And somewhere out there, I would learn that afternoon, Tara’s situation had gone the other direction. Gerald Maddox, it turned out, was the kind of rich man who trades in his women on roughly the same schedule as his cars. He’d moved on years ago. Whatever settlement she’d gotten was long spent. She was aging, alone, and running out of road.
So she’d done the math that people like her always do.
Somewhere she’d heard — a mutual acquaintance, social media, the name on a truck — that Wade Boone wasn’t a struggling laborer anymore. That the twins she abandoned were about to graduate, healthy and successful, one of them with a scholarship. That there was, after all these years, finally something here worth coming back for.
And she had shown up, with a folder under her arm, at the one event guaranteed to have the biggest audience and the softest hearts.
