Once a Family

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “What about us?” Del asked, frowning, teasing her nipple at the same time. He knew it drove her crazy. But she didn’t want him to stop.

  Because it drove him crazy, too. Which kept him hooked on her.

  “It’s just for a little while longer,” she said. “Until I can figure out what to do, how to make Tanner give me my freedom.” She wasn’t really clear on the “until” part of it. Not until she figured out all the abusive behavior stuff and how to stand her ground and not be afraid.

  “You just need to come live with us,” Del said, his eyes big and lonely-puppy-looking until she just wanted to melt right into him. “Mom said you could.”

  “You asked her?”

  “Yeah. She wanted to know why you weren’t coming around and I told her that you were staying at a friend’s house for a while.”

  “Did you tell her why?” Her stomach cramped up again, which was happening all the time. She didn’t want Del’s mom to think badly of Tanner. No matter what he’d done or was, he was still her brother. And he’d done a lot for her.

  Still did.

  And, okay, she loved him. Most of the time.

  “I just told her that you and Tanner had a fight.”

  “What did she say?” It was important.

  “That it had to be hard for him, being so young and raising his siblings. That’s when she said you could stay with us.”

  Wow. That was cool. Something to think about.

  But...

  “For right now, I think I should stay where I am,” she said. “Tanner’s being cool about it and...” She needed Sara and Sedona. And Lila and Maggie and Lynn, too. Growing up alone with Tanner she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed having another female in the house.

  “He’s not doing it to you again, is he? Pulling you back in with all that talk about loving you when he doesn’t even take the time to find out who you are and what you want? You know how Tanner is, telling you whatever he has to tell you to get you to do what he wants. What is it, school again? Because he thinks you’d be happier at some school back east than you will being my wife?”

  She shook her head.

  He licked her lips. “Just think, baby, if you were at my house we could have all the time we wanted for this.” This time when he kissed her, he slid a finger across the crotch of her pants.

  And she pulled away. She needed to think. To know she was doing what was right for her. Just like Sara said. Not be pressured into doing things to please others.

  Like Tanner. Who’d lied to her.

  And Del. Who loved her and who she loved to distraction, but...

  “If you were at my house, Tatum, I could take care of you all the time. You wouldn’t have to worry anymore about anything or anyone, ever. You could have all the clothes and jewelry you want, too.”

  “From your dad, you mean.” She didn’t like Mr. Harcourt any more than Del did. And didn’t need to take one single counseling session to know that he was abusive. Or to know that Del was a victim. “We don’t want to owe him anything,” she reminded him.

  “I have an inheritance from my mom’s side, too. And I know other ways to make money.”

  She was kind of worried about that. But now wasn’t the time to get Del to see that getting his friends whatever they wanted, for a price, wasn’t as cool as he thought it was. One thing at a time, just like Sara had said.

  “I just... This place where I am...it’s a place where Tanner can’t come get me and take me home.” She kissed him then, just to prove to him that she was really serious about him. About them. “I don’t want him to keep us apart,” she said, giving him “the look.”

  He put her hand on his crotch and she recognized the hard feel of him.

  “Then at least think about taking part of me home with you,” he said, rubbing her hand against him. “If you’ll have sex with me, I’ll know you’re mine and then I can relax.”

  He made her hot. And she was curious about sex with him. She thought about it every night. Especially since Maddie had talked to her so openly about her and Darin having sex. Maddie really liked it and said that it made her feel completely in love with Darin and kept him completely in love with her.

  Which was what Tatum wanted with Del. To know that she had a family of her own forever and ever. That she didn’t have to worry about being a single woman out in the world like Talia. Or their mother.

  Tanner thought school would keep her safe. But he was a guy. What did he know?

  “If I do it...will you be okay with me staying where I am for a while longer?”

  “Yes.” He sounded so sure.

  “You promise?”

  “Of course, I promise. I told you. I love you and want to marry you. As soon as we’re old enough. So will you do it? Soon?” He pushed his thing up against her.

  “Maybe,” she said. She needed to think. “Probably,” she added.

  According to Sara, every man who hit someone wasn’t an abuser. When Tatum had asked, she’d said there were some situations where a man was driven by circumstances to use force, but that didn’t necessarily make him an abusive or violent man.

  But sometimes the victim of abuse made excuses for a man, thinking he wasn’t abusive because she loved him and understood what made him act as he did.

  And that was where it all got so confusing. How did she know if she was making excuses or just loving a person and everything about him? She made mistakes and apologized and anyone who loved her accepted her apology and let the mistake fade away. Shouldn’t she do the same?

  Sometimes she even made the mistake again. But Tanner had always forgiven her. Because he’d known she didn’t mean to make that mistake. Or because he loved her, anyway.

  Just like she’d always loved him.

  Until she’d found out that he wasn’t who she thought he was.

  The horrible sick feeling she’d had that afternoon a couple of months ago, in his office when she’d found out he’d been lying to her all her life, came back again.

  He hadn’t just been lying about their mother wanting her, like she’d thought, but about himself.

  And if she didn’t know him, then maybe things she knew, things she’d tried her whole life to forget, weren’t what she thought they were, either.

  Or maybe they were.

  Sara told her that the hardest part was knowing when someone was telling you something to manipulate you, or to get you to do what they wanted, and when they were really trying to help you or to tell you something valid that you didn’t already know.

  Like her mother. Sara had asked if Tammy had been in touch with her. Of course she hadn’t been. Tanner would never allow it and Tatum was glad about that. But they’d talked about people telling lies to make you feel good so you’d do what they want.

  Tammy would do that.

  But what about Tanner? Would he?

  Sara told her to listen to her own heart. Separate and apart from what anyone else told her. She told her not to let anyone convince her to do anything that didn’t seem right to her. Not ever. And to ask for help if she ever felt pressured, or unsure.

  Del picked up her hand, slid his fingers up and down her ring finger. She thought of the day he’d taken her shopping for diamonds. She’d picked out her engagement ring. It had been the most romantic, best day of her life. “You know no one’s going to love you as much as I do.”

  She loved it when he said that. And Del Harcourt not only wanted to give her respectability, he loved her enough to beg for her. “Yes,” she said now, feeling as if she might start to cry.

  Why did life have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t Tanner just see that she’d met her Prince Charming and let her go have her own life? So what if she was only fifteen? He’d been younger than that when he’d started taking care of Talia and Th
omas. And then she’d come along and he’d been a dad to her, too.

  “So tell me, what’s Tanner been saying to you in the truck all week? You seem upset. Has he been getting to you?”

  She shrugged. “We don’t talk.”

  “At all?”

  “I haven’t spoken to him at all. And I won’t, Del. I told you that. I’m not going to give him the chance to try to manipulate me, and if I start listening to him, it could happen without my even knowing it, just like you said. I had no idea how much I believed everything he said until you pointed it out to me.”

  “It wasn’t really me.” Del’s voice had grown still. “It was only after you found out he’d lied to you about his―”

  “I know.” She cut him off. If she hadn’t been so shocked the day she’d found the paperwork in Tanner’s desk, she never would have told Del about it. Sometimes, she wished she hadn’t. Every time he mentioned it, her heart broke a little bit more. Not because of what she’d found out. But because Tanner had been living a lie, even with her, when she’d thought they were the only ones who really knew everything about each other.

  He’d told her that was what made the difference with family love—you knew your family members at their worst so you didn’t have to hide. And all the while, Tanner had been hiding. Preaching one thing and living another.

  “Just promise me one thing.” Del interrupted the confusing muck of thought that kept giving her a headache, pulling her onto his lap and laying her head against his shoulder. It made her feel better. Which was why she knew she was meant to be with him. That they were meant for each other, just like he’d told her. “Just promise that you won’t go back home to your brother, and I promise you that I will wait for you. No matter what.”

  The horrible knot left her stomach and Tatum almost felt like laughing. Something she hadn’t done in a long time. Del really loved her as much as she loved him.

  “I promise,” she said, knowing it was a promise she could keep. Even if she had to tell little lies about Tanner, or threaten to tell them, to get him to let her stay.

  After all, he’d told her lies about him, too.

  * * *

  SEDONA MET WITH a new client on Friday. A seventy-five-year-old woman who’d been married almost sixty years and wanted a divorce. She and her husband lived in an active adult community and she’d caught him in bed with another woman. A sixty-year-old widow who’d moved in down the street from them. She’d been hesitant to take on the case. Had suggested arbitration to the mother of four—and grandmother of ten—but in the end had agreed to represent her.

  She’d written a summary judgment on a frivolous lawsuit against another client of hers. The woman’s ex-husband was suing her for having the locks changed on the family residence, causing him to have to sleep in his car because she’d also emptied the joint bank account, when, under an emergency order, the court had granted her both sole occupancy of the residence and the six hundred dollars that had been left in the account after the louse went to Vegas for the weekend and managed to use up the four thousand dollars she’d just deposited.

  She’d represented a mother in a custody hearing and had planned arguments for the case she was taking to court on Monday. A couple of friends from law school invited her out for salad and wine, but she was tired and ready for some Ellie time, so she asked them for a rain check. Locking up her office, she headed for home, and then decided to make a stop at The Lemonade Stand.

  Parking in the back lot, she used her key card to enter the private inner sanctum of the many-acre facility, breathing in the fragrances of flowers and freshly mowed grass, compliments of the new landscape design artist who was engaged to marry Lynn Duncan, the center’s full-time on-site nurse practitioner.

  The Lemonade Stand―where, when life handed you lemons, you made lemonade―had a resortlike feel, with meandering walkways, manicured grass and flower beds everywhere she looked. The idea was to give its female residents a sense of self-worth, of being treated well, to raise their expectations of what they deserved, and how they could expect to be treated so that they wouldn’t settle for anything less than decency.

  They were required to treat themselves, and others, with respect. Encouraged, through action as well as word, to expect respect.

  As she strolled the grounds, Sedona let the peaceful atmosphere wash over her. Bathing her with a reminder of the world she’d grown up in. A loving world. Reminding her that she deserved a home, a life, as full and complete as the one her parents had built together.

  She took a minute for herself, and then made her way slowly up the walk toward Maddie Estes’s bungalow. She’d spoken with Tatum Malone a couple of times that week, spoken with Sara every night, just to check in, but she hadn’t seen Tatum in several days.

  The dinner hour had passed and she’d expected Maddie and Tatum to be settled in for the night, but found the two with backpacks on their shoulders, heading out the door of their bungalow.

  “We are going to the younger girls’ house, Sedona,” Maddie said in her slow, slightly garbled drawl. The woman, in her midthirties, was educably slow from birth and unable to problem solve a lot of the time, but she was a superb caregiver.

  Tatum wasn’t a child. And Sedona had promised Tanner that the young woman would be in her bungalow by seven each evening.

  “Gwen’s husband is off tonight,” Tatum said before Sedona could speak up. “Maddie and I aren’t allowed to stay alone, so we’re going to share the spare room over there.” Tatum pointed to a bungalow across the quad. “We did it last weekend, too.”

  She hadn’t been told. But there’d been no reason for her to be. She was Tatum’s lawyer, not her babysitter.

  “We have to share a queen-size bed, but I do not kick at night,” Maddie told her.

  “I guess Darin will be glad about that.” Sedona smiled at the woman who’d been badly beaten and locked in a shed by her ex-husband. And who, after a couple of years of healing and working at The Stand, was now engaged to marry another mentally challenged individual.

  “Yes, Sedona, he will like it that I do not kick him when he is trying to sleep. I think I will be sleeping with him soon. How long is it until June?”

  “It’s six weeks until the wedding,” Sedona told Maddie. “Think of last Friday when Tatum first spent the night with you and the girls. It’s been one week since then. You do that six times and it will be your wedding day.” She turned to Tatum. “Can we talk for a couple of minutes?” she asked the girl when she’d really just intended to make a quick stop to see for herself that Tatum was doing all right.

  “Of course.” Telling Maddie she’d meet up with her at the bungalow, Tatum walked with Sedona farther along the cement pathway that wound past bungalows and through the grounds.

  “Maddie’s pregnant.”

  “I know.”

  “I think it’s kind of cool that she and Darin can have a kid, and all.”

  “They’ll be living with Darin’s brother, Grant, and his soon-to-be-wife, Lynn, who will be helping raise the child.”

  “But Maddie takes care of Lynn’s little girl, Kara, all the time.”

  “She follows the lists that Lynn leaves her and knows to call for help immediately if something doesn’t go exactly as planned.”

  They’d reached the playground area and Sedona sat in one of the leather swings, while Tatum took the one next to her, lightly kicking off.

  “I want to be a mother.” Tatum’s voice took on a longing note. “I think that’s the coolest thing about being a woman, being able to grow a human being and love it and keep it safe.”

  When Sedona’s thoughts immediately flew to the boyfriend Tatum had told her about, the boy Tanner had forbidden her to see, she was afraid she was thinking for him. Worrying about how he’d feel if he could hear his sister’s thoughts. Instead of assessing for herse
lf.

  “I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful mom someday,” she said. Most girls had dreams of motherhood. She had.

  “Not if my brother has his way.” The girl’s tone of voice changed completely.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “All Tanner cares about is me going to some Ivy League college and having this great career. He says that way I’ll be safe and secure for my whole life, but that’s a lie. Tanner tells me I always have to tell him the truth, but he lies to me.”

  Did he lie to Sedona, too?

  “When does he lie to you?”

  “All the time.”

  “Give me an example.”

  “He said that I would love high school and I don’t.”

  “That’s kind of an opinion, not really a lie,” she said, even though she could see how Tatum felt lied to. “Give me another example.”

  “He told me that my mother wanted me but was just too sick to take care of me. But I remember things and Talia told me the truth. Our mother is a druggie prostitute loser.”

  “Okay, when else?”

  She listened as Tatum listed other innocuous instances of Tanner telling her things to protect her from truths he didn’t think she should have known.

  She tried to hear the duplicity in his intent, to accept what Tatum was trying to tell her. And didn’t believe that Tanner Malone was a liar.

  “I’m not sure how much longer your brother is going to allow this arrangement to continue,” she said as Tatum continued to push off the ground softly, swinging herself lightly back and forth.

  The girl’s head jerked toward her, her pretty gray-blue eyes sharpened by fear. “He can’t make me go back there, can he?”

  “I’m not sure why you don’t want to go.” She hadn’t meant to have this conversation tonight. “I’ve been to the farm, sweetie. I’ve seen your room. It looks like your brother has done all he can to show you how special you are, how much he loves you.”

  “I can’t go back there, Sedona. Please don’t make me.”

  Tatum’s face tightened with panic.

  “It might not be up to me,” she told the girl. “But I promise you that I will continue to do everything I can to help you. I’d be able to do a better job, though, if you’d try to cooperate a little. I can’t tell how Tanner treats you until I see the two of you interacting. Until I see you together.”