The Truth About Tara

“You can’t be serious!” Mary Dee exclaimed. “That kayaking trip sounded amazing. How could you cancel it?”

Tara popped a coconut shrimp into her mouth and washed it down with some of her happy-hour margarita. Strawberry, her favorite flavor. She intended to enjoy it. Most of the Eastern Shore’s hundreds of miles of coastline was bordered by salt marshes, not restaurants. They’d been lucky to snag a table in a prime location. This marked the first Friday after school had been let out for the summer and the place was full, mostly with tourists. Even so, the atmosphere was laid-back. Visitors came to the Eastern Shore for a quiet getaway, usually at a

B and B with a semiprivate beach on the bay. The eastern side of the peninsula was largely bordered by marshland and waterways that led to the secluded barrier islands. The hordes of tourists were an hour north in Ocean City, Maryland, and an hour south in Virginia Beach.

“Canceling was surprisingly easy,” Tara said. “I got all but fifty dollars back from my deposit, and the airline gave me a flight credit.”

Mary Dee set her own margarita glass down on the table with a clink. She thrust out her glossy red lower lip that matched her red blouse. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. That trip would have been great for you.”

Tara wasn’t sure she agreed. Since none of their other friends were kayakers, Mary Dee had persuaded Tara to check out an organization that set up outdoor excursions for singles. The closest kayak trip was on the Snake River in Wyoming. The more Tara thought about it, however, the less attractive the trip seemed.

“I probably would have gotten cold feet, anyway,” Tara said. “I mean, why should I go all the way to Wyoming when I can kayak here?”

“For adventure,” Mary Dee said.

“And can you imagine the kind of guys who sign up for those sorts of trips?” Tara continued as though she hadn’t heard her. “They’re probably out for sex.”

“So what? Some sex would do you good.” She nodded in the direction of four guys they’d known in high school who were across the patio hoisting beers and singing. Tara had dated two of them. “You seem to have already ruled out every man around here.”

“The timing is bad, too,” Tara said, ignoring her friend’s comment. She gazed out into the bay, where the sun was sinking below the horizon in a blaze of red and yellow. “I don’t know what I was thinking when I made the reservation, with the anniversary coming up on Tuesday.”

Tara had been friends with Mary Dee long enough that she didn’t need to explain the significance of the date. The other woman was well aware that was when Tara’s father and sister had died.

“You weren’t planning to leave until Wednesday,” Mary Dee pointed out. “And I thought your mother was going to treat the anniversary like any other day this year.”

“I’m not entirely sure she can do it,” Tara said. “She might need me to—”

“How about what you need?” Mary Dee interrupted. “They’ve been gone thirty years, Tara, but you’re here and you’re alive. When was the last time you did anything for yourself?”

Tara watched the last of the sun disappear before she answered. “I ran five miles last night and had a yogurt smoothie for breakfast this morning.”

“Would you stop doing that?”

“Stop doing what?”

“Pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.” Mary Dee shook her head. “It used to work but not anymore. I’m on to you, Tara Greer.”

Was that really her name? Or was it Hayley Cooper? Tara thrust the ridiculous though from her mind, dismayed that she’d allowed it to surface.

“I’m sorry, M.D.,” Tara said. “I know you’re only trying to look out for me. But missing the trip isn’t a big deal. And it’s not like I have a choice.”

“You could have chosen to tell your mom no,” Mary Dee said. “She didn’t have any right to volunteer you like that without asking first.”

“I hadn’t gotten a chance to tell her about Wyoming yet,” Tara said. “Besides, the camp sounds like fun.”

Mary Dee thumped the table with a manicured hand. “Doesn’t matter. She still shouldn’t have volunteered you.”

“It’s for a good cause,” Tara said.

“Yeah, but why are her causes more important than yours?” Mary Dee asked. “She always needs something from you.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

Mary Dee raised her dark eyebrows. “Then why do you live two blocks away from her?”

“You know why,” Tara said. “My place was such a great deal, I couldn’t pass it up.”

“Was that really the reason?” Mary Dee asked. “Or did your mother need you to live close by?”

Tara twirled the tiny straw in her margarita glass, not bothering to point out that while she relished her own space she liked being available for her mother. Mary Dee would probably find fault with that, too. “You’re being awfully hard on me today.”

Mary Dee laid her hand on Tara’s arm. “I don’t mean to be. I’m only trying to get you to be a little more selfish.”

Tara reached across the table, plucked one of Mary Dee’s breaded mushrooms from her plate and popped it into her mouth.

“How’s that?” she asked.

Mary Dee laughed. “Better. Now, are you going to tell me about that guy I saw you with yesterday?”

Tara blinked, blindsided by the question.

“You didn’t really think I’d forgotten about it, did you? So spill.”

“He was nobody,” Tara said.

“What? A guy that hot—he was definitely somebody.”

“A tourist,” Tara clarified.

“What did he want?”

It was on the tip of Tara’s tongue to repeat the crazy tale Jack DiMarco had spun of the abducted three-year-old and Tara’s own uncanny resemblance to the age-progression photo.

“Directions.” Tara wasn’t sure why she lied, especially because she seldom censored herself in front of Mary Dee. Tara often felt as though her sister’s death had created a void in her life that hadn’t been filled until Tara had become friends with Mary Dee.

“That’s it?” Mary Dee’s expression crumbled. “I had such high hopes for you two.”

“You’re a real pain with that stuff since you got married,” Tara complained. “Just because you’re in love doesn’t mean I have to be.”

“Being in love is wonderful.” Mary Dee’s lips rose in the dreamy smile she got whenever anyone referred to marriage or husbands or love. Then again, she was still a newlywed. “If you’d make room in your life for a relationship, you could feel wonderful, too.”

“I’ve had plenty of relationships,” Tara countered.

“Short ones,” Mary Dee said. “You find fault with everybody you date.”

“That’s not true,” Tara said. “I’m just not willing to settle for anything less than fireworks, like you have with Bill and my mom had with my dad.”

“You should have gone to Wyoming to increase your chances of finding someone, then.” Mary Dee gestured to the happy-hour crowd, made up of almost all couples. “Speaking of that, did you at least give that tourist your number?”

“No, Mary Dee,” Tara said with exaggerated patience. “I did not give my number to the stranger who stopped to ask for directions.”

“What good are you, girl?” Mary Dee asked, shaking her head. “I know you want children some day. You need a man for that.”

Tara laid a finger on her cheek. “So now you think the tourist who asked for directions should be the father of my children? I don’t even know if he’s single.”

“You didn’t check out his ring finger?” Mary Dee asked.

She had, actually. It was bare. She was uncomfortably aware that she’d found him attractive. No, not merely attractive. Appealing. If he’d been anybody else, she might have found a way to give him her number.

Mary Dee pointed a finger at her. “You did, didn’t you? I knew you were attracted to him. Too bad you don’t know where he’s staying. You could at least have a fling with him while he’s visiting.”

Tara’s heartbeat sped up at the prospect, although she should not have been thinking about Jack DiMarco in those terms. She had ample reason to hope she never saw him again. “I guess I missed my chance, then.”

“Too bad.” Mary Dee fanned herself. “Now, that’s a man who could get a woman thinking about her needs.”

Tara’s cell phone vibrated and skittered a few inches on the table, as if it were alive. With an apologetic look at Mary Dee, Tara picked it up and checked the display. Her mother. Not that she’d tell her friend that.

“Sorry,” Tara said. “I’ve got to take this.”

Mary Dee nodded, watching Tara over the rim of her glass as she sipped her margarita.

“Hey, what’s up?” Tara asked, careful not to call her mom by name.

“I think I smell gas in the kitchen!” her mother cried. “I checked and the pilot light’s not on. Wouldn’t you know the shut-off valve’s behind the stove, which is way too heavy for me to move.”

Tara turned away from Mary Dee and spoke directly into the phone so her mother could hear and her friend couldn’t. “Did you call the gas company?”

“Yes, but what if it takes them an hour to get here like it did the last time?” her mother asked. “I can’t stay outside on the porch with Danny for an hour. You know how he gets when his routine is disrupted.”

Tara tapped her nails on the table, trying to come up with the best solution to the problem. “I guess I could be there in about twenty minutes.”

“Could you?” her mother asked. “That would be wonderful.”

Tara cast a glance at Mary Dee, who was still watching her. Tara wouldn’t be leaving her friend high and dry if she cut out early. Mary Dee had mentioned that her husband had rented a movie they were planning to watch tonight.

“I’ll leave right now,” she told her mom. “In the meantime, open some windows and stay out of the kitchen.”

“Already done. Bless you!” Her mother made a few more gratifying noises before Tara disconnected the call.

Taking a deep breath, Tara addressed Mary Dee. “I’m sorry. Something’s come up. I’ve gotta go.”

“Of course you do.”

Tara finished off the last swallow of her margarita, set enough money on the table to cover their tab and stood up. “I really am sorry, M.D.”

“I know you are,” Mary Dee said.

Tara turned away from her friend and started for the exit. She hadn’t gotten two steps when she heard Mary Dee’s voice calling after her.

“Say hey to your mom for me.”

* * *

TARA GRABBED FOR HER foster brother Danny’s soft hand the following afternoon, holding it securely in hers as they crossed the parking lot to the Kroger in Wawpaney. There weren’t a lot of choices. The next closest grocery store was twenty miles away.

“You’re a good boy to come with me.” After picking up Danny from his Saturday swimming lesson at the community center in Cape Charles, where the camp was being held, she’d announced she needed to make a stop. “If I don’t buy a few things, my cupboards will be bare. Like Mother Hubbard.”

“Your mother’s name isn’t Hubbard.” Danny gazed up at her out of small brown eyes with the distinctive slant characteristic of people with Down syndrome. He was short for his age, another trait common to children like him.

“You’re right.” Tara sometimes forgot how literal children with Down’s were. “It’s Carrie. She’s your foster mother and my mother.”

No matter what the stranger who’d stopped her on the street had suggested.

Tara released Danny’s hand to take one of the grocery carts in front of the store, careful to keep him in sight. During the time it had taken Tara to get to her mother’s house the night before, Danny had wandered close to the street to follow a butterfly.

“C-Carrie is getting pretty,” Danny announced. He had a good vocabulary, although his speech was halting and not quite clear. He also stuttered occasionally. Once school started again, he’d be in speech therapy.

“Right again,” Tara said. “Carrie’s at the beauty shop. That’s why I picked you up from swimming.”

Her mother had insisted Danny take the lessons, maintaining that anyone who lived in an area surrounded by water should know how to swim.

Danny scrunched up his face. “Don’t like swimming.”

That was an understatement. Today had been lesson number two and Danny had yet to agree to get into the water. Afterward the instructor had advised Tara to suspend the lessons until he had a change of heart.

“You can’t know you don’t like it until you try it,” Tara said.

“Know it now,” Danny insisted.

“Oh, yeah?” Tara asked. “What if I refused to learn how to drive because I thought I wouldn’t like it? Then how would we get to the grocery store?”

Danny looked thoughtful. “Walking.”

“Good answer,” she said, laughing. It served her right for asking a question with such an easy answer. “Dan the Man strikes again.”

Danny giggled at the favorite nickname, and she bent down and gave him a hug. He loved hugs. He’d also been laughing more and more in the three weeks since he’d come to live with her mother. It was a welcome change from the sad little boy who’d kept asking where his real mother was.

She waited for Danny to precede her through the automatic door into the store. “Stay close,” she told him.

He moved a step nearer to her.

Tara stopped at a table of navel oranges at the front of the produce section and tore a plastic bag off the roll. “You want me to buy a couple extra for you?”

“Don’t like oranges.”

“I love them.” Tara injected enthusiasm into her voice. She picked out four oranges and dropped the bag into the cart, then pointed to the refrigerated section containing precut bags of vegetables. “How about some baby carrots?”

“No,” he said. “No c-carrots.”

Her mother was in the process of ensuring that Danny ate healthy foods. Like a lot of Down syndrome children, he was on the chubby side. Diet, however, was only one factor. Many children like Danny weren’t active early in life because they had decreased motor skills. Add stunted growth to the mix and weight problems resulted. In Danny’s

case, they were compounded because he loved to eat with a rare passion.

“I’ll give you a hint about what I need next.” Tara turned the cart with difficulty, noticing for the first time she’d chosen one with a bum wheel. “Cluck cluck cluck cluck.”

“Chicken!” Danny said.

“Right you are.” She maneuvered the cart to the top of one of the long aisles and got ready to push it to the refrigerated section in the back of the store.

“Tara!” Mrs. Jorgenson, who’d been her mother’s neighbor for as long as Tara could remember, headed toward them with the help of a cane. Otherwise, she was in admirable shape for a woman of eighty-plus, with a trim figure and dark blond hair without a trace of gray. “How nice to see you. You, too, Danny.”

“Who are you?” Danny asked.

“You know Mrs. Jorgenson, Danny,” Tara said. “She lives in the white house across the street from you.”

“Old lady in white house,” Danny said. Tara winced.

“That’s me,” Mrs. Jorgenson said cheerfully. “I’ll be eighty-seven on my next birthday.”

“I’m ten,” Danny said.

“Lucky you,” Mrs. Jorgenson said. “Where’s your mother, Tara?”

“At the beauty salon,” Tara said. “School’s out for the summer so I have more time to help her with Danny.”

“Such a good heart your mother has,” Mrs. Jorgenson said. “I don’t know what I would have done without her when Artie was in the hospital. She drove me there every day. Now that he’s home, she stops by a few times a week to check on us. Always brings us something home cooked, too.”

Tara hadn’t known that, but it didn’t surprise her—not when frozen dinners filled Mrs. Jorgenson’s buggy.

“Artie doesn’t feel up to cooking these days,” Mrs. Jorgenson said, gesturing to the food she was going to buy. “I was never much good at it.”

Danny started down the nearest aisle, darting back and forth as he checked out the items on the shelves. Tara debated whether to call him back and decided against it. The attention span of a ten-year-old, disabled or not, was only so long.

“Nice talking to you, Mrs. Jorgenson,” Tara said. “But I’ve got to go after Danny.”

“Certainly dear,” the older woman said, shooing Tara away with the motion of her hand.

Tara gave chase, the bad wheel on her buggy causing the entire cart to wobble. “Danny, wait up!”

She needn’t have bothered calling out anything. The child had stopped, transfixed by an item on the shelves. Tara groaned even before he reached out and grabbed a jumbo-sized bag of potato chips.

“Look what I found!” Danny thudded toward her on heavy feet. “Chips!”

He put the bag in her cart, his face creased in a broad smile. Tara did not smile. The salty snack was a terrible choice for a little boy with a weight problem.

She reached inside the cart for the chips and held them out to Danny. “Please put those back, Danny.”

“I like chips!” Danny cried.

“I know you do,” Tara said. “But they’re not good for you.”

“They are good!” he protested, his voice rising.

“Not every food that tastes good is good for you.” Tara gave up trying to get Danny to reshelve the chips. “I’ll buy you a healthy snack.”

She headed for the spot where the chips had been with Danny following close behind.

“Want chips!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

The other people in the aisle, Laura Thompson and her two young daughters, stopped and stared. Tara had taught the older girl, Shelly, in PE last year. She groaned inwardly. Tara was a teacher. She was supposed to be able to handle situations like this.

“Anything I can do to help?” Laura asked.

“Thanks, but no,” Tara said. “Please stop yelling, Danny.” She kept her voice as calm as possible, the way she did when one of the students at school misbehaved. She placed the potato chips back on the shelf. “Let’s go find you something else.”

“No-o-o-o-o!” Danny screamed, his face turning red. “Want chips!”

Although her mother had warned her about Danny’s tantrums, Tara had never seen one. Her calm voice hadn’t worked. Time to try something else.

“Quiet down this instant, Danny!” she said sharply.

“Want chips!” His cry was even more ferocious than the last one. With a defiant look, he snatched the chips from the shelf and took off down the aisle as fast as his short legs would carry him.

“Danny! Come back!” she yelled after him.

He didn’t even slow down. With the bag of chips slapping against his hip, he veered right when he reached the end of the aisle.

Tara got behind the cart and followed him. “Sorry about this,” she called to Laura and her two daughters as she passed by. She tried to speed up, but the rickety cart slowed her.

“Forget this,” she said aloud and abandoned the buggy.

At the end of the aisle she turned in the direction Danny had gone. She stopped in her tracks. The child was nowhere in sight. She couldn’t hear him, either.

Her heartbeat sped up and her throat closed. Hayley Cooper sprang to mind. Was this panic what Hayley’s mother had experienced when she first realized her little girl was gone?

Tara usually felt safe in Wawpaney, which encompassed a few square miles and had a population of about four hundred. Even during the height of summer, the small inland town didn’t get a lot of strangers. Hayley had reportedly been abducted from a small town in Kentucky, proof that bad things can happen anywhere.

Her heart thudded so hard it felt as if it was slamming against her chest. The store had dual exits and one of them was in the general direction Danny had headed. Tara set off again, checking each aisle for any sign of Danny. She spotted people she recognized as she went, but didn’t want to linger, asking them if they’d seen Danny. Her panic grew by the second until there was only one more aisle to go.

She was almost afraid to look for fear she wouldn’t see him. But, yes! There he was. Not alone, though. A man was crouched down so that he and Danny were at eye level.

Not just any man.

Jack DiMarco.

Her fear over losing Danny subsided, and her heart gave a little leap. If he’d been any other man, she would have attributed the reaction to excitement. But no good reason could exist for Jack to still be in Wawpaney. At the thought, adrenaline of another sort surged through her. She glanced back over her shoulder, battling the urge to flee. Retreat wasn’t an option, however, not without Danny.

Gathering her courage, she started forward.

CHAPTER THREE

“HEY, BUDDY, WHERE’RE you going in such a hurry?” Jack crouched so he was eye-to-eye with the boy he’d seen in the parking lot of the grocery store with Tara Greer, the one who’d plowed into him about five seconds ago. The boy

didn’t seem to be suffering any ill effects from the collision. Jack couldn’t say the same for the bag of chips he was clutching to his chest.

“She won’t let me have my chips!” the boy cried.

He was different from most other little boys, Jack realized instantly. From his almond-shaped eyes, somewhat flat nose and round face, Jack guessed he had Down syndrome. Like his first cousin’s son back in Kentucky.

From the corner of his eye, Jack spotted Tara approaching. Was she the boy’s mother? She hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring when he’d confronted her the other day, but plenty of women had children outside marriage. She might even be living with the boy’s father. Something inside him deflated at the thought.

The boy pointed to Tara. “She’s mean!”

It didn’t take much brainpower to figure out what was going on.

“She looks pretty nice to me,” Jack said. An understatement, he thought.

The boy gazed at him warily and held the chips tighter. He wasn’t surrendering them without a fight. Okay. Jack could deal with that.

“You want to see some gross magic?” Jack asked, using two words sure to appeal to any boy.

Just as Jack knew he would, the child nodded.

“I can separate my thumb from the rest of my hand,” Jack announced. “Watch.”

He placed his left hand palm down with the fingers together and stuck out his thumb. With his right hand, he covered his thumb with a fist and pretended he was trying to detach it. At the exact moment he tucked his left thumb into his palm and jerked his right fist forward, he snapped two of his hidden fingers together.

“Ow!” Jack cried.

“Gross!” the boy yelled, the bag of potato chips falling to the floor.

Just as quickly, Jack brought his hands together and pretended to screw his thumb back on. Then he opened both hands to show that all ten of his fingers were intact.

“Again!” the boy cried, all his attention focused on Jack’s hand.

Tara had almost reached them. Jack turned his head to look at her fully. In a sleeveless yellow shirt, sandals and tight-fitting khaki shorts that extended almost to her knees, she looked even better than she had the first time he’d seen her. Her skin had a healthy glow from her tan and her reddish-brown hair swung loose around her shoulders.

“Let’s make sure it’s okay with your mom first,” Jack said.

“I’m his foster sister,” she said shortly. She barely met his eyes, but relief hit him hard at her pronouncement. He checked her ring finger again. Still bare.

Tara stooped in front of the boy. “You shouldn’t have run from me, Danny. And you’re not supposed to talk to strangers.”

So that was how she thought of him. He shouldn’t have been surprised after he’d practically accosted her in the street. In retrospect, that probably hadn’t been the best way to approach her.

“He took off his thumb!” Danny said. “Do it again!”

“Is it okay with you?” Jack asked.

She didn’t answer immediately. Even unsmiling, she was pretty. About the only thing he didn’t like about her was the unfriendly gleam in her eyes. There had been nothing frosty about her when she was in the parking lot with her foster brother. She’d been laughing as she leaned over and gave him a warm hug, affection pouring off her. That women, he thought, was the real Tara.