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you.”
    Jillian flinched at Wil’s blunt language, even though moments ago she’d also reduced their encounter to just that.
    “It’s okay, Miss Sealy.” Wil’s expression was blank, her voice emotionless. “I’m quite used to being seen as a second-class citizen in this town.”
    “Wil—”
    “Get out.”
    “I just want—”
    “Get. Out. Of my truck.”
    She sighed and shoved the door open. As soon as her feet hit the ground, she slammed the door behind her. She didn’t turn around, but seconds later she heard gravel fly as Wil sped away.
     

Chapter Four
     
    Wil pulled a beer from the refrigerator and resisted the urge to slam the door. She tossed the cap in the sink on her way to the attached garage. After she flipped on the light, she set the bottle on the workbench where her tools were laid out neatly just inside the door. In the center of the garage, the makeshift table she’d fashioned out of a sheet of plywood and two sawhorses held four drawers. She’d finished assembling them the night before for a rolltop desk she was making for her father’s office. Tonight she would begin cutting the pieces for the base.
    Six years ago, after she bought this house on fifteen acres on the town’s outskirts, she had transformed the garage into a workshop. A decade old, the house was more modern and sterile than she liked. As subdivisions crawled out from nearby cities, construction companies had begun to build cookie-cutter houses, and Wil’s was no exception. She’d been more interested in the land than the house. But the relatively cheap cost of maintaining the small home allowed her to save until she built the house she really wanted.
    Still, it was much nicer than the place her family had lived in when she was younger. Bud had been struggling to rebuild the company that her grandfather, with a series of bad business decisions, had nearly run into the ground. They had rented a dilapidated house that probably should have been condemned years ago. Bud made what repairs he could with no money, but the house needed major work.
    Wil knew her mother wasn’t happy. She heard them arguing when they thought she was asleep. Her mother screamed at her father that her college education was wasted while she waited tables at the diner. She hated living in a small town and wanted to move back to D.C. where she had grown up. He usually tried to convince her that things would get better, but one night when Wil was twelve years old, he told her to go. And she did. Wil remembered standing in front of the house watching her drive away. Her mother had tried to explain why she was leaving, but Wil was too hurt and angry to listen and ignored her until she finally gave up and got in the car.
    After that Bud had taken nearly any job he could just to keep food on the table. And still Wil had gone to school many days with no lunch money, in clothes from Goodwill. In such a small town, that meant the other kids recognized their own discarded, season-old clothing.
    Wil took pride in owning her home because no one had ever expected anything from her. She and Bud had worked hard, and Johnson and Son now had a reputation for quality work and dependability. But she suspected many residents would always view her as the poor girl in secondhand clothes. She’d seen more than her share of pitying looks from her elders over the years.
    This afternoon had proved that a part of her that could still be stung by an offhand remark. Jillian Sealy was white-collar, and not just by profession. Her carriage and the confidence with which she made eye contact communicated the expectation that she would be treated a certain way. Despite Wil’s occasional arrogance, she would never have that sense of entitlement. She knew she would always be susceptible to the resurgence of childhood shame, and Jillian’s quick reaction to Rose’s harmless remark had stirred that old inadequacy.
    She would probably do best to remember that her relationship with