The Truth About Tara (18 page)

Tara put the key in the ignition and started her car, her destination clear. She would have headed over to her mother’s tonight even if Jack hadn’t sent the text, if only to distract him from noticing there were no photos of herself as a young child in the house.

Jack had given her no reason to believe he suspected she was anyone other than Tara Greer, which was probably who she was. Even now she’d put her chances at better than even that Carrie hadn’t abducted her. But what if she had? And what if the woman in Tara’s nightmares was real?

She took a deep breath. She couldn’t avoid Jack, not when she saw him every day. Two days of camp remained, including Friday’s field trip to Chincoteague Island that they were both chaperoning.

It went without saying that she needed to maintain a working relationship with Jack. The wild card was whether she could continue to be as close to him as she craved to be.

Before she pulled out of the parking space, she opened a message prompt on her cell phone and typed,
On my way.

Although she had no clue what she’d do or say when she got there.

* * *

Y
ELLOW
LIGHTS
FLASHED
low to the ground in Carrie Greer’s backyard, giving away the ever-changing location of the fireflies that had emerged at dusk.

“I got one!” Susie Miller yelled. She ran up to Jack, her hands cradled in front of her.

Very slowly, almost reverently, Susie opened her hands. The firefly she’d captured flashed its light, then flew away into the darkening night.

Susie let out a cry of delight. “I knew I could catch one!”

She’d been attempting it for at least fifteen minutes, ever since she’d spotted the blinking lights in the backyard and asked Jack if they could go outside to try their luck. Danny had been sitting on the bottom step of the back porch with his arms folded across his chest for about as long.

“Hey, buddy,” Jack called to him. “You ready to give it a try?”

“No!” Danny provided the same answer he had the past three times Jack had asked. It was the identical response he’d repeated when Jack offered him the Wii remote so he could play a game of video bowling with Susie.

“You really like that word no, don’t you, pal?” Jack asked.

Danny thrust his lips out in a pout. “No!”

Jack scratched the back of his neck. Why had he believed he’d be any good at babysitting? And where was Tara? He’d sent her the text nearly forty-five minutes ago, strategically timing the missive for after her spinning class.

“I’m tired,” Susie announced and plopped down in the middle of the yard. Her abrupt change of mood didn’t surprise Jack. He’d noticed at camp that most of the children had quick mood changes, switching from happy to sad and back again in a flash.

“Firefly chasing will do that to you,” Jack said.

“They’re called lightning bugs,” Susie corrected.

“Okay. Lightning bugs.”

Now neither child was smiling. A firefly flew near Jack and he snagged it out of the air, pretty sure neither Susie nor Danny had noticed.

“Hey, who wants to see a magic trick?” he asked.

“Me!” Susie got to her feet and came toward him, her good humor already restored.

“How about you, Danny?” Jack asked.

Danny’s scowl started to waver. “What kind of magic trick?”

“I can pull a lightning bug out of your ear,” he said.

Danny uncrossed his arms and rose from the porch step. “C-cannot.”

“Watch me.” Jack surreptitiously maneuvered the firefly in his hand until he held it firmly but gingerly between his thumb and forefingers, hidden from view.

One of Jack’s uncles had taught him the other magic tricks he knew. He was making this one up on the fly. He decided the trick needed all the help it could get. Perhaps a magic word? He searched his mind for one.

“Shazam!” he called out.

Jack touched Danny behind the ear, then extended his arm in front of him with a showman’s flourish. He opened his fingers. Almost as though the firefly were cooperating with the trick, it flashed its light as it flew away.

“Cool!” Danny yelled, his smile back.

Susie jumped up and down.

“Shazam?” Tara asked. He turned toward the voice. She was standing not six feet behind them wearing jeans, sandals and a pretty yellow top, her hair damp. She must have gone home and taken a shower and changed before coming over.

She’d been more distant at camp this afternoon than he would have liked, but he wasn’t discouraged. She was here, wasn’t she? Jack felt himself grinning. Just looking at her did that to him. “The trick doesn’t work unless you say the magic word.”

Danny ran up to Tara and hugged her. “Jack pulled a lightning bug from my ear!”

“I saw,” Tara said, hugging him back. Although she was as affectionate with the boy as always, Jack noticed lines of strain around her mouth. He vowed to take her mind off whatever was troubling her.

“For my next trick, I will pull a quarter out of Susie’s ear.” Jack needed to talk fast before one of the children suggested he perform the firefly trick again. He couldn’t catch another of the insects without somebody noticing. “I will also make juice appear.”

“How?” Danny asked.

“I’m going to take the juice carton out of the refrigerator,” he said.

“That’s not magic!” Susie exclaimed.

“That’s tricky is what it is,” Tara said with a small chuckle.

Jack grinned at Tara and placed a hand on the shoulder of each child. “Magicians are supposed to be tricky.”

A couple glasses of juice and three magic tricks later, the four of them retreated to the family room. Danny asked if he could turn on the Nickelodeon channel, which was playing a popular cartoon. Within minutes, both children were asleep.

“Cartoon reruns will do that to a kid,” Jack cracked in a hushed voice from next to Tara on the love seat. She held herself stiffly, cementing his suspicion that something was off. After the nights they’d spent together, she should be curled up against him.

“What was with the SOS?” she asked in an equally quiet voice before he could attempt to get to the bottom of what was wrong. She flipped her hair back over her shoulder and he got a whiff of a pleasing floral scent, the same one from when they’d made love. “It didn’t seem like you needed help when I got here.”

“Only because I’d resorted to cheap magic tricks,” he said. “I thought for sure I’d accidentally crush that firefly before I pulled it from behind Danny’s ear.”

“Danny liked the tricks,” she said, looking down at her hands instead of at him. “He likes you.”

“Didn’t seem that way before you arrived,” Jack said. “I couldn’t get him to do anything.”

“He acts that way sometimes.” Tara glanced at him, then just as quickly glanced away. “You’ve seen how stubborn Danny can be at camp. It doesn’t matter what you do or say. He just refuses to try.”

“I wish I knew why,” Jack said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I think I’ll mention it to Carrie. She’s bound to have more insight than I do.”

“She’s trying her best,” Tara said, an edge to her voice. “She’s a great mother.”

“I know that.” He narrowed his eyes. Something was definitely different between them than it had been the previous two nights. “Is something bothering you?”

She chewed on her lower lip, then nodded. She turned to him, still not quite meeting his eyes. He tipped up her chin so she had to look at him.

“Before you start,” he said, “I want to state for the record that I thought the last few nights were pretty terrific.”

“They were.” She took a measured breath and exhaled just as slowly. “But is it really wise for us to get involved, Jack? You’re just passing through. Soon you’ll be gone.”

He tucked a strand of still-damp hair behind her ear and ran his fingers over her jawline. She had such smooth, pretty skin. “We’re already involved.”

“We can cut it off right now. Before either one of us gets in too deep.” She sounded hesitant, as though that wasn’t what she really wanted.

Jack could almost hear the sizzle of attraction between them. He felt a corner of his mouth rise. “Why don’t we go with the flow instead?”

“That might not be wise,” she said, but she was nodding. He wondered if she realized she was giving off mixed signals.

“Breaking things off makes even less sense. I see you at camp every day, Tara. What will stop me from falling more deeply for you?”

“Not having sex with me,” she said in a soft whisper.

He shook his head. “That won’t do it.”

“Really?” She seemed doubtful.

“Really.” He moved closer to her on the love seat, took her hand and brought it to his lips. Very slowly he turned it over and kissed her soft palm. He spoke equally quietly, although there was no chance the two sleeping children could hear them. “Don’t get me wrong. I love having sex with you. But I think you’re pretty great out of bed, too.”

A faint red stain traveled from Tara’s neck to her face, charming him. Not many women in his acquaintance blushed.

“And you’re very charming,” Tara wet her lips, bringing his attention to her mouth. But kissing her would be a bad idea with the kids only a few feet away.

“I won’t pressure you, Tara,” he murmured close to her ear. “I’d like to spend the night with you, but that’s entirely up to you.”

While he talked, he ran a hand up the length of her arm and felt her shiver. The air felt charged, the sexual tension between them like a living thing.

“No fair,” she said in a breathy voice. “How can I think clearly when you’re touching me?”

He grinned. “Then why try?”

“Because I have to,” she answered, suddenly serious. “I’ve never been the kind of woman who leaps before she looks. I need to figure out some things on my own. Do you understand?”

He withdrew his hand so that he was no longer touching her and forced himself to smile. “I’m nothing if not understanding.”

But he didn’t understand. Not really.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

V
ERY
EARLY
THE
NEXT
morning, Tara flicked on her porch light and padded out to the darkened curb in front of her house where she’d parked her car. The pavement felt cool under the soles of her bare feet and the neighborhood was quiet except for the hum of cicadas.

Not much went on in Wawpaney before dawn broke. Tara should know. This was the second time this week she’d been awake before the sun. She stood peering down at the trunk of the car, hugging herself despite the moderate temperature. The sky was clear, portending beautiful weather for the next-to-last day of camp. That was later. Right now Tara had to drum up the courage to deal with the murky nature of her past.

“Okay, Tara,” she whispered aloud. “You can do this.”

She uncrossed her arms and unlocked the trunk, lifting out the box she’d taken from her mother’s house a few days before. A couple moments later she set the box on the kitchen table. The light over the table hurt her eyes after the darkness outside.

What was she waiting for?

Since her discovery that she and her mother had moved to the Eastern Shore in the same year Hayley Cooper had been abducted and Tara had withdrawn from Jack, she’d been miserable.

She couldn’t continue this way. She was sleeping in fits and starts, missing having Jack beside her. The nightmare images of the woman shaking her were occurring with increasing regularity. This Thursday morning, as Tara had lain awake in her bed, she’d finally accepted the inevitable.

She needed to figure out once and for all if she was Hayley.

The simplest course of action would be to ask her mother. Tara rejected the idea, as she’d already done a few times previously. She couldn’t do that to Carrie, not without proof. Her mother had endured enough heartache in her life. It could shatter her to know her own daughter suspected her of this unspeakable crime.

If Tara was her daughter.

Tara blew out a shaky breath.

Carrie truly had done her a favor if she’d taken her away from the woman of her nightmares. Except something had nagged at Tara since Jack had relayed more details about the case earlier in the week. If Tara had been born Hayley Cooper to the cruel woman, she had left behind others. A father. At least one sister and perhaps even more siblings. And now nieces and nephews.

The reasons that Tara needed to know who she was were stacking up.

The box of photo albums could provide the answer.

If one of the albums contained a photo of Tara with her father or with Sunny, she’d know for certain that she’d been born a Greer.

If not...

Taking a deep breath, Tara unfolded the worn flaps of the cardboard box and pulled out the top album. The cover was shiny and looked almost new. She flipped it open to page after empty page. Except that didn’t mean the other albums were devoid of photos.

She peered into the box at the rest of the contents. Whereas the top item was an unused photo album, the others weren’t. Her high school yearbooks were arranged side by side with their spines showing.

Relief hit her with the impact of a freight train.

She sank into one of the kitchen chairs, her stomach fluttering until she felt almost giddy with relief. Maybe her mother had been telling the truth about her photo albums being damaged in the move.

Maybe? Tara shook her head. Most likely. As in, most likely her mother hadn’t kidnapped her. Carrie was an advocate for children in need. She was a foster mother, for goodness’ sake. She solved problems for children. She didn’t cause them.

On the heels of that thought came another: the empty photo albums and the box full of old yearbooks didn’t prove a thing.

“This is ridiculous!” Tara shouted.

She rose to her feet and yanked open the drawer in the sideboard beside the kitchen table. Inside was the DNA testing kit that had arrived from eBay yesterday.

The kit suggested getting a tissue sample from the parties in question by swabbing the inside of the cheek. However, there were other ways to establish paternity. Or, in Tara’s case, maternity.

She crossed to her coat closet and took her purse off the large hook where she’d hung it. Rummaging inside the handbag, she pulled out the item she’d impulsively removed from her mother’s bathroom last night. It was a brush complete with dozens of strands of long blond hair. In the back of her mind, Tara must have known it would come to this.

Tara sat back down at the kitchen table and dug into the DNA testing kit until she found the sheet of paper with the detailed directions. She learned that if she paid significantly extra, she could get the results within a day of when the lab received the kit.

The extra cost would be worth it, she decided. So would the next-day service she’d spring for when she got to the post office when it opened that morning.

Most likely the results would be exactly what she wanted to hear. Until then, she was going to try her best not to worry about it.

* * *

D
ANNY
BOUNCED
UP
AND
down in his seat on the tour boat on Friday and pointed to something brown near the shore of the nearby island.

“I see a pony!” he cried.

Without much hope, Jack looked toward where Danny was pointing. He’d learned that the wild ponies living on Assateague Island could be viewed only from the water, but they didn’t always cooperate with the tourism industry. The boat captain who ran Assateague Nature Cruises had already taken a few detours through the salt marshes on the outer reaches of the island searching for them, to no avail. The dolphins hadn’t made an appearance, either. So far the highlight of the trip had been a bald eagle too far away to see clearly.

“Oh, my gosh!” Tara said. “You’re right, Danny. That’s a pony.”

Dark sunglasses covered a good portion of her face, causing her flashing teeth to seem very white. Her hair was in a ponytail, the wind whipping tendrils loose that danced around her forehead. She was wearing an orange life jacket like the rest of them. Hers didn’t detract from her tanned and toned arms. He thought she looked beautiful.

She also looked untroubled.

They hadn’t traveled in the same car during the ninety-minute drive from the community center in Cape Charles. When they’d arrived at the floating dock at the waterfront park in Chincoteague, however, he’d noticed the tension that had surrounded her in recent days seemed to have lessened.

A single boat was too small to accommodate all of them, necessitating a split into two groups. Jack had suggested he and Tara help chaperone the five children who had already boarded the first boat, along with Aggie, the assistant director, and Brandy, the teenage volunteer. Tara had agreed without an argument.

He was starting to be optimistic she’d given up on the ridiculous notion that they should end things.

“Let’s take a look,” the boat captain yelled above the sound of the motor. He rotated the wheel and cut his speed, maneuvering the boat into a salt marsh. From their perches on white poles that marked publicly leased oyster grounds, a dozen or so double-crested cormorants soared away until they were black specks against the blue, cloudless sky.

“Is it Misty?” Susie Miller asked. Somehow she’d ended up in their boat instead of with her father and Carrie.

“Good question, but it’s
Misty of Chincoteague,
” Brandy said, naming the book that had helped make the ponies famous. “Not Misty of
Assateague.
”

“It’s not Misty,” the captain said above the hum of the outboard motor. “They’re sometimes called the Chincoteague ponies, but they all live on Assateague.”

He’d already told them that about 150 wild ponies lived on the barrier island, a 14,000-acre wildlife refuge free of human residents that bordered the Atlantic Ocean on one side and a string of bays on the other.

“I see two ponies!” Susie yelled.

Their view of the second pony had been blocked by the stout, wide body of the first one. The second pony had a similar short-legged build but showier coloring, with black markings on its white coat.

The captain cut the engine and let the boat drift not fifteen yards from where the ponies grazed on salt marsh grasses. The animals didn’t seem to notice or care that they had an audience.

“I told you I saw a pony!” Danny said, his chest swelling with pride.

Jack patted him on the back. “Good eye, buddy. Without you, we might not have seen any.”

“Look!” Danny got to his knees on the padded bench seat that lined one side of the boat, shielding his eyes from the sun despite his sunglasses. “Another one.”

A tan pony with a white mane emerged from the brush and joined the first two. Jack caught Tara’s eye and grinned at her, enjoying this unbridled side of her foster brother.

“Can I stand up to get a picture?” Tara asked.

“As long as you’re careful,” the captain said.

She pulled a digital camera out of her bag and rose, almost immediately stumbling over a backpack. Jack shot out of his seat and righted her before she could lose her balance.

“I’ve got you,” he said, keeping his hands on her shoulders and her body in front of him. He immediately thought about how much he missed being this close to her. He’d never been a patient man, but wasn’t sure how to convince her they should be together. She snapped a few photos, including one with the five children in the foreground.

“It’s wild to see ponies living on the coastline,” Jack said, hiding his disappointment when Tara broke away from him and sat back down. “How did they get here?”

“Nobody’s real sure,” the boat captain said. “We like to think they swam ashore in the 1700s from a shipwrecked Spanish galleon.”

“What’s a galleon?” Danny asked.

Jack hadn’t realized Danny was paying attention to their conversation, as intent as he was on the ponies. He sat down beside the boy and ruffled his hair. “Just a boat, buddy.”

“Can the ponies swim?” Danny asked.

“Absolutely,” the captain said. “Every July we round ’em up and drive ’em across the channel. We’ve got vets on hand to give them their annual checkups. After that, the town holds an auction.”

“What’s an auction?” Susie asked.

“It means people can buy some of the ponies,” Aggie explained. The camp’s second in command had been much quieter than usual, confessing earlier that the boat ride was making her feel queasy.

“Can we buy a pony?” Danny asked Tara.

Tara laughed. “A pony wouldn’t be too happy in my mother’s backyard. There’s not enough room.”

“Then can we watch them swim?”

Jack started to tell Danny he’d bring him back to Assateague for the event in July, then stopped himself. If things went according to Jack’s plans, he would be picked up by a minor league team by then. The prospect usually cheered him. Not today, though. Today he realized success in his career would take him away from Tara and her family.

Once the children had their fill of looking at the ponies, the captain headed back through the salt marshes to the open water of the bay. They passed under the Chincoteague bridge and in no time were once again at the floating dock.

Jack disembarked first, helping the children step off the boat onto the dock and making sure Aggie was okay until she got her land legs back. Tara was last. He extended a hand to her, reluctant to let go of her when she was safely on shore.

“Jack’s your boyfriend now,” Danny said, grinning at them. “Boyfriends and girlfriends hold hands.”

“He’s got you there, Tara,” Jack said, holding tight. “That’s the truth.”

Tara made a face at him and slipped her hand from his, but she was laughing. Yes, things were definitely looking up.

“Looks like the other boat isn’t back yet,” Jack said.

“Let’s hope things went smoothly, for my mother’s sake,” Tara said. “Considering how she feels about the water, I’m shocked she agreed to get on the boat.”

“Your mother’s stronger than you give her credit for,” Jack said, a thought he’d had more than once. “Maybe she’s finally ready to let go of the past.”

“I hope so,” Tara said.

Aggie nodded toward the swings and monkey bars on the other end of the park. Her color was already coming back. “Let’s wait for the rest of our group at the playground. How does that sound, kids?”

“I want to go to the playground!” Susie yelled. “Let’s race!”

Four of the children took off, some with stumbling gaits, all of them laughing.

“Wait up,” Brandy called, dashing after them and looking more like a kid than a counselor. Aggie followed at a slower pace. Danny walked a few steps, then sat down, right in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Oh, no,” Tara said as an aside to Jack. “Not again. He seemed like he was doing so much better today.”

“I’ve been thinking about Danny’s situation,” Jack said so only Tara could hear. “You know, with his mom giving him up but keeping his brother.”

Tara nodded. “It had to affect him, but I can’t begin to figure out what’s going on in his head. My mother can’t, either. She’s making him an appointment with a psychologist.”

Except Danny must be leaving them clues. Jack thought back to Wednesday night, when Danny had refused to bowl on the wii or try to catch the fireflies. Was there a pattern to the things he refused to do? The boy usually cooperated at camp, discounting the times he wouldn’t take part in the physical activities.

Eureka!
Jack thought.

“That’s great about the psychologist, but right now would you let me handle Danny, Tara?” he asked, his eyes on Danny’s sad slouch.

“Sure,” she said, touching him briefly on the arm. “Give it your best shot. I’ll be at the playground.”

Jack waited until Tara was gone before he sauntered up to Danny and stopped. “Hey, buddy. What are you doing down there?”

Danny thrust out his lower lip and crossed his arms over his chest.
If you can’t beat ’em,
Jack figured. He plopped down on the sidewalk next to the boy.

Danny’s chin came up. “You’re not ’sposed to sit on the sidewalk.”

“You’re doing it,” Jack pointed out.