Once a Family

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Tatum skidded to an abrupt stop and stood up. “You’re trying to trap me, aren’t you? Just like he does? You’re trying to get me to agree to something that I just told you I don’t want to do.”

  Someone had done a number on this girl.

  “No, I’m not.” Sedona stood, as well. “I represent you first and foremost,” she said, with a strong reminder to herself, as well. “My parents invited your father over for dinner on Sunday. I’d like you to come with us. You’ll like my folks. And you won’t have to be alone with Tanner, or go home, but I can still see how he treats you.”

  Tatum studied her for a long moment. “So this is to trap him.”

  “Not to trap him.” Trap was such a strong word. And not anything she wanted to do to Tanner. What she wanted was to help him. “Just to understand how to help you.” How to help them both.

  God help her, she was in too deep. Was losing what little bit of perspective she’d been pretending to have.

  And if she admitted that? If she recused herself from the situation, what would happen to Tatum? Would Tanner be willing to let his little sister remain at The Lemonade Stand if Sedona reneged on her part of the deal?

  She couldn’t take that chance.

  But she could bring the problem to two people she trusted with her life. Maybe not the specifics, but the people. She could see if her parents still liked Tanner as much when he was around his little sister.

  “I need to see you and your brother interact, Tatum. Please come with me on Sunday. I promise I won’t leave you alone with him.”

  Those unusual blue eyes gazed over at her. “You promise?”

  “I do.”

  “Okay, I’ll come. But I’m not going to talk to him.” The girl’s pain was clear to see.

  Sedona’s heart lurched.

  But it wasn’t until she was on her way home that she admitted to herself that her heart wasn’t just hurting for Tatum. But for Tanner, too.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HE’D BEEN TAKING Tatum an outfit each day when he picked her up from school, for her to wear the next day. She wasn’t returning them and he could only surmise that she was laundering them herself. He waited to do his own laundry, thinking that she’d be handing him a bag of dirty clothes and he’d throw all the jeans in together, like always. And Sunday morning, when he finally had to break down and wash his clothes or have nothing to wear to Millie and Chuck’s that afternoon, Tanner made himself a promise.

  He was going to pick Sedona up, and then Tatum, for the drive to dinner. And on the way home, he’d drop them off in the same order. Sedona first. Leaving him alone in the truck with Tatum. At which time he’d drop her off, too.

  In her own room.

  He was going to dinner. And then, everyone else be damned, he was bringing his little sister home.

  He’d given them their chance to help her. Time was passing and nothing was changing. He’d done just fine helping Tatum since the day she was born. He’d find a way to get her through this, too.

  With that thought in mind he canceled his participation in the private wine testing he’d been scheduled to attend that afternoon, put his clean jeans in the dryer and, with an old pair on, went out to spend a few hours with his vines.

  * * *

  “THIS WAS SEDONA’S room when she was growing up.” Standing in the upstairs hallway of her childhood home, Sedona watched as Tatum stuck her head in the door of the yellow-walled room. “It’s nice,” she said, polite as always.

  It had been a mistake bringing her here. She’d driven to the shelter after church, wanting to spend some time with a couple of the other residents before Tanner came to pick them up for the drive to her folks’ house. She’d also wanted to be there with Tatum to make sure the young woman didn’t back out of her promise to spend the afternoon with them.

  Tatum had been joking with Maddie when she arrived. Teasing her about the Xs in her dough while they stood at the kitchen counter making peanut butter cookies together. She’d been patient with Maddie’s valiant attempts to place her fork exactly in the middle of the ball of dough—and as happy as Sedona had ever seen her.

  And she’d clammed up the second she’d climbed into the backseat of Tanner’s truck.

  The girl was reticent at dinner, too.

  Sedona’s mother, who knew only that Tanner was Tatum’s guardian and that brother and sister were at odds—and that Sedona was friendly with both—had seated Tatum between herself and Sedona, placing Tanner on Sedona’s other side.

  “I’d like to see your vineyard,” Chuck was saying to Tanner as though the two had been buddies for years. They’d chatted outside while Chuck grilled their steaks. Tatum had glanced out at them several times, as though keeping Tanner in sight, and Sedona was anxious to ask her father what Tanner had had to say.

  For Tatum’s sake, of course.

  “You’re welcome anytime,” Tanner said over a bite of steak. “But it’s not that impressive.” Listening to Tanner conversing with her father felt...good.

  “Yes, it is.” Tatum’s voice slid into the conversation naturally. Sedona could feel the sudden tension emanating from her brother at the tone. “It’s small by winery standards,” the girl continued, looking at Chuck, and nowhere else. “But the vines are trellised and healthy, his grape size and color is as good as any you’ll see anywhere else and there isn’t a single weed in four acres. He spends enough time out there.”

  The last sentence might have held a touch of resentment, but there’d been no doubting the pride in the rest of her soliloquy.

  It was also clear to Sedona that Tatum didn’t just live at the farm—she was a part of it.

  They moved to the deck after dinner, the adults having one glass of wine apiece, sipping slowly from a bottle her father had brought back from France with him. Tatum sat first, settling on a bench on the far corner of the deck, looking out at the ocean beyond.

  “You ever think about getting on a boat and sailing away?” the teenager asked Sedona as she sat down next to Tatum.

  “I used to come out here when I was a kid and dream about all of the worlds that were out there for me to see,” she said.

  “So what happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why are you still here?”

  “Because I grew up,” Sedona told her. “And I realized that while I wanted to visit different worlds, my life was where my heart is. And that’s with my family.”

  Tatum glanced over to where her brother sat in a patio chair perpendicular to her father. “I think he would have liked to travel,” she said. “But instead, he just made stuff up and then must’ve started to believe it was true.”

  “What stuff did he make up?” Sedona held her glass of untouched wine, needing to help this young woman more than any client she’d ever had. Tatum shrugged, her long blond hair falling around her face like a shroud. “Just stuff,” she said. “You know, like who we are and stuff.”

  “Who you are?” She wanted to know, to understand. To fix this one.

  “Like us as people. Like having people think we aren’t who we really are.”

  More chilled than the glass in her hand, Sedona said, “I don’t understand.”

  “He lets people think that we’re these decent people, winegrowers, a family that is, like, you know, normal. And we aren’t. You know, stuff like that.”

  No, she didn’t know. But she wanted to.

  “You don’t think you’re normal?”

  “We’re white trash, Sedona.” The girl’s voice was pained, as though she was imparting a horrible secret. “We come from trash and we’re nothing but trash.”

  “There’s nothing trashy about you.”

  “My mother’s a hooker. My dad was a pimp. Tanner’s the only one of us who had a decent dad.
We aren’t like you, with smart parents who have money and a real house....”

  Yeah, maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to bring the girl here.

  “Wait a minute, young lady,” Millie said from behind Sedona while the two men remained deep in conversation—about wine varietals probably. Sedona had no idea how long her mother had been listening in. Tatum, apparently, hadn’t realized they’d been overheard, either, as stared at Sedona’s mother, a look of shame on her face.

  “You had no choice about who you were born to,” Millie said, sitting down on the bench on the other side of Tatum. “Your brothers and sister didn’t, either. And that doesn’t define you. You are a product of the choices you make. Tanner is a product of the choices he makes. He chose to be a vintner, and by the sounds of things, he’s a pretty darn good one.”

  Silent, Tatum looked at her brother. Seeing him differently? Or seeing something they couldn’t see? “You see Chuck over there?” Millie asked, pointing to her husband. And Sedona knew what was coming. Should have thought of it herself.

  “His daddy was a rapist. Raped his momma and she had him. She couldn’t stand to look at him, though, because he reminded her of what had happened to her, so she gave him up for adoption.”

  “How does he know about her, then? If he was adopted.”

  “Because when he was about your age, he decided that he had to know who he was, and figured the only way to do that was to find out where he’d come from. He talked to his adoptive parents, and they agreed to help him find his birth mother.”

  “And they found her?”

  “Yes, they did, but she didn’t want to see him. She told his adoptive parents why, and they talked about it and decided the best thing was to tell him the truth.”

  Tatum’s mouth hung open. “What did he do?”

  “He went a little crazy for a while. Drank too much. He got in a car accident, but luckily no one was hurt. And his parents told him that he was at a crossroads. They would pay for him to go to college and make a life for himself. Or he could choose to move out of their home and find his own way.”

  “And he chose college?”

  “And never looked back,” Millie said.

  Looking at Tanner again, Tatum didn’t seem any happier. Her expression didn’t lighten. She didn’t smile. But when Sedona came back from the restroom a few minutes later, she noticed that the teenager had moved on the deck and was sitting several feet closer to her brother.

  And throughout the rest of the afternoon, though there was no visible softening in the young woman toward her brother, Tatum didn’t let Tanner out of her sight.

  * * *

  DRIVING HOME FROM the shelter Sunday evening, Tanner wasn’t in the best of moods when his phone rang. Seeing his caller’s name didn’t improve his emotional state all that much.

  But he answered. Because when it came to his siblings, he always would.

  “So how’d it go? Is she home?” Talia got right to the point. They’d been in touch, pretty much every day, but only to speak about Tatum. Talia was never going to forgive him for the lover she’d lost. The baby she’d given up for adoption.

  “No.” They’d outwitted him this time—Tatum and her lawyer, a woman who inspired his trust even while he knew that she’d take his sister away from him in a second if she thought it was the right thing to do. “Sedona was waiting for me at the shelter this afternoon. She left her car there.”

  “You think they knew you intended to take her home?”

  “No.” Probably not. But maybe.

  “You need me to come home? Maybe if I’m there...”

  “Is she answering your calls yet?”

  “Not since that first time.” Last year he’d have been happy to hear that, seeing it as a sign that Tatum was choosing wisely. Now her refusal to speak with the older sister she’d once idolized scared the shit out of him.

  “Then I’m guessing it wouldn’t help any to have you here.”

  “Your way with words amazes me, big brother.” Talia’s drawl almost made him smile. “I thought maybe you’d like the company. I don’t see you as too happy rambling about in that big old house by yourself.”

  “I’m pruning.”

  “Ah, the vines. Maybe if I came home you’d actually let me try a bottle of Malone Maison wine.”

  “I don’t have the label yet.”

  “But you will have, Tanner. We both know that.”

  Because he didn’t give up. Because he was tenacious. Because he’d had to be and had wanted his siblings to know that they didn’t ever have to settle for less than the best. Less than what they wanted.

  “So there’s no change, then?” Talia didn’t seem as eager to hang up as he was.

  “No.”

  “She didn’t talk to you at all today? Didn’t this lawyer’s folks think that was a little odd?”

  “No, she didn’t speak to me and I don’t know what they thought about it,” he said. “Chuck Campbell talked about wine. Millie makes a great broccoli salad. Sedona seems to get along well with her folks, and Tatum was her sweet self with all of them.”

  There. Had he given her what she needed? Could he hang up now?

  “This lawyer, she’s close with her parents?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “You’re good at reading people, Tanner.”

  There’d been no sarcasm in the tone. Nothing negative.

  “What happened today isn’t important. What matters here is what happened months ago.”

  “What was that?”

  “A teenage asshole went after our little sister, trying to get her to do drugs and have sex with him.”

  “You could have trusted her.”

  Read: you should have trusted me. But he had trusted Talia. And she’d ended up pregnant at sixteen by a man older than Tanner was.

  He wondered, not for the first time, if Talia ever had thoughts of looking up the son she’d given away. Just to see how he’d fared. But he didn’t ask.

  “She’s vulnerable,” he said instead, sparing his sister the trip down memory lane. “You know how sensitive she is.”

  “And impressionable.”

  “She’s not hardened like the rest of us.” And dammit, he’d sworn that he’d see that she grew up that way. That one of them had a chance to see beauty first in the world.

  “I can’t believe this is all over a guy.”

  If Talia had been around, if he hadn’t made her see that she’d become too much like their mother to be a role model for Tatum, would she have seen signs he’d missed?

  “Doesn’t make sense to me, either,” he said now. “But one thing’s for sure, I’ve either royally pissed her off, or someone’s got some kind of hold on her.”

  “You still think it’s Tammy?”

  They’d agreed―him and Thomas and Talia―that the woman who’d birthed them didn’t deserve to be called “Mom.” Those days of the three of them banding together against the world seemed so long ago.

  Like a different lifetime.

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “I’ve done what I can to find her and I’ve come up with nothing.”

  “I haven’t been successful, either,” he said now, surprised at how difficult finding Tammy was proving to be. Granted, he’d never tried before, but he’d always assumed that if he had, it wouldn’t have been that hard to locate her.

  Tammy had always told them that if they wanted her, she’d be there. He’d actually believed her.

  “I’ve got someone looking for her,” he told Talia now. He’d hired a guy.

  “You hear from Thomas yet?”

  “No.”

  “Did you say anything in your messages about Tatum?”

  “No.”

 
“It’s been almost two weeks. Maybe you should call him again.”

  “Okay.” Or... “You could call him.”

  “Nah. You do it.”

  He would. But... “Maybe it’s time you did, too.”

  “I don’t think so. It’s not like Thomas has any power to get Tatum to come home. Hell, she hardly remembers him. I just thought, maybe he’d want to know. But it’s not that big of a deal.”

  From the day he’d left, Thomas hadn’t instigated a relationship with any of them.

  “We’re family, Talia. It’s time we remembered that.”

  Their family connection went soul-deep. But the truth was, sometimes, in a day-to-day world, it was easier to try to forget.

  “It’s pretty clear that Thomas has no interest in remembering that.” Her words held no rancor.

  And because he agreed with her—maybe even understood, somewhat—he didn’t push the issue.

  “And let’s face it, Tanner, he sure as hell wouldn’t want to hear from me. Like you made clear last year, I’m Tammy’s daughter.”

  He shouldn’t have said that. He’d just been so shocked. And afraid when he’d found her being pimped out by her own husband...

  “You’re one of us, Tal.”

  “But you don’t want me to come home.”

  “You’re welcome here anytime.” The words felt good. Damn good.

  Talia’s silence shamed him. He’d been protecting Tatum when he’d come down hard on Talia for the choices she’d made. But she was his sister, too. And he’d let her down.

  “I, uh, have some vacation time coming,” she said. “I thought...maybe...I’d head your way.”

  “When?” Anticipation swept through him for the second it took him to quell the useless emotion.

  “I’m not sure. I’ll let you know.”

  Translation: not now and maybe never.

  “Sure, you do that,” he said. And rang off. He was home, anyway, pulling into the driveway. He had to be up early in the morning. One of his back quarter irrigation lines had sprung a leak and he had no idea how long it was going to take him to fix it.