“Why didn’t you tell your brother and sisters?”
“I didn’t want any of them to know, to feel responsible. Or blame themselves. And later, when I managed to make a success of this place, I didn’t want them to use me as an example of how you could succeed without an education. If Tammy had had some schooling, I really believe she’d have made different choices...back in the beginning. She was smart, a good student, going places in spite of her mother and the home she’d grown up in, and then she met my dad. She thought he loved her. Turned out he was just using her. Judging her by her mother. He thought she was a cheap lay. But she got pregnant and had to quit school to have me and...”
He was saying too much.
They passed the middle of the porch where the stairs were. His plan, before he’d started, was to paint all the way across and climb over the railing down to the ground from there, giving the porch a chance to dry before tackling the spindles and railing that ran the perimeter of the porch and down the three cracked cement steps.
And silently, they reached the other side. As though they’d choreographed their motion, Tanner held his roller, and set the paint tray on the rail just as she placed her roller on the tray. She climbed over the rail first, and he followed, after which she grabbed her roller off the tray he now held and finished the last foot of board left between the spindles.
It was plain and simple and boring—and perfect, too, the way they worked together without words. But the worst part was then they were done. Wiping her hands against each other, as though she had dust there to brush off, Sedona pulled her car keys from her pocket.
“If you have any hope of helping her, Tanner, you’re going to have to deal with this. She doesn’t trust you now.”
Without trust there was no truth.
Without truth, there was nothing to be gained.
Things he’d learned in a different kind of school—the school of “life with Tammy.” Things he’d taught his brother and sisters.
Tatum.
Without another word, or even a look, Sedona headed toward her car. She’d drive off—back to her secure, beautiful world. Her beach house and puppy dog. Her career. Her parents who adored each other. And her.
What did a successful lawyer do on a gorgeous spring Saturday afternoon? When she wasn’t accompanying a self-made vintner to wine tastings?
She rounded the hood of the old Thunderbird.
“Wait.”
Keys in hand, Sedona stopped, but took a minute to look back at him.
“Have you ever soaked macaroni in cold water until it softened enough to chew and eaten it for breakfast, lunch and dinner?”
Her expression shadowed as she shook her head.
Macaroni and cheese was a symbol to the Malone children. A sign of having enough. Even now that they could afford filet mignon.
For him it would always be about having the milk and the butter and the heat to make the boxed food just as it was intended.
Sedona came a little closer and he backed up. She needed something from him. He wasn’t sure he could give it to her.
“Tammy thought she was a great mother. And she was. On her good days. On the bad ones, which were more common, she seemed to hate the kids, blaming them for all of the things they’d taken from her.”
Tanner took a second to breathe, and hoped he’d be able to give her enough.
“I didn’t tell anyone I quit school. Tammy never asked. I was six months from graduation and Thomas and Talia thought I graduated early.” Because he’d told them he could. He’d wanted them to believe that he had. “If I’d told them I quit, they’d have felt responsible, or followed suit, and seeing what had happened to my mother, I just couldn’t take that chance.”
He felt naked. Exposed. And was getting no feedback.
“When graduation time came, Talia was pissed that I wasn’t going to get the chance to wear a robe and graduate with circumstance, so she baked this cake to surprise me and we had our own private celebration.”
The cake was supposed to have been a double layer, but, at eleven, she wasn’t all that proficient of a baker yet. She’d frosted the thing the second it came out of the oven and the top half had slid halfway off the bottom and broken.
She’d started to cry and, sitting her on his knee, he’d sat there and eaten every bite, to prove to her how good it was.
And any residual sting from his inability to graduate had slipped away.
He’d had a bigger purpose. His siblings relied upon him.
It suddenly occurred to him to wonder how Tatum had found out he’d never finished high school.
But he didn’t ask.
In the end, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that she no longer trusted him. “Thanks for your help with the painting,” he said when panic started to rear itself and he knew that he’d pushed himself as far as he was going to go. “Let me know what I owe you.”
With the last inane parting remark, he turned his back on the most beautiful woman he’d ever known and left her standing in his dust.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SATURDAY WAS WARM for the last week in April. Sunny. A perfect day to be on the beach. Not in a swimsuit, perhaps, but certainly in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt.
Sedona put off a couple of college friends, both unmarried professionals, who’d invited her to join them in L.A. for the night. They all had season tickets to an off-Broadway production house, but Sedona donated her ticket more often than not. She’d thought maybe this week she’d go. Lord knew she needed some time away.
But she also knew that a play, even talking with her friends, wouldn’t be enough to take her mind off of the Malones’ problems.
After leaving Tanner’s place, she stopped by her office, worked for a couple of hours, had a good conversation with a lawyer who she occasionally hired to do research. The semiretired family lawyer had found case law to support a property settlement battle Sedona was facing with one of her more wealthy clients. The case had to do with a woman inheriting family money separate and apart from the marriage and being allowed to keep it outside of marital assets.
It was good news. And it barely inspired a smile.
She couldn’t keep pretending that she was only Tatum Malone’s attorney—that the brother and sister and their lives and fates meant nothing personal to her.
So she went home and ran on the beach instead. Ellie wasn’t happy when she headed out without her, but sometimes a woman had to take responsibility for the things that ailed her and work off steam before she combusted.
It was while she was spraying sand behind her that she knew what she had to do. Out of breath and sweaty, she stopped right there. Dropped down to the sand, facing the water, reached into the pocket of the sleeveless running shirt she’d pulled on with her Lycra shorts and tennis shoes and pulled out the cell phone that she always carried with her.
When it had just been about Tatum, about the girl’s claim that her brother had just recently started hitting her, when she’d bargained Tanner’s permission for Tatum to stay at The Stand in exchange for getting to know the real Tanner, there’d been no reason to contact Talia Malone.
It wasn’t just about Tatum’s allegations against her brother anymore. It really wasn’t about that at all. It was about a big brother who’d fallen off his pedestal and a young girl in trouble, a girl with no one to trust and nowhere to turn.
As she tried to sort out, in her own mind, what role she played in the brother’s and sister’s lives, she wasn’t coming up with any acceptable answers. Nothing that was black-and-white. Nothing that made logical sense to her.
So she listened to her heart. And, on her phone, she accessed the cloud that stored all of her client information in separate files. Tanner had given her Talia’s number in the very beginning. Told her she could call his si
ster at any time to check up on him or his version of the truth.
He’d issued the permission as a challenge. Almost daring her to call, because not to do so would be paramount to trusting him.
At the time, she’d opted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
She was about half a mile from her place, but still on private property. She didn’t personally know the people who were out on the beach behind her. There was a group of guys playing volleyball, and a little farther down, a couple with two children had spread out a blanket with a cooler and while the man grilled, the woman was building bucket castles in the sand. Turning back around to face the waves that were predictable only in their constant presence, she chose the number she wanted and pushed Call.
The voice that answered was so like Tatum’s she almost hung up. She couldn’t risk liking a third Malone.
Talia had her own problems with her brother. Sedona couldn’t take on any more....
“Talia? This is Sedona Campbell calling. I’m―”
“Sedona. I’m so glad you called,” the woman interrupted, and Sedona knew instantly that the person she was speaking with was much more mature than Tatum. “I’ve promised myself not to stick my nose in things for fear of messing them up further, but I’m worried sick about Tatum, and Tanner, too, if you want to know the truth.”
The truth. That was exactly what she needed.
And so she asked Tanner’s second youngest sibling about the time Tanner had hit her.
“He didn’t hit me,” Talia said. “Not like you make it sound. I’m surprised he told you about it, though. He doesn’t usually talk about the things that bother him most.”
Feeling as though she was at the foot of the grail, possibly about to unearth the lost secrets, she asked, “So what happened?”
“I was telling him about something I’d overheard a teacher say to another teacher about Thomas. I told Tanner that I thought the guy should go eff himself. He slapped my face. Not hard enough to knock me off balance, but it stung. Mostly it shocked the words right out of me.”
“Did you cry?”
“No, I’d passed the crying stage of life by the time I was five,” the woman said laconically, and Sedona guessed that she wasn’t exaggerating. “I just stood there, staring at him. I couldn’t believe he’d actually struck out at me. For a second I thought he was going to cry. He told me that I wasn’t ever to speak like Tammy again. That if I talked like her people would assume I was like her in other ways. And then he started apologizing all over himself for his reaction to my words. He said there was no excuse. That his actions were in no way a reflection of me, but of himself. He rocked me like a baby, begging for my forgiveness. And then made all of my favorite foods for every meal the following week. I think it scared the heck out of him,” Talia said.
“Your words or his reaction to them?”
“Both. In any case, his reacting so out of character was exactly what I needed—though I could have done without the sting to my face. I’ve been through some pretty hellish situations but I’ve never once forgotten to keep my mouth clean. Funny thing is...Tanner was right. No matter who you are or what you’re doing, people respect you more if your speech is clean and kind. They give you more credence, anyway.”
That still didn’t make hitting his sister okay.
“Did he ever strike out at you or Thomas again?”
“I don’t think he’s so much as killed an ant since that day,” Talia said, her voice sounding sad. “Tanner was so good to all of us, but who was ever good to him, you know? Who watched out for him?”
Sedona had been asking that same question for weeks. And needed there to have been someone.
Because she feared that otherwise it was going to be her now. And it couldn’t be.
Still... “You held a grudge, though,” she said, staring out at a boat on the water. A smaller vessel, but large enough to take on the Pacific Ocean.
“No, I didn’t.” Talia’s reply left no room for doubt. “I am far more like Tammy than Tanner wants to believe,” Talia said. “What I did was hold on to the memory of Tanner’s vulnerability that day. And when it served to my advantage, I’d pull out the reminder and throw it in his face.”
Sitting there in the sand, Sedona could almost feel the sharply tipped words piercing her chest. Tanner made one mistake, albeit a huge one, and rather than knowing forgiveness, he’d known retribution.
Was it any wonder the man had faith in no one but himself?
The true wonder was that he still loved as fiercely as he did. Tatum. Thomas. And Talia, too.
“As kind as he was to us all, as self-sacrificing and loyal and loving, he didn’t deserve that from me,” Talia said now. “I paid for it, though, when I turned sixteen and he had my boyfriend thrown in jail.”
“For statutory rape.”
“He told you about it.”
“Some. In two sentences or less. Tatum told me more.”
“Tatum was only five at the time. She can’t remember all that much. And I only told her a little bit about it myself, later, when we were in touch.”
“She told me that the guy wanted to marry you and Tanner wouldn’t allow it.”
“I was pregnant. At sixteen. Just like Tammy had been with him. He saw history repeating itself. I saw myself making a new history. One that started somewhat the same but had a happy ending. Tanner’s dad wouldn’t marry Tammy. As a matter of fact, he never even acknowledged her when she told him she was pregnant. She told me that she’d later heard that he and his friends had sought her out because they figured she’d be an easy mark. And so, she became one.”
Tammy Malone hadn’t had it easy, either. But she could have made different choices. For her children, if nothing else.
Sedona hoped she never met the woman. She might be tempted to lower herself to Tammy’s standards just long enough to voice what she thought about a person who’d learned only one thing from her mistakes—how to repeat them. And then made four innocent children pay her dues.
“I gave my baby up for adoption,” Talia said. “That’s different from Tammy, too. I’m thinking about looking him up. Once I get my life settled. You, know, just to make sure he’s okay. But I don’t regret giving him up. I gave him a chance for a normal, loving life.”
“What did Tanner have to say about it?” It was something she’d wondered.
“He told me that he’d support whatever choice I made. He said he’d help me out financially and welcome the baby into our home if that’s what I wanted. The only condition was that I agree to finish school. He also said that if I wanted to give the baby up for adoption, it wouldn’t be a wrong thing, that I shouldn’t feel guilty for doing so. I already knew that, of course. Growing up in our house, the hope of being adopted was like thinking about what you’d do with the money if you won the lottery.”
Sedona could try to imagine...but that was all. As soon as she hung up from Talia she was going to call her mother. Thank her and her dad for the gift of a loving childhood. She’d taken them and her life growing up for granted. As if happiness was normal.
“If it wasn’t for Tanner I don’t know what any of us would have done....”
Sedona held her tongue. Told herself this wasn’t her business. Other than representing Tatum in case of a legal battle, she had no rights. And then she said, “He needs you,” anyway.
“What?”
“I’m not trying to interfere in your life, or your livelihood, but if there’s any way you could move home, even temporarily, I think it would help your brother a lot.”
Talia’s sharp intake of breath was clearly audible over the phone. “He told you that?”
She could hear the children laughing on the beach in the distance. And then screaming with glee, as though someone was chasing them.
Would she ever have
a little one of her own? Would Talia have another chance?
“No, he didn’t,” Sedona had to say. “I’m sticking my neck out way beyond my means here,” she continued, with the sudden feeling that she was fighting the case of her life.
And she was off the clock.
“I don’t think he hit Tatum, Talia.” She spoke slowly, as though in court facing a jury, choosing every word with precision. “But someone did.”
Pausing to let her words sink in, she continued. “I found out today that something else happened recently, completely unrelated to Tatum’s claims of abuse. I’m not at liberty to disclose the particulars, but Tatum’s trust in Tanner was shattered—at the same time someone was hurting her. It is my opinion that unless something changes, Tatum is going to stay at The Lemonade Stand as long as Tanner will allow her to do so. And if he tries to force her to come home, she’s going to use whatever legal means she can to get away from him. I honestly believe that in her fifteen-year-old mind, her shattered trust in Tanner is far worse than a bruised arm.”
“She told you that?”
“Not outright. But she’s been asking questions about making a motion to the courts about having her legal guardianship changed.”
“To who?”
“Again, she hasn’t specifically said, but I suspect that she’s under the impression that Del Harcourt’s mother would gladly take her.”
Tatum hadn’t told her so. But the girl mentioned Del’s mother often in their casual conversations—speaking about how much the woman liked her, how kind she was, how welcoming. Tatum could very well have built up a scenario in her mind where Del’s mother became her own, before she officially became her mother-in-law.
She’d asked Tatum if she had anyone in mind for guardianship and the girl had prevaricated. And after what she’d heard about Tammy today, Sedona could see how Tanner was panicking about Tammy’s life replaying itself through Tatum. Rich boy, telling her he loved her with one goal in mind—to get in her pants.
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