it, fate won. “Let’s go home.”
He gathered his backpack, her lopsided luggage, and her hand.
As he led her through the throngs of people, she asked, “Why didn’t you answer your phone? I tried calling you a dozen times.”
“I…lost it.”
Lost it. Right. Just like Amanda had lost the Buick’s license plate. “Well, when you find it, you’ll hear a dozen messages from me. They might sound a little crazy. I was having a really bad day.” She smiled up at him and squeezed his hand. “But it’s all better now.”
* * * *
As they drove into the clearing at Bryson’s Tree Farm, they noticed Max’s parents, along with Greg and Chaos, relaxing on the large porch swing. The swaying stopped as the trio spotted the truck.
Max parked his Chevy, and before Amanda could descend from the cab, Greg had her door open and was trying to haul her out. Chaos, with his front leg still in a cast, slowly hobbled over, giving a happy, high-pitched bark.
She squeaked, “Hold on, buddy; let me undo the seat belt.”
Max reached over the bench seat to release it for her.
Amanda could rub her neck only for a split second before Greg was squeezing her tightly. “I’s missed you, ’Manda! I’s missed you!”
Amanda hugged him in return, breathing in the fresh pine scent of him. She ran a hand through his messy hair. “I’ve missed you too. Did you have fun?”
“Yes, lots of fun.” He released her and stepped back. “We made Christmas trees!”
“You did?”
Ron came up and gave her a great big bear hug. “Welcome home.”
“It’s good to be home,” she replied, really meaning it with all her heart.
Amanda saw Ron’s eyes flick to her ring finger, but before she could say anything, Ron just gave her a wink.
Spotting the exchange, Max quickly faced his mother, clearing his throat. “Mom, I know what present you’ve always wanted the most for Christmas. And I know it’s way too early for Christmas, but—”
He bent over and whispered in her ear, “She said yes.”
Mary Ann’s face lit up, and silvery tears pooled in her eyes. With a happy cry, she rushed over to hug Amanda.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! That’s the best Christmas present ever!” She stopped and looked anxiously from Max to Amanda’s flat stomach and back. “Well, unless there’s more you need to tell me?”
Max groaned loudly.
“Well, get busy, Son! You only have six months until Christmas.”
“Mother!”