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The Truth About Tara
Darlene Gardner
Tara Greer's world is fine the way it is–even if some details of her childhood simply don't add up. Life on the beautiful Virginia coast with her mother and young foster brother are all she needs.What she doesn't need is gorgeous stranger Jack DiMarco's suspicion that she was stolen as a child. Because if he's right, the truth would devastate her family.Steering clear of Jack is the easy answer, right? Wrong! The sexy, compassionate on-the-mend baseball player is everywhere she turns…exactly where her heart wants him. But their future seems unlikely when being with Jack means facing a reality that could cost Tara everything.


Brought together by a secret
Tara Greer’s world is fine the way it is—even if some details of her childhood simply don’t add up. Life on the beautiful Virginia coast with her mother and young foster brother are all she needs. What she doesn’t need is gorgeous stranger Jack DiMarco’s suspicion that she was stolen as a child. Because if he’s right, the truth would devastate her family.
Steering clear of Jack is the easy answer, right? Wrong! The sexy, compassionate on-the-mend baseball player is everywhere she turns...exactly where her heart wants him. But their future seems unlikely when being with Jack means facing a reality that could cost Tara everything.
“According to Mr. Snyder’s buddy, I’m your old man.”
Tara scoffed at Jack’s words. “You’re not my man at all.” She caught the gleam in his eyes and frowned at him. “You’re teasing me.”
“Guilty,” he said. “But I am at your disposal for the next few weeks. You can do what you want with me.”
“I’m not going to ask you to have sex with me, if that’s what you mean.”
“It wasn’t,” he said, his grin spreading. “I was talking about helping you refinish that piece of furniture.”
“Sorry.”
“No apology necessary.” He brushed a strand of hair from her face. “I’m flattered that you look at me and think about sex.”
She wondered how this conversation had spiraled out of control so quickly. So what if Jack was handsome and charming and likable? She should have acknowledged the growing attraction between them and taken better steps to prevent it. “You weren’t listening. I said no sex.”
“It’s okay with me if we start out slow.”
Dear Reader,
Websites of missing persons are filled with images of people who have disappeared, never to be seen again by their loved ones. Way too many of these missing persons are children.
The Truth About Tara grew out of a what-if. As in, what if a woman looked eerily like an age progression photo of a missing child, but didn’t want to know if she’d been abducted? What if she was desperate not to be the face on the milk carton?
Out of those questions, the character of Tara Greer was born. Milk cartons don’t typically depict the photos of the missing anymore, so Jack DiMarco comes to the Eastern Shore of Virginia to check out a tip for his private investigator sister.
I took a research trip to the Eastern Shore to check out the setting for this book. It’s lovely and serene, a peninusla of land surrounded by salt marshes, the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. It makes perfect sense that Tara would love her life there. I hope you enjoy “visiting” the Eastern Shore as much as I did.
So is Tara a missing person? You’ll have to read the book to find out!
Until next time,
Darlene Gardner
P.S. Visit me on the web at www.darlenegardner.com (http://www.darlenegardner.com).

The Truth About Tara
Darlene Gardner


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
While working as a newspaper sportswriter, Darlene Gardner realized she’d rather make up quotes than rely on an athlete to say something interesting. So she quit her job and concentrated on a fiction career that landed her at Harlequin/Silhouette Books, where she wrote for the Temptation, Duets and Intimate Moments lines before finding a home at Superromance. Please visit Darlene on the web at www.darlenegardner.com (http://www.darlenegardner.com).
To my nieces Marlee and Reva
for helping me with the scenes where the
Down Syndrome children appear.
They’re both longtime volunteers at a camp
for children with mental disabilities.
And to the families of the missing.
May the lost be found.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE (#ub62a5e35-1cb5-5f31-99a9-9d69fa79da31)
CHAPTER TWO (#u7a3cfb8f-2a52-59ec-8185-b37341f5ff7c)
CHAPTER THREE (#u6637bce5-0c22-59a1-b3fe-9a9f9bde9a48)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u3c63d9ed-284a-527e-912f-b7941377dfd5)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
EXCERPT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
THAT WHITE PICKUP WAS as conspicuous as the evening sunset over the Chesapeake Bay.
It took its time in coming, too. For the past block, since Tara Greer had crossed the empty street to walk along the sidewalk, the pickup had rolled along at a speed roughly equivalent to her pace.
In ten or fifteen more minutes, children who walked to school from the bordering neighborhood would start appearing. So would the school buses that transported students from the rural areas of the Eastern Shore that fed into the elementary school.
For now, however, Tara was virtually alone.
Tara glanced back over her shoulder, hearing the slow thud of her heartbeat over the rumble of the truck engine. She couldn’t tell much about the driver except that he was male and had thick dark hair. The pickup didn’t have a front license plate, so it wasn’t registered in Virginia.
Even though it was early June, when tourists seeking peace and quiet were starting to show up in the area, something about the pickup seemed off. The Eastern Shore was geographically removed from the rest of Virginia, sandwiched by the Chesapeake and the Atlantic Ocean, seventy miles north to south but only fifteen miles at its widest point. Wawpaney was about three or four miles inland from the bay, a community of a few hundred without even a bed-and-breakfast. Strangers stuck out.
The school was in sight. Tara walked faster down the uneven sidewalk shaded by leafy oak trees and tall pines. It was barely past eight in the morning, but there would be people, safety if the guy tried anything.
The truck drew even with her, slowing down for the space of a few heartbeats before continuing past her. Tara chided herself for being silly. This was Wawpaney, not the mean streets of a big city. The town’s Native American name meant daybreak, the most peaceful time of day. Nothing bad happened here.
No sooner did she have the thought than the driver swung the pickup over to the curb and shut off the ignition. The sigh of relief caught in Tara’s throat.
The man who hopped out of the truck was tall, lean and probably in his early thirties. He looked normal enough, but so did lots of prison inmates.
Through an opening between the trees, the man was momentarily bathed in sunlight that magnified his appearance. He had a square jaw and a nose that was on the long side, a combination that lent him an air of gravity. Or maybe he looked serious because he wasn’t smiling.
If he smiled, he’d be handsome. But if he smiled, she’d be even more freaked out.
She veered off the sidewalk, intending to run to the other side of the street. She gave silent thanks that as a physical education teacher she wore tennis shoes to school.
“Wait! Please!” The man’s voice was low pitched and pleasing to the ear. “I just need to ask you something.”
Tara froze on the dew-damp grass of the swell between the sidewalk and the street, considering once again that she might have overreacted. She drew in a deep breath of bay-scented air, reminding herself it wasn’t like her to be skittish.
The man was walking toward her, getting closer with every step. He wore jeans and a light-colored shirt with the sleeves rolled up, projecting a casual coolness instead of sinister purpose. Probably a tourist who’d lost his way. He got to within a body’s length of her.
“Do you need directions somewhere?” she asked.
“No,” he replied.
She retreated a step closer to the curb, then stopped and squared her shoulders. She wasn’t sure how, but now that she could see the man up close she knew he meant her no harm. Stepping onto the sidewalk, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Then you were following me.”
“It’s not what you think,” he said hurriedly. “I was driving over to the school, hoping to talk to you. And then suddenly, there you were.”
She should have been alarmed, but his eyes, a velvety-brown shade, seemed kind. His voice was so low it was almost soothing.
“Why would you want to talk to me?” she asked. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
If she had, she’d remember.
“My name’s Jack DiMarco. I’m visiting from Kentucky.” His accent was soft, evident only in the slight rounding of his vowels. He rubbed a hand over his mouth and shook his head. “I’m not sure how to say this.”
“How to say what?”
He opened his mouth, closed it then withdrew a piece of paper from the back pocket of his jeans and unfolded it.
“Maybe this will help you understand,” he said, holding the paper out to her.
Tara had a premonition that she didn’t want to see whatever was on the paper. She didn’t know what had gotten into her this morning. She wasn’t normally so anxious. Careful not to touch him, Tara took the paper. On it was the photo image of a young woman with golden-brown hair, a high forehead, wide-set eyes and an oval face with a rounded chin.
Tara’s free hand flew to her mouth. “This looks like me.”
“I think so, too,” the man—Jack—said. “Except for the hair. Yours is more reddish-brown.”
It made no sense. Why would this stranger have a drawing of her? She waved the paper at him. “Where did you get this?”
“It’s a computer-generated photo done by a forensic artist,” he said. “My sister pushed for an updated version of it. She’s a private investigator.”
Tara caught only the first part of his answer because she was reexamining the photo. Underneath it in large block type was the name Hayley Cooper. The smaller print below the name blurred as she belatedly recalled his last two words. Her chin came up. “You’re a private investigator?”
“I’m not,” he said. “My sister is. Since I was coming to the Eastern Shore, anyway, she asked me to check out a lead on one of her cases to see if it was worth pursuing.”
“What case?”
“A missing-person case.”
Tara’s shoulders relaxed. She breathed in air that carried the familiar smell of salt water and late-spring blooms. Without reading the rest of the print, she extended the sheet of paper back to him. “There’s been a mistake. I’m not Hayley Cooper and I’m not missing.”
“You don’t understand.” He nodded down at the piece of paper. “That’s an age progression. It’s an approximation of what the missing person would look like today.”
Tara’s stomach tightened as the tension returned. She remembered a magazine article a few years back about Jaycee Dugard, a missing child who’d been found after being held against her will for eighteen years. The magazine had run Jaycee’s current photo and her age-progression one side by side. They’d looked remarkably alike.
“What does this have to do with me?” Tara asked.
“Maybe nothing.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Here’s the deal. My sister is investigating the case of a three-year-old who was abducted twenty-eight years ago from a shopping mall in a little town outside Louisville.”
“And?” Tara prompted.
His mouth twisted. “Is there any chance you could be her?”
It felt as if all the blood rushed from Tara’s head. She fought not to sway. The stranger was watching her carefully, as though she were a specimen under a microscope.
“That’s crazy,” Tara said.
“You’re about the right age,” he said. “Hayley would be thirty-one in a few weeks.”
“I’m thirty-two.” Tara needed time to gather her composure while she assessed how to handle the situation. The next few moments could be crucial. “What led you to me?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” he said. “That photo I showed you, my sister made sure it was posted on all the missing-persons websites. She’s gotten dozens of tips, too many to physically track down every one herself.”
Tara wanted to find out more about the websites, but it was more important to convince the stranger he was wrong about her.
“I’ve lived in Wawpaney my whole life,” Tara said. “I’ve never even been to the Midwest.”
He tilted his head. “Are you sure? Most people don’t have memories from their first few years.”
Tara had only one, although it had never made any sense. She’d gotten good at banishing the memory, if that were truly what it was. It had been years since she’d awakened abruptly from a deep sleep with her body shaking and tears dampening her cheeks.
“I’m sure I wasn’t abducted.” She managed to laugh. “The neighbors would have been awfully suspicious if a three-year-old suddenly joined the family.”
Before he could respond, she added, “Besides, I’ve seen baby photos of myself. You have, too, right?”
A corner of his mouth kicked up. He seemed to relax. “I’m from a family of six,” he said. “My mom takes so many photos she should have bought stock in Kodak.”
“My mother, too.” Tara was relieved the hand that still held out the paper to him wasn’t shaking. This time he took it.
“Sorry to have bothered you,” he said. “My sister warned me the lead probably wouldn’t pan out. Most of them go nowhere. But you’ve gotta admit, that photo looks an awful lot like you.”
“I’m sure age progression isn’t an exact science.” Tara needed to get away from him as soon as she possibly could. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get to school. Class is starting soon.”
“Of course.” He seemed about to say more, but she didn’t give him a chance, passing by him and continuing on the cracked, narrow sidewalk to Wawpaney Elementary.
She was fortunate that Jack DiMarco wasn’t the private investigator in his family. Otherwise, it might not have been so easy to convince him she wasn’t the grown-up version of Hayley Cooper. She forced herself to act normally and walk at a measured clip, resisting the urge to glance back to see if he was still studying her.
She couldn’t afford to do anything that would make him suspect that most of what she’d just told him were lies.
* * *
MOST DINERS THAT LOOKED like old railroad cars were actually cleverly designed fakes. Or so Jack had heard. The place with the silver exterior where he stopped for breakfast just outside Wawpaney, though, had to be an exception.
The inside was long and narrow, with a counter lined with stools running the length of one side of the diner. Opposite the counter were booths with windows that overlooked the parking lot. It seemed as though the floor rumbled when Jack stepped inside, as though the railroad car still had some miles left in it. That could have been his runaway imagination, though.
He took a seat at the end of the counter and looked over a plastic menu with fingerprint smudges—it ran the gamut from breakfast to dinner. Home-cooked entrées, tried-and-true favorites and dishes with fresh ingredients populated the menu. The scent of bacon and eggs filled the air.
The place was nearly full, although it probably held no more than thirty or thirty-five customers. Conversational voices blended together to create a continuous hum.
Jack looked up from the menu, surprised that a waitress was standing across the counter from him, waiting. Her curly black hair framed a round, friendly face. She was so short they were almost at eye level, although he was sitting down.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t notice you there.”
“You must be a tourist.” She balanced one hand on her hip. “The locals all know the menu by heart.”
“The food must be good here,” he said.
“The best, especially the fresh seafood and homemade desserts. The lemon meringue pie is to die for,” she said. “But our breakfasts are nothing to sneeze at, either. Where you from?”
“Kentucky,” he said.
“You don’t sound it.”
“Lexington, not Appalachia,” he said. “It’s pretty urban, with lots of transplants.”
“What brings you here?”
“Road trip,” he said.
“Business or pleasure?”
His waitress asked so many questions, she reminded him of his two sisters, who never hesitated to poke around in his business.
“Both,” he said, hastening to ask a question of his own before she could fire off another one. “Tell me, do you know anything about Tangier Island?”
“Sure,” she said. “Never been myself, but I hear it’s real tranquil, though maybe not so much as it used to be on account of tourism. No cars—just bikes and golf carts.”
Tangier sounded like the kind of place people with high-stress jobs and expendable cash vacationed. No wonder Robert Reese had chosen it.
“Any idea how to get there?” Jack asked.
“Easiest way is the ferry in Onancock, which is up the coast a ways along the Chesapeake,” she explained. “Or you could always charter a boat. It’s not a long trip. Tangier’s only ten or so miles off the coast.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate the information.”
“Have you decided on breakfast?” she asked.
“What do you suggest?”
“You can’t go wrong with the creamed chipped beef or the sausage gravy biscuit. They come with either grits or home fries.”
What the hell, Jack thought. When on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, eat as the natives do. “I’ll have the creamed beef with grits. And coffee.”
“Black?”
“Two creams, two sugars.”
She flashed him a grin. “Interesting.”
“Why is that interesting?” he asked.
She leaned over the counter. “It means you have a sweet side.”
He thought of the glare he’d adopted as the top relief pitcher for the Owensboro Mud Dogs, a minor league baseball team in his home state that for many was the last stop before reaching the big time. Jack had gotten called up to the majors late in the season twice over the course of his career, both for brief stints. His goal was to make the third time stick.
“Not everyone would agree with that,” Jack said.
“Then they’re not looking hard enough.” She raised her dark brows and left the counter to take another order.
His phone rang for the second time that morning. He checked the display. Not Annalise this time. His other sister, Maria, the private investigator. Jack had grown up with his older two sisters and younger brother in a rambling house on the outskirts of Lexington with parents who didn’t always give them what they wanted but provided them with everything they needed. The perfect family, other people called them.
The two stools closest to him were empty, but the rest of the diner was filling up fast, providing him an excuse not to answer. If he didn’t, however, one of his sisters would keep calling until they got him. They might even enlist the help of his mother. He clicked through to the call. “Hey, Maria.”
“Jack! I’m so glad I caught you. Are you okay?”
Almost thirty-two years old and they still checked up on him, proving his family wasn’t perfect. Privacy was pretty much impossible. Considering what had happened to their younger brother, though, it was understandable.
“Hold on a minute,” he told her. To the waitress who was bringing his coffee over to the counter, he said, “I’ll be back in a few.”
“Where are you?” Maria asked on the other end of the line. Patience had never been her strong suit.
He exited the restaurant into the bright sun of the morning before answering his sister’s question. “At a diner on the Eastern Shore.”
“You’re there already? You didn’t drive straight through, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I just got a really early start this morning.”
The high-pitched giggle of a little boy carried through the gravel parking lot. The man with him lifted the boy and tossed him in the air a few inches before catching him and swinging him to the ground. A deep, pulsing throb started in Jack’s shoulder, only partially due to yesterday’s eight-hour drive and the too-hard mattress at the hotel just outside Richmond.
“Annalise said you didn’t answer your cell this morning,” she said.
“Some states have laws against using the phone while you’re driving.” Jack didn’t know if Virginia was one of them, but it was as good an excuse as any.
“Just as long as you’re okay.” Maria’s pause lasted a few seconds. “You are okay, right?”
He was getting tired of answering that question. He scuffed his foot in the gravel. “I’m fine. You and Annalise don’t need to keep tabs on me, you know.”
“You can’t blame us for being worried,” she said. “We know what a blow it was when the orthopedist told you that you couldn’t pitch again.”
Those hadn’t been his exact words. After performing a second surgery in a six-year span on Jack’s right shoulder, the doctor had said he doubted Jack would ever be able to throw a fastball in the nineties again.
Maria didn’t wait for Jack to respond. “And then when you announced you were taking off, well, what were we supposed to do?”
Jack took a deep breath and got a whiff of the bacon cooking inside the diner. “Accept that I need some time alone.”
“Of course you do,” Maria said. “You’ve never wanted to be anything but a pro baseball player, but you’re not getting any younger. You need to figure out what to do with the rest of your life.”
Jack had fallen in love with baseball at his first T-ball game when his ball soared to the outfield. Even though he now realized the ball had gone only about sixty feet, he’d felt as powerful as Babe Ruth. Later he’d gotten that same feeling when he took the mound. He’d had his future mapped out since he was a kid. He wasn’t about to change his mind now. He wasn’t going to share the particulars with Maria, either.
“Hey,” he said. “I checked out that lead for you.”
“Already? I thought you just got to Virginia this morning.”
“She wasn’t hard to find in a place as small as Wawpaney,” he said, even though it had been a shock to see a woman matching the age-progression photo walking on the sidewalk toward the school. “But she wasn’t your missing person.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Jack had experienced a moment’s doubt that the woman was being entirely truthful, but it made no sense for her to lie. It was human nature to want to know where you came from. She obviously already knew. Add to that her reddish-colored hair, her age and her comment about baby photos and Jack was convinced.
“It’s not Hayley,” Jack maintained.
He heard what sounded like a sigh. “I didn’t really expect her to be.”
“Any luck with the other leads?”
“Not so far. I’ve checked out more than half of them and they’re all dead ends. But as I told Hayley’s mother from the start, finding her daughter is the longest of long shots.”
Jack leaned against the sun-warmed passenger door of his pickup. Five years ago Maria had left the Fayette County sheriff’s office to become a private investigator and had never looked back. “Then why take the case?”
“She said not a day goes by that she doesn’t think of her missing daughter,” Maria said. “She doesn’t care if the odds of finding Hayley are one in a million, as long as that one chance exists.”
Jack reached into his back pocket, withdrew the paper with the age-progression photo and unfolded it. Unlike an actual photograph, where personality could shine through, the computer-generated likeness seemed flat and lifeless.
What would it be like to know nothing about the person your loved one had become? Or if they were even alive at all?
“Why look for her now?” he asked. “It’s been almost thirty years. The trail must be ice-cold.”
“Lots of reasons. Her husband is making noises about moving to be near their grandchildren, but it’s probably mostly because she just had a scare with breast cancer.”
“Is the father on board with the search?”
“Interesting that you ask. She didn’t tell him she was hiring me. Apparently their marriage barely survived the tragedy the first time.”
Jack felt for the couple, but their plight didn’t concern him now that he’d eliminated the pretty Wawpaney Elementary schoolteacher as a victim. He had pressing problems of his own.
“Wait a minute,” Maria said abruptly. “How did we start talking about the case? I wasn’t through asking about you.”
“Some other time,” he said. “I came outside the diner to talk to you. My food’s probably ready by now.”
“At least you’re eating,” she said.
“Bye, Maria.” He ended the call and was back at the counter at about the same time the waitress arrived with his Southern breakfast. The paper with the age-progression
photo was still in his right hand. He set it on the counter.
“Here you go.” The waitress placed a plate of steaming food in front of him. She started to walk away, then paused, a curious expression on her face. She pointed to the paper. He’d refolded it so that the top half of the woman’s
face was visible. “Is that Tara Greer?”
The waitress didn’t wait for his answer. She picked up the paper, shook it out and stared down at it. “Why, yes, it is. Why do you have a drawing of Tara?”
The anonymous person who’d given Jack’s sister the tip hadn’t provided the name of the woman who looked like Hayley Cooper, only the information that she taught physical education at Wawpaney Elementary. Jack probably should have thought to ask the woman he’d stopped her name. If he didn’t follow up on the waitress’s remark, his sister might disown him.
“Tara’s the teacher who works at Wawpaney Elementary, right?” he asked.
“That’s right,” the waitress said. “She teaches PE.”
At least he’d stopped the right woman, although even he could deduce she was a PE teacher from her shorts and Wawpaney Elementary T-shirt. The athletic clothes called attention to her toned arms and legs and the general glow of health surrounding her. He’d thought she looked fantastic.
Jack nodded at the sketch. “That isn’t Tara.”
The waitress took another look before she put the paper back down. “I’m a little farsighted, but that sure looks like her to me.”
Jack thought of all the other false leads that his sister was chasing down. “Turns out lots of people look like this woman.”
The waitress tilted her head. “Is that the reason you’re on the Eastern Shore? Because you’re searching for the woman in the photo?”
“Not even close.” Jack folded the paper and put it back into his pocket. The waitress regarded him expectantly, waiting for him to expand on his reply.
It wouldn’t hurt to tell her at least part of the truth, Jack thought.
He dredged up his favorite line from the inspirational poem he’d hung in his locker after his first shoulder surgery, the one about sticking to the fight when you’re hardest hit.
“I’m here because I still believe in myself,” he said.
The orthopedist in Owensboro had written him off, but Jack hadn’t lasted almost ten years in the minor leagues by giving up when the going got tough.
Quitting had never been an option before.
It wasn’t now, either.
* * *
LAUGHTER AND EXUBERANT shouts rang out from the field adjacent to Wawpaney Elementary. Sixteen kindergartners, eight to a side, swarmed around the soccer ball. Tara referred to the phenomenon as the clump. No matter how many times she explained spacing to the children, they abandoned the knowledge in favor of running to where the action was.
Tara watched from the sideline, leaving the whistle hanging from the lanyard around her neck. With summer vacation only hours away, she decided in favor of fun and exercise over the fine points of playing soccer. She opted against telling them to tone it down, too. They probably wouldn’t be able to, anyway.
Especially Bryan, who did everything with gusto. He was only five, just a few years older than Hayley Cooper had been when she’d been snatched from the mall, yet he had a stronger personality than most adults.
All of the children were distinct.
Dwayne could run faster than his classmates. Ashley was more interested in the flight of a shorebird than the game. Jorge was half a head shorter than everybody else but made up for it by trying the hardest.
Observing the children made what the stranger had suggested this morning even more preposterous. Surely any one of her students would know if they’d been taken against their will from a shopping mall only two short years before. They’d know if their mother wasn’t really their mother—even if, like Tara, they’d never seen a baby photo of themselves.
“Tara!” Mary Dee Larson, the kindergarten teacher who was Tara’s best friend on the staff, approached from the direction of the sprawling brick school. She wasn’t any taller than five foot two, but her short, quick steps ate up the ground. Tara had avoided her since earlier that morning when Mary Dee alerted her that she expected to get the scoop on the hot guy she’d seen Tara talking to. Mary Dee wouldn’t interrupt Tara’s PE class to talk men, though. She wouldn’t be walking so fast, either.
“Your mom’s waiting for you in the school office.” Mary Dee was slightly out of breath, concern pinching her sharp features. “She says it’s an emergency.”
Tara’s heart sped up. Her mother called and left urgent messages at least once or twice a week. However, she rarely stopped by the school. “Did she say what kind of emergency?”
Mary Dee shook her head, rustling her silky black hair. “I didn’t ask. I just volunteered to come get you and keep an eye on your class.”
“Thanks.” Tara took off at a jog, her head emptying of the questions about her childhood she’d intended to ask her mother. They seemed unimportant now.
She burst through the double doors and hurried along the wide empty hall, the soles of her tennis shoes squeaking on the tile floor. A colorful Enjoy Your Summer! banner hung on the wall outside the office. Beside it stood Tara’s mother.
She was dressed in the same flowing print dress she’d worn that morning to her job at the bakery. With flyaway long blond hair she couldn’t manage to tame, her mom never looked quite pulled together. She seemed even less so now, with her lipstick worn off and her hands fluttering.
“Tara, honey!” Her mother rushed forward to meet Tara, the skirt of her dress flowing behind her. Though she’d spoken only two words, her North Carolina drawl came through loud and clear. In her wedged sandals, she was still a good four inches shorter than Tara. “I know you’re busy, but I just had to come on over here and see you.”
Her mom seemed physically fine, eliminating one of Tara’s worries. On the heels of it came another.
“Did something happen to Danny?” Tara asked, referring to the ten-year-old who was her mother’s latest foster child. Her mom had hooked up with the program the same year Tara went off to college, which was already a dozen years ago.
“Why ever would you think something like that?” Her mother sounded truly stumped. “Danny’s fine as can be.”
Tara felt her pulse rate slow down. “Then what is it?”
Her mother tapped her index finger against her lips, the way she did when she was thinking about how to phrase something. What would Mom consider an emergency? Tara wondered.
“Wait a minute. Why aren’t you at work?”
“Would you believe Mr. Calvert said no when I asked for time off this summer to be around for Danny?” her mother asked, her tone conversational. “What could I do but quit?”
Tara let out a surprised, involuntary breath. “But you loved that job.”
“I liked it,” her mother corrected. “I never will put work before family. Danny needs me, the same way you did when you were younger.”
While Tara was growing up, her mother had switched jobs as often as some women changed hairstyles. Her mom had once walked away from the reception desk of a dental office because she couldn’t get permission to leave early to attend Tara’s high school volleyball game. Another time she’d quit her job at the grocery store to go on a school field trip to the National Wildlife Refuge.
Tara swallowed a sigh. “I wish you’d talked it over with me first. I already told you I could help out with Danny this summer.”
“Then what I did wasn’t so awful, now was it?” Her mother grabbed Tara’s upper arm and squeezed. Finally, Tara thought. Her mother was ready to reveal the reason she’d come to the school. “It’s about that summer day camp where I want to send Danny.”
“The one in Cape Charles that’s just starting out?”
“That’s the one.” Her mother clapped her hands. “I volunteered to help and got a break on Danny’s tuition!”
Tara would bet anything there was more to the story. If all her mother had to report was good news, she would have waited until Tara arrived home from school.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Tara asked.
Her mom sucked in a breath through her teeth. “I volunteered you, too.”
“You what?”
“Before you say anything else, hear me out.” Her mother talked so fast her words tripped over each other. “You know how hard it is to find a camp for children like Danny. This one’s a gift from God, being that it’s new and fifteen miles away in Cape Charles. There are only ten children signed up, but they still need lots of volunteer counselors. With your background, why, you’re perfect. So I filled out the paperwork for both of us.”
Tara could have predicted the next answer, but asked the question, anyway. “When is this camp?”
“It starts Monday and goes for two weeks. But you don’t have to be there all day, every day.” Her mother worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “Orientation’s at seven o’clock tonight. Now you see why I had to rush on over here and tell you?”
Tara sighed. “You could have told me before today.”
“I know, honey. I should have,” her mom said. “I was so excited for Danny when I heard about the camp that I didn’t think. And you will be able to get time off here and there to do all those other things you do.”
Tara worked at some businesses in the summer on an as-needed basis to help out friends and keep busy, but in order to volunteer at the camp she’d have to cancel the kayaking trip she’d impulsively booked. But then, Tara hadn’t shared her plans with her mother yet.
“Oh, please, Tara.” Her mother laid a hand on Tara’s arm. “Say you’re not mad.”
Tara should have been more irritated than she was. She might have been if the trip had excited her more. But the bottom line was that her mom’s kind heart was in the right place.
“How can I be angry?” Tara asked. “Like you said, you’re only thinking of Danny.”
Her mom’s lips curved upward, relief evident in her smile. She touched Tara’s hand, her blue eyes sparkling. “I am so darn lucky to have a daughter as wonderful as you.”
Tara was the one who was lucky.
After losing her husband and her oldest child when Tara was a baby, her mom had showered all her love and attention on Tara.
Not for a single second of her childhood had Tara doubted she was loved. Mom had been there every step of the way: volunteering to be homeroom mother, sitting in the stands at her athletic events, chairing the all-night grad party committee, chaperoning the prom.
And because a handsome stranger had spun a wild tale, Tara had been prepared to ask her mother for proof that they belonged together.
So what if beneath the hair dye Tara’s natural color was the same golden-brown as Hayley Cooper’s would be? And there could be plenty of explanations for why Tara had never seen baby photos of herself.
As for the flashes Tara sometimes got of a woman shaking her and yelling that she should stop crying, the woman could be anybody. Or nobody. Maybe she was simply the stuff of nightmares.
“I love you, too, Mom,” Tara said.
Her mother beamed and ran a gentle hand over Tara’s cheek the way she’d done so many times before.
You don’t want to believe your mother could have abducted a child, a little voice inside Tara’s head insisted.
True enough.
It was a moot point. As far as Tara was concerned, the absurd matter was closed.
The only person who had ever raised the possibility that Tara hadn’t been born a Greer was a stranger passing through town. When Jack DiMarco left Wawpaney, he’d taken the question with him.
CHAPTER TWO
TANGIER ISLAND WAS A THROWBACK, a tiny slice of land in the Chesapeake Bay with nothing near it but crab shanties on stilts and miles of water. The teacher in Wawpaney who looked so much like the age progression of Hayley Cooper seemed very far away. So did civilization as Jack had come to know it. If not for the tour guides who greeted the ferry from Onancock, Jack imagined Tangier hadn’t changed much in hundreds of years. The guides stood in front of golf carts, which according to the ferry captain was the main method of transportation on the island aside from walking. The boat had been about a third full, which apparently was typical for a weekday before summer kicked in. The other passengers, all of them dragging suitcases, went directly to carts. Jack hung back.
“Ten dollars for a tour of the island,” a short middle-aged woman, wearing a straw hat, called to Jack. She had the same formal English accent as the ferry captain, which supposedly didn’t sound much different than the way Tangier residents had spoken in the 1600s.
“How much to take me to the Marsh Harbor B and B?” Jack asked.
“The same.” The woman smiled at him, revealing a gold front tooth. She swept a hand toward her golf cart.
Why not? Jack thought. He hopped in, resting his large cardboard folder on his lap.
“Do you have any bags?” the woman asked.
Jack tapped the folder. “This is all I need.”
The woman nodded and joined Jack in the cart, pressing her foot down on the accelerator. The canopy over the cart provided welcome relief from the blazing June sun that made the day feel warmer than eighty degrees.
The cart crawled ahead more slowly than the posted fifteen-miles-per-hour speed limit down a quiet, narrow street leading away from the dock. People wandered from shop to shop. None of them seemed to be in a hurry.
“This is Main Street,” the guide said, pride evident in her voice. A few restaurants shared space with a place to rent bikes and a smattering of gift shops, one of which proclaimed Tangier The Soft Crab Capital of the World. There wasn’t a fast-food chain or department store in sight. In the distance, a church steeple pointed to the sky.
“Legend has it that Tangier Island was settled in the middle of the 1680s by the Crockett family. No relation to Davy,” she said in her accented English. “This was after Captain John Smith discovered Tangier in 1608. Not counting the tourists, we have about seven hundred residents, most of them watermen.”
After a few blocks, she veered the golf cart off the main thoroughfare onto an equally narrow street. She chatted about the island’s eclectic mix of styles while they passed Victorian cottages that were next door to double-wide trailers. A few homes had weathered gravestones in their front yards.
Jack breathed in the earthy smell of the marsh. He wasn’t in Tangier as a tourist, but the guide had aroused his curiosity. “How big is the island?”
“Three miles long, one-and-a-half miles wide.” She turned the golf cart down another street that had a partial view of the bay. “We have room for some churches, a few grocery stores, a school, a health center and not much else. Even in the high season, we’re not crowded. Exactly how we like it.”
She pulled up in front of a large yellow clapboard house with turn-of-the-century Victorian architecture and a steeply pitched white roof. A wide porch wrapped around the house.
“Here we are,” she said.
If Jack had known exactly how close the dock was to the B and B, he would have skipped the golf cart and set off on foot. But then, he would have missed the nuggets of information about Tangier.
He pulled out his wallet and withdrew enough money for her fee plus a healthy tip. “Thanks for the ride.”
“I hope you have a wonderful time here on our little piece of paradise,” she said, puttering away with a wave of her hand.
The house had none of the trappings of tourism except the Marsh Harbor B and B sign suspended from one of the porch railings. Jack climbed the three wooden steps leading to the front door, stopping abruptly when he noticed a gently swaying hammock occupied by a man with white hair. Could it be? Jack narrowed his eyes. Yes, it was Robert Reese.
Although they’d never been introduced, Jack recognized the other man from his website photo. Not many guys sported a full head of prematurely white hair before they were forty years old.
Jack strode forward, the soles of his sturdy sport sandals clapping against the wooden slats of the porch. “Dr. Reese?”
The man rested his book against his stomach spine first. It was a mystery Jack recognized as one of the blockbuster hits of the year. He looked up at Jack with a quizzical expression, as though Jack presented a bigger puzzle than the book.
“You are Dr. Robert Reese, aren’t you?” Jack asked.
The other man scrunched up his brow, contorting his regular features. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
Jack stuck out his hand. “Jack DiMarco.”
Reese took it, a wary look in his eyes. “Refresh my memory.”
“The pitcher with the torn labrum,” Jack said. “We spoke a few days ago. You said you were on your way here, that the only people you’d be seeing in the next three weeks were on Tangier.”
Reese swung his legs over the side of the hammock and stood up. His book slid off his lap, falling to the porch floor with a loud thunk. Several inches shorter than Jack, he carried himself with the confident air of a successful man. “I remember now. Don’t tell me you took that as an invitation?”
Jack wasn’t about to admit he realized Reese had been brushing him off. He inhaled the scent of island flowers before answering. “I tried to call ahead to let you know when I was coming, but I couldn’t get through to your cell.”
“There’s no cell phone reception on the island,” Reese said, then stopped. “Wait. You never did tell me how you got my number.”
Where there’s a will, Jack thought, there’s a way. He’d called in a favor from a former teammate who’d become golf buddies with Reese after the doctor operated on his shoulder.
“Does it matter?” Jack asked.
“I suppose not.” Reese bent and picked up his book. “So, tell me. Why exactly are you here?”
“My goal is to play ball again. To achieve it, I need to be operated on by somebody who’s tops in the field.” Jack omitted the fact that the team doctor of the Owensboro Mud Dogs had advised against surgery, leading to the team releasing Jack. “Lots of people say you’re the best.”
“Are you trying to flatter me?” Reese asked.
“That depends.” Jack cocked his head. “Is it working?”
Reese ran a hand through his white hair. “The reason I vacation on Tangier, that anybody vacations here, is to get away from it all. I should tell you to leave me alone.”
“But?” Jack asked, starting to hope.
“But vanity is a weakness of mine,” Reese finished. “You understand I can’t do the surgery on the island?”
“I just want to get it scheduled. The sooner, the better,” Jack said.
Reese walked over to one of two large wicker chairs on the porch and sat down. Jack took the other seat.
“Tell me how the injury happened,” he said.
“About a year ago I collided with a base runner and broke my collarbone.” Jack stated the barest facts when there was so much more to the story.
“I thought you tore your labrum,” Reese said.
“I didn’t know the labrum was torn until the collarbone healed. The MRI I had a month ago confirmed it.” Jack held up his cardboard folder. “I brought my films, present and past.”
“You do understand I need a computer to look at those,” Reese said, making no attempt to take the films. “Wait a minute. What do you mean, past?”
“I’ve had two rotator-cuff surgeries.”
“And you want to go through surgery a third time?” The tail end of Reese’s question rose.
“If it means I can pitch at a competitive level again, hell, yeah.”
“Stand up and show me your range of motion,” Reese said.
Jack raised his arms over his head. The right one touched his ear. The left one came close.
“Not bad after a rotator-cuff injury,” Reese said, “especially considering you have that tear.”
“Tears,” Jack corrected. “There is no one big tear, just a number of smaller ones.”
Reese stroked his chin. “How old are you, Jack?”
“Thirty-one.”
Reese whistled. “Too bad I didn’t know about the other surgeries or I could have saved you a trip. A third surgery won’t get you where you want to be.”
“How can you say that without looking at my films?”
“I don’t need to see them,” Reese said. “The labrum is collagen based. It can’t be strengthened.”
“People have surgeries to repair their labrums all the time,” Jack argued.
“Yes, they do. But if they’re athletes who use an overhead motion, like a pitcher, it’s highly unlikely that surgery will yield the desired result,” Reese said. “My advice is to go with rehab to strengthen your shoulder muscles and increase flexibility.”
“Does rehab ever work?” Jack asked.
“Depends on how aggressive the rehab is,” Reese said. “I know of a swimmer with a mild tear who came back to compete in the Olympics. But he was ten years younger than you.”
“I’m tough,” Jack said. “I’ve already rebounded from two surgeries. I can rehab with the best of them.”
“That may be true, but you’ve got to understand how far-fetched it is to think you’ll improve to the point where you can pitch at a major league level.” Reese’s pronouncement was distressingly close to what the Owensboro team doctor had said. “Let me give you a piece of advice, Jack. Find something else to do with your life.”
Later that afternoon, after an hour-long ferry ride under the unrelenting sun, Jack arrived back at the dock at Onancock. It was larger and more tourist oriented than some of the other small towns and quaint villages that dotted the finger of land that made up the Eastern Shore of Virginia, with a prominent downtown and several hotels and B and Bs. He walked the block into town to find a place to eat. His head hurt from thinking about what the specialist had said.
Find something else to do with your life.
“Like hell,” he said aloud.
He’d been working toward pitching in the major leagues since he was a boy. He’d gotten there three times, twice as a September call-up and once as a roster player. Because of the injuries, however, his big-league stat line was meager: three games, four total innings. He refused to believe the dream was over.
He walked past a gift shop and an insurance office before coming to a storefront that looked more like a house than a business. Real estate listings plastered the front window. He slowed, then stopped. The sign above the door said the Realtor dealt in rentals as well as sales, not only in Onancock, but throughout the Eastern Shore.
Jack thought about the Olympic swimmer who’d returned to his previous form. He’d take bets that the swimmer didn’t have sisters who popped in on him whenever they felt like it and parents who kept telling him that life didn’t end when athletic careers did.
No, the swimmer had probably rehabbed somewhere peaceful and tranquil where he could devote his energy to healing. Somewhere like the Eastern Shore.
Jack pushed through the door of the Realtor’s office. The woman at the reception desk looked up, a smile on her face. “Can I help you?”
“You sure can,” he said. “I need to get away from it all.”
* * *
THE SALTY BREEZE BLEW over the rustic outdoor patio of the restaurant, one of the few establishments near Wawpaney with a water view. This view was of a shimmering bay that eventually led to the Atlantic Ocean. The sight didn’t have its usual soothing effect on Tara. No surprise. Mary Dee Larson was gazing at her as though Tara had just bitten the head off a seagull.
“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.
“Use your manners, Danny,” she said. “You’re supposed to say please.”
“Please take off your thumb,” he cried.
“Everything okay, Tara?” One of her neighbors, a heavyset man in his sixties, called from the end of the aisle.
“Thanks for checking up on us, Mr. Ganz,” Tara called back, geniality radiating from her. “We’re fine now.”
Jack repeated the trick. It had been one of his younger brother’s favorites when they were kids. A wave of sadness hit Jack, as it always did when he thought of Mike. He thrust the melancholy feeling aside, concentrating instead on snapping his fingers to make it sound as though his thumb were breaking off. He winced and grimaced his way through the reattachment sequence until he was supposedly whole again.
Danny clapped his hands.
“Thanks,” Jack said. “How ’bout I introduce myself so we’re not strangers. I know your name is Danny. Mine’s Jack.”
“Will you be my friend, Jack?” Danny asked.
“Sure,” Jack said. “If that’s okay with Tara.”
She didn’t look as if she wanted to give her permission. “That depends on what you’re doing here.”
“Grocery shopping.” He held up his handbasket. Unfortunately, it was empty. Their aisle smelled of the ground coffee on the shelf behind him. He turned, picked one out at random and dropped it into the basket. Maybe not his smoothest move judging from the way her lips thinned.
“Here in Wawpaney?” she asked.
The skepticism that ran through her question was so heavy she could just as well have accused him of following her. It didn’t seem like a good idea to admit he’d decided to come into the store only after seeing her hug Danny in the parking lot.
“Shell Beach doesn’t have a grocery store,” he said, naming the Chesapeake Bay community about six or seven miles away where he was renting a house. “I’m pretty sure Wawpaney’s the closest town.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“C-can you take your thumb off again?” Danny interjected.
“Maybe later, buddy,” Jack said.
“My name’s not buddy,” the boy said. “It’s Danny.”
Jack smiled. “Sorry, Danny. I can’t take off my thumb right now. I need to talk to Tara.”
“How do you know my name?” she asked sharply.
“You told me,” he said. Hadn’t she? Suddenly he wasn’t so sure.
She shook her head. “I didn’t.”
That was right. The waitress at the diner had provided Tara’s name when she’d spotted the age progression of Hayley Cooper.
“I thought you were passing through town,” she said.
“I liked it here, so decided to stay awhile. What better place to hang out than the beach?” When she didn’t agree, he looked down at Danny. “You like the beach, right?”
“I like fish,” he said.
“Me, too,” Jack said. “I was thinking about getting a couple poles so I can fish off one of the piers.”
“Danny means he likes the schools of tiny fish you sometimes see in the tidal pools,” Tara said. “He gets a bucket and rescues them.”
“I’m their hero,” Danny said proudly. “Right, Tara?”
“If those fish don’t love you, they’re crazy,” she said, smiling down at him with all the warmth she wasn’t showing Jack.
“Crazy fish,” Danny echoed. “That’s funny.”
“Maybe you can show me how you rescue them sometime.” Jack nodded to Tara. “You can bring your foster sister with you.”
Again a mask seemed to cover the real Tara. “I don’t think so.”
“But I wanna—” Danny began.
“You’ve got a busy few weeks coming up, Dan the man,” Tara interrupted. “Camp starts Monday.”
Although the excuse seemed legitimate, it also sounded like a brush-off. Jack had expected as much, but he also subscribed to the school of thought that you can’t get what you want if you don’t try for it. He wanted to get to know Tara better and see if he could bring out the softness in her that so intrigued him.
“Jack can come to camp,” Danny announced.
“No, Jack can’t come,” Tara said quickly. “The camp is for kids.”
“You’re c-coming!” Danny said.
“That’s because I’m working there,” she said, her voice even. Jack admired her patience. Although Down syndrome children were known for their sweet and cheerful personalities, from firsthand experience Jack knew it wasn’t always easy to deal with them. “Now let’s say goodbye to Jack so he can get on with his grocery shopping.”
She put heavy emphasis on the last words. Yep. She didn’t trust him. Jack supposed he couldn’t blame her. She didn’t know anything about him except that he claimed to be the brother of a private investigator. Never mind that it was the truth.
“Say goodbye to Jack, Danny,” Tara said.
“But I don’t wanna—”
“Bye, Danny. It was nice taking my thumb off for you,” Jack interrupted, loath to cause any trouble between Tara and her brother. He was gratified when the boy giggled. “Bye, Tara.”
Her eyes flicked to his. “Goodbye.”
She took her brother securely by the hand and led him away, her carriage almost regal. They’d almost reached the end of the aisle when Danny wrenched his hand from hers and ran back to Jack with pounding feet.
“Danny!” Tara called after him.
He ignored his foster sister, not stopping until he reached Jack. His chest heaved up and down.
“Come see me at c-camp,” he said somewhat breathlessly. “You can take off your thumb again.”
Before Jack could reply, Danny turned and headed back for his foster sister at a slower pace. Over his head, Tara’s gaze met Jack’s.
He shrugged, trying to convey his apology, not so much over Danny but about the way they’d met. He wished she didn’t have reason to be so suspicious of him.
She broke eye contact and in moments she and Danny turned the corner and disappeared from sight.
The big bag of potato chips lay forgotten on the floor.
* * *
WAS JACK DIMARCO following her?
The question ate at Tara for the rest of the afternoon and night. She briefly forgot about Jack while helping out at a friend’s pub in Cape Charles on Saturday night, but not until she’d visually scoured the vicinity for any sign of him.
Her paranoia was still on full alert Sunday night on the short drive to Cape Charles where she taught spinning classes. The town, founded along the bay as a planned community to serve the railroad and ferry trades, boasted late-Victorian architecture and a sandy beachfront park. It had become home in recent years to a resort retirement community with waterfront homes and championship golf courses, making it feel like a tourist town, albeit a sleepy one.
Tara expected to see Jack’s pickup rolling along behind her. It was little consolation that she didn’t. If he wanted to find her, he could.
She parked and started up the sidewalk to the fitness club, mentally reviewing the reasons Jack could still be in the Eastern Shore. She supposed it was possible that the beauty of the area had tugged at him, as it had many others. Or maybe he was interested in getting to know Tara better. He certainly acted as though he were attracted to her.
She dismissed the notion, dismayed that it held some appeal. It was far more likely he still thought she might be Hayley Cooper.
“Hey, Tara! Wait up!”
Kiki Sommers, one of the youngest members of her class, rushed to catch up with her. The nineteen-year-old was wearing another of the colorful outfits that were her trademark. This one featured bright pink yoga pants and a sleeveless black-and-white sports top. Kiki’s long blond hair was tied back in a high ponytail that swung as she moved.
“Hey, Kiki.” Tara opened the door to let the other woman precede her into the brick building that had once housed a YMCA. The fitness club that had taken over the space was prospering, but summers were slow despite the regulars who used the weight room and the diehards in Tara’s classes. “Love the outfit.”
“Thanks,” Kiki said. “I knew it was cute, no matter what JoJo said.”
“JoJo?”
“My brother. He moved back home from Virginia Beach a couple weeks ago after he lost his job.” Kiki snapped her fingers and turned to regard Tara as she walked through the door. “Hey, I heard you want to get fixed up with him.”
“Who does Tara want to get fixed up with?” Dustin Jeffries, an employee not much older than Kiki, asked from behind the front desk. The place was so small, nothing anybody said was sacred. A lounge area consisting of a TV and single sofa was on one side of the desk. Across an aisle on the other side was the all-purpose room where Tara taught her exercise class.
“My brother JoJo,” Kiki answered.
“Give me a break,” Tara said. “I didn’t know your brother existed until a few moments ago. Who told you I wanted to date him?”
“Mary Dee,” Kiki said. “She saw JoJo picking me up last week. I thought you did, too.”
Tara was going to let Mary Dee have it when she next saw her. Unfortunately that wouldn’t be today. Mary Dee was missing class to take her husband out to dinner for his birthday.
“No, I didn’t see him.” Something occurred to Tara. “How old is he, anyway?”
“Twenty-three,” Kiki said.
“Too young for me,” Tara said.
“JoJo looks older,” Kiki said. Tara thought it was telling that she didn’t say anything about her brother’s maturity level. So far about the only details she’d provided were that he was unemployed and lived at home.
“Kiki’s right,” Dustin said. “I’ve seen her brother. All that facial hair does make him look older. You should go out with him, Tara.”
She shook her head. “Is everyone around here trying to fix me up?”
“Yeah,” Kiki said. “Pretty much.”
“I can find my own man, thank you very much,” Tara said, a mental image of Jack DiMarco flashing in her brain.
Kiki clapped. “You’ve got a man?”
Tara thrust Jack from her mind. “Maybe,” she said, which was the quickest way to get Kiki to stop suggesting a date with her brother.
“Ooooh,” Kiki said. “Tell me more.”
“Can’t,” Tara said. “Class is starting in a few minutes. I need to stretch.”
She ducked into the all-purpose room, where nine women awaited her, about two-thirds the number that usually showed up. Summer didn’t officially start for another week or so but vacation season had begun.
She changed the CD in the sound system to a mix she’d made the night before of songs with fast tempos. She climbed on the bike at the front of the room and started to pedal.
“Okay, class,” Tara called above the noise of the gears turning. “Who’s ready to work hard?”
“I am!” Kiki, unsurprisingly, was the first to raise her hand.
Forty-five minutes later, Tara was damp with perspiration. She always pedaled with enthusiasm to set a good example for her students. Today, however, she’d put in extra effort, the better to stop thinking about Jack DiMarco and Hayley Cooper—although here at the health club, where she felt so comfortable, she could almost convince herself that Jack’s presence in Wawpaney was innocent. He even seemed like a nice guy. He’d helped her out with that situation with Danny and the potato chips, hadn’t he? And she hadn’t even thanked him.
With the class dismissed, Tara finished off the water in her bottle and bent to remove a towel from her bag. She noticed a flash of bright pink out of the corner of her eye and realized Kiki was approaching.
“Now I understand why you don’t want to go out with my brother,” Kiki said.
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, JoJo’s kind of cute, I guess. But he’s got nothing on your guy.”
“My guy?” Tara asked.
“About six-two with a body to die for and that gorgeous thick brown hair. Early thirties, I’d say. Really hot. But then, I just love a guy with a widow’s peak.”
She’d just described Jack DiMarco.
Tara’s heart slammed against her chest. “Where did you see him?”
“He was watching the class for a little while,” Kiki said. “You had your back to him, so you must not have known he was there.”
Tara wiped off her face with her towel to hide her shock. Her hands were shaking. First the grocery store, now the fitness club. This couldn’t be a coincidence. Jack must not have believed her rationale when she’d denied she was Hayley Cooper.
“You’re a lucky girl,” Kiki announced. “I’d pump you for information about him, but I’ve got to get home. JoJo needs the car.”
KiKi gave a wave and hurried off. Tara packed up her things and rushed out of the room. The health club didn’t get a lot of traffic in the warm-weather months, but the weight room was never empty. A half dozen men worked out on the machines, but Jack wasn’t among them. Neither was his pickup in the parking lot.
Tara left the club and headed toward her car at a jog, thinking about her claim that she’d seen baby photos of herself. She was in front of the pale blue two-story house where she’d grown up before she consciously knew that was where she was headed.
Bright yellow flowers that matched the shutters on the windows spilled out of pots flanking the front door. Not bothering to ring the doorbell, Tara walked in through the unlocked front door, her tennis shoes making soft thudding sounds on the weathered wood floor.
“Mom!” she called. “It’s Tara.”
Her mother appeared from the back of the house almost instantly, a finger resting against her lips. She was dressed in another of her flowing dresses, this one in pale pink. “Shh. I just this minute got Danny to sleep. He is so excited about camp tomorrow he can hardly stand it.”
“Sorry,” Tara said, but her attention was only half on what her mother had said. In the hall, pictures were everywhere. Of her sister and father, their heads close together, their smiles almost identical. Of her parents with her sister at a carnival, at a park and in front of a Christmas tree.
There were a few photos of Tara, too, but none of her as an infant or a toddler. In the images, she was either alone or with her mother. Why had Tara never noticed that there were no photos of her with her father or sister?
“Is everything okay, honey?” Her mother’s question jarred Tara back to the present. She was gazing at Tara with her forehead furrowed. “You’re so darn busy on Sundays, I usually don’t get to see your pretty face.”
“Everything is fine,” Tara said, although suddenly she wasn’t at all sure of that. She thought about coming straight out and asking her mother about Hayley Cooper, but rejected the notion. Tara couldn’t just blurt out something like that. She searched her brain for an excuse to explain why she’d stopped by. “I’m just making sure we were still carpooling tomorrow.”
“Why wouldn’t we be?” her mother asked.
“No reason,” Tara said and fell silent. What did it mean that she’d never seen a photo of herself with her father or sister? Didn’t most parents delight in having their children photographed together?
“Can I make you something to eat?” her mother asked. “Get you something to drink?”
“No, thanks. I need to go home and take a shower.” Tara started backing toward the door, then stopped. If she didn’t at least ask her mother about the photographs now, she might never screw up the courage. “Mom, can I borrow your photo albums from before we moved to Wawpaney?”
Her mother’s hand flew to her throat, a reaction that seemed out of proportion to the request. “Why ever would you want to do that?’
“I guess because I’m curious,” Tara said. Her mother continued to gape at her, compelling Tara to come up with a better explanation. “Mary Dee has her kindergartners bring in baby pictures at the start of every year. She brings in one of herself, too. She’s always asking to see one of mine.”
Her mother’s hand was still at her throat. She was so petite, it wasn’t much bigger than a child’s hand. “The school year just ended.”
“Yeah, but I thought I’d have one ready for September. And besides, I’m curious about when we lived in Charlotte. I don’t remember ever seeing those pictures.” Tara swallowed. “So, can I borrow those albums?”
Her mother’s face seemed to lose color, although Tara thought that perhaps her imagination was running rampant. She held her breath as she waited for a response.
“I’m real sorry, Tara,” her mother finally said. “I don’t have any photo albums from Charlotte.”
Tara frowned. Her heart started to thump. “Are you sure? You’re always taking photos. You even did that scrapbooking class last year.”
“I didn’t get into scrapbooking until we moved here.” Her mother’s voice sounded shaky. “All those pictures I was going to put in albums—I’m afraid they’re gone.”
“Gone?” Tara repeated, a hitch in her voice.
Her mother averted her eyes—or was that Tara’s imagination, too? “A casualty of the move. Such a shame, it was. Some of the boxes had water damage.”
Including, apparently, the very box that could have proved Tara was who she’d always believed herself to be.
“I’m sorry,” her mother said again.
Tara’s throat was so thick she could barely get the words past her lips. “That’s okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She backed out of the house and into the overcast night, automatically placing one foot in front of the other.
I’m sorry, her mother had said.
Tara wondered what exactly she’d apologized for before facing a truth of her own. There was another reason she hadn’t been more persistent when questioning her mother. A stronger reason.
If Carrie Greer had abducted her, she didn’t want to know.
* * *
WHAT WAS HE GOING TO DO for the rest of the day? Jack wondered. It wasn’t a great question to be asking himself, considering it was barely past noon.
The beach where he was renting a cottage wasn’t wide enough or long enough for running, so he’d jogged along the narrow road through the maritime forest that bordered the salt marsh. He’d also performed the series of shoulder exercises the team doctor had prescribed before the Mud Dogs released him, driven into Wawpaney to buy some toiletries at the drugstore and eaten a sandwich he’d slapped together.
The local newspaper he’d bought at the convenience store lay on the butcher-block kitchen table. He picked it up, struck again by how thin it was. It wouldn’t take long to read.
With the newspaper in hand, he headed out to the porch that was just steps from the bay. The low rent on the one-bedroom cottage hadn’t made sense until he saw the collection of modest homes on either side of a mile-long street that made up the community. If the houses hadn’t been parallel to the water, there’d be nothing special about them. As the Realtor in Onancock had claimed, however, the location couldn’t be beaten.
With a narrow expanse of beach just steps from the porch, the warm, salty scent of the Chesapeake Bay in his nostrils and the sound of the lapping waves filling his ears, Jack had to admit she was right. The setting would be even more perfect on a day that wasn’t overcast.
He was about to sit down on one of the plastic Adirondack chairs when he noticed two local girls in bikinis about fifteen yards away staring at him. From their gangly figures and coltish legs, he judged them to be about thirteen or fourteen. Their heads were together and their shoulders shook as though they were giggling. The thinner of the two broke away from the other girl and headed straight for him. She stopped just shy of the porch.
“Hey, mister, can I ask you something?” She was still giggling. The sun glinted off something silver and Jack realized she wore braces.
“Sure.” He figured the girls had some kind of bet going.
“Are you famous?”
Jack supposed it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that one of the girls had recognized him, although the world he lived in seemed very far away.
“Are you a baseball fan?” he asked.
She seemed surprised by the question. “Sort of. But I know you’re not a baseball player.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s baseball season right now,” she said. “You’d be playing. You wouldn’t be here.”
He nodded. Of course she didn’t know him from baseball. He’d made three appearances in the major leagues in nine years, none lasting longer than a few innings. Only the most hard-core fan would recognize his name. Even fewer would know his face.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not famous,” he said. “Who did you think I was, anyway?”
“We weren’t sure,” she said. “But we thought maybe Ryan Reynolds.”
“Ryan who?”
“Green Lantern,” she said.
“What’s that?”
She giggled again. “A movie about a comic-book character. Ryan Reynolds is a movie star.”
“Oh.” Jack didn’t see many movies.
She turned and ran back to her friend, sand kicking up under her feet. Jack sat down, aware his mood had darkened.
He wasn’t sure why. For as long as he could remember he’d dreamed of becoming a pro baseball player, not of being famous. When he’d brushed elbows with his superstar teammates during his brief stints in the majors, fame hadn’t looked attractive.
The most famous of them, a center fielder who’d won a couple of batting titles, had to switch hotels because of the autograph seekers who mobbed him in the lobby. Somebody had told Jack the player was a virtual recluse in the off-season because it was so difficult for him to go out in public.
No, it wasn’t lack of fame that nagged at Jack.
It was the reminder that baseball season was in full swing and he was here at an out-of-the-way beach community on the Eastern Shore instead of on the mound where he belonged.
“What now?” Jack asked himself sarcastically. “You’re going to start feeling sorry for yourself?”
That wasn’t his style. Neither was talking to himself.
He’d already identified the problem. He had too much time on his hands. Too bad he wasn’t one of the sun worshippers who could while away the hours on the beach. Another workout was in his future, but not until at least early evening when his muscles had recovered from his morning exercises. Swimming in the bay was tempting, but he feared his shoulder wasn’t yet up to it. He needed to curb his enthusiasm until he could meet with the fitness consultant the guy at the health club had recommended when he’d stopped by the night before.
Jack turned his attention to the newspaper, not exactly sure why he’d picked it up instead of the thicker regional paper. Reading that would have taken longer.
He skimmed a front-page story about a crabber who’d been harvesting the Chesapeake for almost fifty years, scanned a story about beach erosion and skipped a detailed account of the latest Northampton County Board of Supervisors meeting.
He flipped through the rest of the newspaper, finding little to catch his interest. He was about to refold the paper when two words in bold type jumped out at him: Volunteer Opportunities.
Of course. The answer to his boredom. He could volunteer.
He read through the listings, keeping a mental tally of activities that might suit him. Delivering meals to shut-ins. Picking up trash off the beach. Helping kids learn to read.
All the opportunities seemed possible, but none seemed quite right until he reached the last listing.

No experience necessary! Help needed at Camp Daybreak, a summer program in Cape Charles for children with developmental disabilities. You bring the energy. We’ll provide the guidance.

The listing included the name and phone number of a contact as well as other particulars about the camp. It went from 9:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. daily for the next two weeks and started...today.
This camp was, without a doubt, the one that Tara Greer’s brother, Danny, was attending.
Adrenaline surged through Jack for the first time all day. Not only might volunteering at Camp Daybreak bring him back into contact with Tara, he genuinely enjoyed being around children like Danny. Because of his cousin’s son, he even had some limited experience.
If volunteering awarded him a chance to change Tara’s mind about him, so much the better. He’d seen Tara again last night when he’d stopped by the fitness club. She’d been smiling and laughing, her upbeat personality and a good cheer shining through even as she pedaled faster and faster. He’d been tempted to stick around until her class ended, but was afraid she wouldn’t believe it was a chance encounter.
Jack leaped to his feet and went into the rented cottage to find his cell phone. One voice-mail message later, he disconnected the call and made a snap decision. Camp Daybreak didn’t end for another three and a half hours. Three and a half hours that would be interminable if Jack spent them here alone.
He had the address of the camp. Why not volunteer his services in person?
CHAPTER FOUR
CARRIE GREER FIGURED now was as good a time as any to get this over with. Actually, considering camp had started a few hours before and the children were settling down to lunch, it was past time.
If nothing else, the confrontation would take her mind off the approaching anniversary of the saddest day of her life and Tara’s odd plea to see a baby photo of herself. Carrie always had trouble sleeping in the days leading up to the anniversary. Last night she’d tossed and turned even more than usual, wondering what had prompted Tara’s request and worrying that her daughter hadn’t bought her explanation.
She shoved the problem to the back of her mind. Now wasn’t the time to obsess over things she couldn’t change, not when the director of Camp Daybreak was alone in the community center’s small office.
“I’ll be right back,” she told Tara.
“Sure thing.” Her daughter glanced up from the long table in the all-purpose room where she was helping one of the ten campers unpack his lunch. The other nine were happily munching on the sandwiches, chips, fruit and assorted goodies they’d brought from home in their packed lunches.
“Bye, C-Carrie!” Danny waved, his face wreathed in the biggest smile he’d worn since coming to live with her. Just as Carrie suspected, this camp was exactly what Danny needed.
She forgave herself for tricking Tara into volunteering by telling her Danny’s tuition would be waived. There was a kernel of truth in the claim, since the children of volunteers got the first week free. With both Carrie and Tara helping out at the camp, Carrie had a strong argument for not having to pay for the second week.
If she couldn’t sway the director to her way of thinking, Carrie would have to ask Tara for the money. She was loath to do that. Even at half the cost, camps like these were expensive.
The facilities were top-notch. Camp Daybreak had rented space at a privately owned community center that boasted an oversize air-conditioned room. On rainy days, tables could be pushed aside to create an empty space in the center of the room. Campers also had access to a playground and a community pool. The staff was impressive, too. The director was not only the father of one of the campers but a special education teacher, his assistant was a developmental disability nurse and one of the four volunteer camp counselors was a physiotherapist. Another staff member was a speech therapist.
Carrie walked across the all-purpose room, the heels of her sandals making clicking sounds on the linoleum floor, the skirt of her sleeveless cotton dress swishing about her legs. Gustavo Miller was in the cramped office, his head bent over paperwork, one hand poised over a calculator. He didn’t look up.
Here goes, Carrie thought.
“Hey there, Gustavo,” she said.
His head jerked up, his green eyes fastening on her. The color was quite remarkable, considering his dark hair and swarthy complexion. After a few brief meetings, she’d already noticed he was a man of contradictions. Take his name. Miller was as common as names in the United States came. Gustavo was not.
The intent expression on his face morphed into a smile. “Call me Gus. Most people do.”
“I don’t believe I will,” Carrie said. “Gustavo suits the tall, dark and Latin thing you’ve got going on.”
If he’d been seven or eight years older—in other words, her age—she wouldn’t have worded the compliment quite that way. With men as old as she was and older, she was very careful not to flirt.
He laughed, a nice rumbling sound. “My mother’s from Argentina, but I’m only half Latin. My father grew up near here in Exeter.”
“How interesting. How did your parents meet?” she asked.
“Dad was a month into what was supposed to be a trip around the world when he saw her on a beach in Mar del Plata,” he said. “He stayed in Argentina to romance her and six months later they were married. I spent the first ten years of my life in Buenos Aires.”
“Now I understand why you have an accent.”
“You can hear it, then?” He shook his head, as though he didn’t realize how attractive his slightly different pronunciations were. “I learned to speak Spanish first. I’ve lived in the States so long, though, I keep expecting to lose it. You’ve got an accent, too. Southern?”
“That’s right,” she said. “Nothing exotic. I’m just an American girl from Charlotte.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Gustavo said. “I quite like Southern girls.”
Was he flirting with her? No, that was highly unlikely given their age difference.
She nodded to the empty chair at the table. “Mind if I sit down?”
“Not at all.” He folded his hands on top of the papers while she settled into the chair. “Is there something I can help you with, Carrie?”
She shouldn’t be flattered that he remembered her name. She’d been at orientation last week and they were more than halfway through the first day of camp. She’d never heard Carrie pronounced quite that way, though, with the slight rolling of the r’s.
Strangely reluctant to bring up the reason she’d sought him out, she asked, “Aren’t you going to have lunch?”
“A little later,” he said. “But that’s not what you came to see me about, is it?”
Still not ready to talk money, Carrie smiled at him. It wasn’t difficult. Gustavo had a face that made her want to smile. She got a whiff of something. Not cologne. Something clean and fresh like soap or shampoo. Whatever it was, it made him smell good. “I’m wondering how you got to be director of a camp like this?”
“It’s important to me that Susie have the camp experience,” he said. “There wasn’t a special-needs camp close enough, so I decided to start one. First I had to set up as a nonprofit agency. Then I was lucky enough to get a grant to offset some of the costs. We’re starting small this year with the ten campers, but my plan is to keep growing. We might even make next year’s camp residential.”
“I’m impressed,” she said. “You can’t have lived here very long or we’d have run into each other.”
“About six months,” he said. “I’ve been homeschooling Susie, so haven’t met a lot of people yet. We moved from Baltimore when my grandmother had a heart attack. She was running a bed-and-breakfast. Maybe you know it? The Bay Breeze?”
“That sounds familiar,” Carrie said. “It’s a two-story house on the water, right? Not far from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel?”
“Right,” he said. “My parents moved back to Argentina a few years ago. Dad couldn’t get away, so it made the most sense for me to help Grandma run the place until she got better, even though I had to quit my teaching job in Baltimore. Except she never made it out of the hospital.”
Carrie’s heart twisted and she laid her hand on his. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. She was a great lady.”
“Will you and your wife keep the B and B going?” she asked, realizing she was fishing around for his marital status. His daughter, Susie, was a camper, but thus far he hadn’t mentioned a wife.
“I’m divorced,” he said. “And no. I’ve got a special ed job lined up for the fall. I closed the Bay Breeze to guests after my grandma died. I’m putting it on the market once I find another place for Susie and me to live. The place needs too much—how can I put it?—TLC.”
“If you’re in charge of a camp like this, you must be awfully good at TLC,” she pointed out.
He looked down at the table, where her hand still rested on his, and lifted his green eyes. “Thank you.”
She drew her hand back quickly, breaking the contact. Oh, no. Now she’d gone and done it. When she broached the subject of Danny’s tuition, he could get the wrong idea.
“I wasn’t flirting with you,” she blurted out.
“You weren’t?” He actually looked disappointed. “You’re not married, are you?”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Widowed.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Me, too.” She sensed he was about to ask her questions she’d rather not answer and cast around for something else to say. “Besides, you’re way too young for the likes of me.”
“I doubt that,” he said. “I’m forty-seven.”
She usually wouldn’t reveal her true age unless threatened at gunpoint, but she was trying to make a point. “I’ll have you know I’m fifty-four.”
“You don’t look it.” His accented words seemed to glide over her skin. She should be gracious and thank him. Surely she’d blush if she did, though.
“Believe it,” she said. “You’re the first person I haven’t lied to about my age in years.”
He threw back his head and laughed, revealing even teeth that looked very white against his tanned skin.
“Is Susie your only child?” she asked, partly because she wanted to know, but mostly to change the subject.
“Yes,” he said. “How about you? Do you have other children besides Tara and Danny?”
Carrie didn’t pause before answering. “Another daughter. We call her Sunny because she’s happy all the time.”
“Cute,” Gustavo said.
Carrie didn’t care to examine why she talked about Sunny as though she were alive. She was about to explain that Danny was her foster child when Susie Miller came running into the office, her face split in a wide smile.
“Daddy!” Susie cried. If she hadn’t made sure the entire camp knew she was eleven, Carrie never would have guessed her age. She was short and on the stocky side, with a round, flat face that was always smiling. In her fine, straight brownish-blond hair, she wore a pink bow. “Look what I found!”
Her hands were cradled together. She opened them and a spider with eight spindly legs jumped out on the table. Carrie took an involuntary step backward. It was a daddy longlegs.
“Look how cute it is!” Susie cried.
Gustavo laughed and hoisted his daughter onto his lap. “Only you would call a spider cute. You were careful with him, weren’t you, mi hija dulce?”
Carrie knew enough Spanish to figure out that translated to “my sweet daughter.”
“Yeah. See how fast he moves,” Susie said, her attention on the spider. Her speech was quite good, clearer than Danny’s. Down syndrome children commonly had significant language delays. She must have had a good speech therapist.
“He’s trying to get away.” Gustavo blocked a side of the table so the spider didn’t scramble to the floor.
“Why?” Susie asked. “We won’t hurt him.”
“He doesn’t know that.” Gustavo set his daughter back on the floor and got to his feet. He easily caught the spider in his cupped hands. “Let’s take him outside where he belongs.”
Susie’s face fell. “I didn’t mean to make him sad.”
“Are you kidding me, sweetheart? If not for you, he might never find his way outside.” He slanted a look at Carrie. “You’ll have to excuse me. Fatherhood calls.”
“Go,” Carrie said.
He smiled at Carrie. The bulk of his attention, however, was on his daughter, where it rightly should be. She watched them leave, forming the impression that Gustavo Miller was a very nice man and an even better father.
It wasn’t until he was almost out of sight that she realized she never had gotten around to asking him to waive the second half of Danny’s tuition.
* * *
TARA BLINKED ONCE, then twice. It did no good. Jack

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