The Truth About Tara

by Darlene Gardner

  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 y
ou 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.