Status: Complete
Torn Between Lust and Love
Chapter 6
Mandy and Wayne returned home when she was strong enough. They got married and for the first time in forever, everything was back to the way it was. Mandy didn’t have any memory of what happened in Africa and she probably never would, but she kept feeling like something wasn’t right.
Mandy spent months trying to figure out what had happened in Africa. Her phone was destroyed in the crash and couldn’t be fixed. Her only reminder of what really happened was gone. She knew that the empty feeling inside of her had something to do with the man that visited her in hospital, she just didn’t know who he was or what he was of her. Boxes with things that she’d bought while there, stood in the attic like discarded memories useless to her now. She opened one of them which was filled with journals that she filled with things she saw and receipts for the things she bought. She paged through every single one of them hoping to find something, and she did. A letter. A letter she’d written to Benedict telling him everything, the truth about what happened the night his baby was killed in the accident, her feelings. Everything. Mandy knew that this letter would bring everything to light. She opened it carefully.
‘Benedict
I’m the kind of person that writes letters instead of emails to tell people stuff. To me it feels like they’re so impersonal and don’t capture the same kind of emotion as what hand-written letters do. So I’m writing this to you.
Something has been haunting me for a while now. Something that could change our future completely. Something that changed my life and yours in the same way. I know what happened to Nadia. I was there. I didn’t realize until I found the newspaper article from your local newspapers in your drawer. I read it til the end and later that evening when I found an article written by an American newspaper I realized that the two accidents were connected. The South African one told about a local girl – Nadia Jones of Welkom that went on business to the United States of America for and that she was involved in a car crash and got injured. They didn’t say she was pregnant and didn’t say what caused the accident. The American version told about a girl who was driving in the car with her parents who was in a car crash, they said that the driver who had been the girl lost control of the vehicle in the rain and that the car crashed off the freeway and rolled killing the parents – Johnathon and Amanda Dawson and that their daughter Amanda had survived, she was only 17 at the time. Like your version of the newspaper they only gave one side of the story never telling what happened to the other person or persons. I’ll fill in the blanks that your newspapers left out.
Amanda and Johnathon Dawson along with their daughter, Amanda or Mandy as she’s known, were on their way to the hardware store to buy paint. Amanda and Mandy were going to paint Johnathon’s office that summer, at the time of the accident he was trying to talk them out of the color –green. He hated the color, he wanted them to paint it like a rusted orange or something like that, frankly anything other than green. They wouldn’t hear it and stood by their decision to paint it green. It had been raining the whole week and was finally starting to slow down. Mandy was driving the speed limit and kept the traffic laws. She turned to her mother who had been in the passenger’s seat for a second, when she turned her focus back to the road, she saw two beams of light a few feet in front of her. She tried to swerve into the other lane to miss the car that was driving on the wrong side of the road, but the roads were wet and she lost control of the car. The car drove off the side of the freeway and rolled four times before stopping. She blacked out then and woke up three days later in the ICU. The doctors asked her to identify her parents and then they were buried. She went to live with her boyfriend and his family.
Your newspapers reported about a girl named Nadia Jones that had been on business in America. The story was similar; it had been raining and she lost control of the car and crashed getting hurt in the process. It was never reported that she was pregnant with a baby. They never did a follow up article on how she was doing. They simply forgot about her and so did the rest of your country, same as the Dawson’s in America. These accidents had survivors and they had victims. Nadia –your girlfriend survived the crash but your baby didn’t. Amanda Dawson survived the crash despite the fact that she wasn’t supposed to, but her parents, Amanda and Johnathon –my parents didn’t survive.
I spent the last four years with a hole in my heart. I broke up with my then boyfriend, Taylor. I left him for Wayne. Wayne made me feel things that Taylor never did. I’ve been living with him for the past three years and now that we’re about to get married, I’m starting to doubt every single thing and aspect of our relationship. That’s why I came to South Africa. I needed perspective, I needed clarity. I needed to meet you so that I could finally begin to heal.
I thought that I had come here to gain clarity on my relationship with Wayne and to find myself and see what I wanted out of life, but I was wrong. I didn’t know it at the time, but I came to meet you. I needed to meet you so that I could finally gain closure to what happened four years ago when I was in that crash. It was a freak accident and I don’t blame Nadia. She lost her baby and you lost the girl you loved as well as your unborn child. I lost my parents but as a result of it, I became a more independent and grown up person. I just hate that three people, especially an unborn and innocent baby had to die for that to happen and for us to meet.
I love you, Benedict
Mandy’
Mandy’s heart started swelling with pain. Everything came crashing back. She realized that she’d made a mistake marrying Wayne. She remembered everything. Everything.
Mandy spent months trying to figure out what had happened in Africa. Her phone was destroyed in the crash and couldn’t be fixed. Her only reminder of what really happened was gone. She knew that the empty feeling inside of her had something to do with the man that visited her in hospital, she just didn’t know who he was or what he was of her. Boxes with things that she’d bought while there, stood in the attic like discarded memories useless to her now. She opened one of them which was filled with journals that she filled with things she saw and receipts for the things she bought. She paged through every single one of them hoping to find something, and she did. A letter. A letter she’d written to Benedict telling him everything, the truth about what happened the night his baby was killed in the accident, her feelings. Everything. Mandy knew that this letter would bring everything to light. She opened it carefully.
‘Benedict
I’m the kind of person that writes letters instead of emails to tell people stuff. To me it feels like they’re so impersonal and don’t capture the same kind of emotion as what hand-written letters do. So I’m writing this to you.
Something has been haunting me for a while now. Something that could change our future completely. Something that changed my life and yours in the same way. I know what happened to Nadia. I was there. I didn’t realize until I found the newspaper article from your local newspapers in your drawer. I read it til the end and later that evening when I found an article written by an American newspaper I realized that the two accidents were connected. The South African one told about a local girl – Nadia Jones of Welkom that went on business to the United States of America for and that she was involved in a car crash and got injured. They didn’t say she was pregnant and didn’t say what caused the accident. The American version told about a girl who was driving in the car with her parents who was in a car crash, they said that the driver who had been the girl lost control of the vehicle in the rain and that the car crashed off the freeway and rolled killing the parents – Johnathon and Amanda Dawson and that their daughter Amanda had survived, she was only 17 at the time. Like your version of the newspaper they only gave one side of the story never telling what happened to the other person or persons. I’ll fill in the blanks that your newspapers left out.
Amanda and Johnathon Dawson along with their daughter, Amanda or Mandy as she’s known, were on their way to the hardware store to buy paint. Amanda and Mandy were going to paint Johnathon’s office that summer, at the time of the accident he was trying to talk them out of the color –green. He hated the color, he wanted them to paint it like a rusted orange or something like that, frankly anything other than green. They wouldn’t hear it and stood by their decision to paint it green. It had been raining the whole week and was finally starting to slow down. Mandy was driving the speed limit and kept the traffic laws. She turned to her mother who had been in the passenger’s seat for a second, when she turned her focus back to the road, she saw two beams of light a few feet in front of her. She tried to swerve into the other lane to miss the car that was driving on the wrong side of the road, but the roads were wet and she lost control of the car. The car drove off the side of the freeway and rolled four times before stopping. She blacked out then and woke up three days later in the ICU. The doctors asked her to identify her parents and then they were buried. She went to live with her boyfriend and his family.
Your newspapers reported about a girl named Nadia Jones that had been on business in America. The story was similar; it had been raining and she lost control of the car and crashed getting hurt in the process. It was never reported that she was pregnant with a baby. They never did a follow up article on how she was doing. They simply forgot about her and so did the rest of your country, same as the Dawson’s in America. These accidents had survivors and they had victims. Nadia –your girlfriend survived the crash but your baby didn’t. Amanda Dawson survived the crash despite the fact that she wasn’t supposed to, but her parents, Amanda and Johnathon –my parents didn’t survive.
I spent the last four years with a hole in my heart. I broke up with my then boyfriend, Taylor. I left him for Wayne. Wayne made me feel things that Taylor never did. I’ve been living with him for the past three years and now that we’re about to get married, I’m starting to doubt every single thing and aspect of our relationship. That’s why I came to South Africa. I needed perspective, I needed clarity. I needed to meet you so that I could finally begin to heal.
I thought that I had come here to gain clarity on my relationship with Wayne and to find myself and see what I wanted out of life, but I was wrong. I didn’t know it at the time, but I came to meet you. I needed to meet you so that I could finally gain closure to what happened four years ago when I was in that crash. It was a freak accident and I don’t blame Nadia. She lost her baby and you lost the girl you loved as well as your unborn child. I lost my parents but as a result of it, I became a more independent and grown up person. I just hate that three people, especially an unborn and innocent baby had to die for that to happen and for us to meet.
I love you, Benedict
Mandy’
Mandy’s heart started swelling with pain. Everything came crashing back. She realized that she’d made a mistake marrying Wayne. She remembered everything. Everything.