Darlene Gardner - The Truth About Tara

“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.