Once a Family

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Tatum?” Sedona said into her other phone. “You still there, hon?”

  “Uh-huh. I think your friend’s here.”

  “Son of a bitch. What’s going on?” The voice, young and male and clearly angry, came from the background of Tatum’s phone. “Give me that...” was the last thing Sedona heard before the line went dead.

  Tanner’s stonelike expression told her that he’d heard the muffled words, as well.

  “Donna’s there,” she said. “She’ll make sure Tatum’s safe.”

  For the moment. But until they knew what Del might have put in her drink, or how much of it, she couldn’t make any other promises.

  * * *

  “DID TATUM KNOW she could be particularly sensitive to illegal substances?” Sedona’s question was soft as she came up beside Tanner in the hallway outside the hospital examining room where a team of medical personnel were doing various things to his sister.

  No, of course she hadn’t known. He’d opted not to tell her. “I didn’t want her to label herself. Tammy used some when she was carrying Talia and Thomas, too, but not as much.”

  Yet, the courts had still given Tammy’s babies to her.

  And once they were home, those babies became his.

  “Do they know?”

  “Yes. I told them both when they turned sixteen. I figured they were old enough by then to have formed a healthy self-concept, and they were also entering the age when they’d be tempted to try drugs.”

  “Kids are experimenting at twelve and thirteen these days.”

  “None of the three was automatically going to be affected by Tammy’s addiction. It was just that they could be.” Sedona’s hand slid into his and he held on. For a moment, he knew a strange moment of calm.

  Looking over at her, he wanted to smile but couldn’t yet. Not until he knew Tatum was going to be fine.

  “Thank you for being here,” he said instead.

  “You don’t need to thank me, Tanner. You should be thanking yourself.”

  “What for?”

  “Because you are the most honorable man I’ve ever met. And that honor, that integrity, saved the lives of three very endangered children.”

  He needed to believe that.

  “When push came to shove, Tatum called, didn’t she?”

  “You, not me.”

  “You set me up as your go-between. You approved of me. She knows you’re my friend and that I wasn’t going to be able to be impartial. And when she was in trouble, or even sensed she might be, she called me.” Sedona kept her voice low, in deference to the others around them, he was sure. “Clearly, after Del’s hitting her triggered the trauma from the past and she needed to tell someone, she couldn’t go to you, especially since she’d just found that GED application. She couldn’t trust you and she had no one else.” She paused and saw that she had his complete attention.

  “She had what it took to get help, Tanner. And that is certainly a tribute to you. To her upbringing.”

  “I lied to you.”

  “You made a difficult choice for the best reasons.”

  Tatum had seen him beating the crap out of the last creep Tammy had brought to their home. “I can’t believe she saw me beating that guy and I didn’t know.” He and Sedona walked up and down the small hallway, passing an empty gurney, an unused IV pole.

  “All this time she’s never said a word.”

  “I don’t think she remembered, Tanner. Not until Harcourt hit her. Kids suppress things all the time. Particularly when it’s something they can’t handle. It probably would have come up in hypnosis, though.”

  “Mr. Malone?”

  He shot over to the curtain where the doctor was standing. “Yes?”

  “You can go in now. I’d let her rest about another hour or so and then you can take her home.”

  “She’s okay?”

  “She’s going to be fine. A little nauseous probably, but fine.”

  “Was she drugged?”

  “We found a trace of a drug similar to ‘X’ in her blood work.” He gave an official name Tanner didn’t recognize. “There wasn’t enough of it in her system to do much more than make her sleepy. Either there wasn’t enough of it in the drink, or she didn’t consume the whole glass―either way, she’s lucky.”

  Lucky? He’d never thought of any of them in that light.

  Stepping around the curtain, he sought his sister’s gaze. He had to see her face, to look in her eyes, and then he’d breathe again.

  * * *

  THE FIRST THING he saw when he entered the small cubicle was her lips. They were cracked and dry. And then he noticed the tears on her cheeks.

  “Hey, Baby Tay, it’s okay.” His nickname for her slipped out. When had he stopped using it?

  “Tanner?”

  “I’m right here, sweetie.”

  “I saw you, Tanner. I saw you beat that guy and I was afraid you were going to kill him.”

  Tatum wasn’t feeling well. She didn’t need any more trauma.

  “I’m glad you finally told us.” Sedona came up behind him. On the same side of the bed as him. Standing just to the left of his elbow.

  Her arm slid around him.

  And something hit home. In an emergency hospital room. With his sister crying in the bed.

  Someone had his back.

  Sedona had his back.

  “That day you’re talking about, I’d come back from dropping you off next door and I heard Tammy take money from that man in exchange for letting him get in the shower with Talia.” Bile rose in his throat as he exposed his baby sister to the dirtiness, but he knew now that he couldn’t keep his secrets anymore. He couldn’t wipe Tammy away. “The guy was her supplier and she needed a fix.”

  Tanner told his sister the sordid details, his instincts bucking him the whole way.

  “That’s why you beat him up?” Tatum stared at him, her cloudy eyes clearing.

  “Yes.”

  “She told me about Rex,” Tatum said then, staring at Tanner openly, as if she was seeing him for the first time. Or maybe finding the man she recognized within the stranger he’d become. Whatever, it felt good having that look directed at him again. “About him being a teacher and it being against the law for them to be together, since she was a student,” she said slowly. “Even if you didn’t press charges, he’d have been charged.”

  Talia told him that she and Tatum had talked briefly. She’d never said what about.

  “That’s right.”

  “She also told me that she’s thinking about looking for her baby. Just to know that he’s okay.”

  Tatum’s eyes narrowed as she watched him.

  “I think it’s a good idea,” he said, meaning it.

  “If she wants your help, you’ll help her?”

  “Of course.”

  She nodded. “I thought so.”

  Then she smiled, and it hit him that she was really going to be okay. They were going to be okay. He could feel the prick of tears behind his eyes and needed a moment to find the calm.

  Instincts ingrained from childhood drove him to turn away. “I love you, big brother.” Tatum’s voice was groggy, but called him back to her.

  “I love you, too, Baby Tay.”

  It would take some getting used to—this sharing of secrets—but he figured he’d best get the hang of it. The women in his life weren’t going to let him slide away from their piercing gazes again.

  * * *

  LATER THAT EVENING Sedona found herself watching a movie at the Malone farm with Tanner and Tatum.

  Tatum had picked the film: a classic Sedona had seen at least a dozen times. One to do with old-fashioned family summer vacations and dancing and falling in love.

 
There’d been more tears that evening as Tatum’s ordeal with Del Harcourt had come more completely to light—to the girl as much as to anyone else. Sara had made an impromptu house call, and as Tatum revealed all of the things Del had told her, it had become clear that the boy had been using his father’s tactics to keep Tatum right where he wanted her.

  To his credit, he probably did love her. He just didn’t know how to love.

  Tatum knew, however, after what she’d learned at The Stand coupled with the latest events in her life, that she didn’t love Del. She’d been afraid of so many things. And Del had played into her fears.

  “I was lonely,” she’d told Tanner at dinner. “You were in the vineyard or the winery so much and when you came in you were always tired.”

  Pretending to be watching the movie, Sedona replayed the past few hours in her mind, figuring that Tanner must be doing the same. Since they’d found Tatum, he hadn’t given her any indication whether she was more than a friend to him or just Tatum’s attorney, other than inviting her to stay for dinner and watch the movie with them.

  He hadn’t had a personal word, or even shared an intimate glance with her since they’d helped Tatum into the backseat of the truck to bring her home.

  “When you got Talia to quit talking to me I didn’t know what to do,” Tatum had said during dinner.

  Tanner had listened—so patient and full of love for his sister—and Sedona had almost been jealous. Would he ever care for her as much as he cared for his siblings?

  Was he capable of caring for anyone else that much?

  “Then when I met Del and found that GED application...and Del hit me, I started remembering more and more about that day when I was little and I didn’t have anyone to talk to and...I just got so confused.”

  Tanner had decided not to press charges against Del Harcourt for lacing Tatum’s drink after he agreed, at Tatum’s request, never to contact her or in any way bother her again. There was still the possibility that the police would file their own charges against him, however.

  And with the little bug Sedona had placed in Donna’s ear, they were going to be looking at the boy’s father, too.

  “I’d never felt like Del made me feel. It was like he looked up to me. But then I tried to get him to stop smoking pot and he hit me when I threw his joint away. He was so sorry and so sweet and swore it wouldn’t happen again, and it didn’t, but then...later...I wouldn’t stand up to you and he hit me again. I wanted to tell you, but then, like, out of nowhere, I remembered that day I’d seen you beat up that guy and it all just got so messed up.”

  Sedona had asked if she’d told Del about that day so long ago.

  She would probably never forget the humble expression on Tanner’s face when the girl said she couldn’t do that to her brother.

  She’d just set out to prove to Del that she didn’t put Tanner first.

  Which was when the manipulation had really started to get dangerous.

  Now, sitting in the Malone living room, looking from one sibling to the other, Sedona felt like the unlucky one.

  She’d had a blessed childhood. Wonderful parents who loved her still. How could she possibly be envious of the life the Malones had endured?

  But she knew. The love she’d known she’d taken for granted. She hadn’t realized the worth of it. She’d just always imagined that someday she’d meet a man she loved like her mother loved her father, and all would be well.

  She hadn’t understood—as the Malones did, as her parents did, as Grady did, even—that love grew in the face of adversity.

  Love conquered adversity.

  She’d never personally experienced that kind of love. Until now, sitting in that living room, feeling the love that had seen four children through more adversity than anyone should ever have to endure.

  Tatum was going to be fine.

  Because of the foundation Tanner—and in a smaller way, Talia and Thomas—had given her.

  “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” Sedona heard the famous line coming from the stereo system Tanner had hooked up to his television. The movie was ending.

  “So, what’s up with you two just sitting there?” Tatum sat up on the sofa, a furry blanket spread across her lap, as she addressed her brother. “You need me to head up to bed so you can do, you know, whatever?”

  “No!” Tanner sat forward. “You’re fine.”

  “And you’re in love,” Tatum said in a saucy voice, and then looked to Sedona. “Since my brother has now shown that his greatest fault is an inability to tell people things that are important for them to know, and because I’m the luckiest girl on earth to have him, I’m going to do him a favor and just say it for him. Tanner loves you.”

  He coughed. “You do,” Tatum insisted. “You’ve never, ever, let anyone step in for you. Not the police. Not child services. Not anyone. But you let her. You could only do that if you loved her.”

  Taking her cue from her fifteen-year-old ex-client, Sedona looked at Tanner. “Do you?” she asked. “Because I have to tell you, I’m head over heels in love with you, and you know how determined I am to get married and stay that way forever.”

  “Like your parents,” Tatum said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay.” Tanner stood, holding up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I can’t take it from two of you at once. Yes, Baby Tay, since you offered, please go to bed. Make some noise when you get up in the morning. And I’m going to tell you right now, you’ll probably see Sedona’s car still here.”

  “Cool!” Tatum stood up, her long slender legs seeming to be steady and strong. “So it’s gone that far? Like, when we go see Thomas this summer, we’ll be, like, legal and all?”

  “If Sedona will have me.”

  “You have to ask her, big brother.”

  Sedona had dreamed of her once-in-a-lifetime proposal her entire life. She and the guy would be having a candlelit dinner on the beach. He’d pass her a rose and there’d be a diamond attached. It didn’t have to be big. It just had to be accompanied by the right words.

  Tatum turned to leave, her blanket trailing on the ground behind her, and Sedona said, “Wait.”

  The girl turned back, her gray-blue eyes looking expectantly at Sedona.

  “I need a witness,” Sedona said, the words becoming clear to her as she spoke them. “Tanner Malone, will you marry me?”

  The man coughed again.

  “I think that was a ‘yes,’” Tatum said.

  “Scram, brat.” Tanner got those words out quite clearly.

  And spent the rest of the night giving Sedona his answer.

  * * *

  “SEDONA?”

  She’d been dozing. After hours of lovemaking and talking about the innocuous things that most people discuss when they first meet. Like favorite movies and colors.

  “Yeah?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  “Of course. I thought we’d already covered that.”

  “Soon?”

  “We can fly to Vegas tomorrow and get married with Talia as a witness if you want.” Now that she knew what really mattered, dreams of her huge wedding flew right out the window. She couldn’t wait that long. Tatum was home. Talia was coming home. The family was flying to New York to see Thomas and meet his fiancée. She couldn’t miss any of it.

  “Tatum has finals.”

  “Then Saturday is fine.”

  “What will your parents say?”

  “Bring Dad a bottle of your wine when we tell them and they’ll be on the plane with us.”

  She said the words. But knew that her parents would be on that plane without any kind of bribe at all.

  Because they loved her.

  And she loved Tanner.

  It really was that simple.


  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from A PERFECT HOMECOMING by Lisa Dyson.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  ASHLEIGH WILSON SWITCHED the phone from one ear to the other and stopped Aunt Viv in midsentence. “Tell me what’s going on with Paula. Is the baby okay?” Her pulse accelerated in anticipation of news about her pregnant sister.

  “The baby is fine, at least for now,” Aunt Viv said. “Paula’s blood pressure is high and she just needs to follow doctor’s orders.”

  “What has her doctor suggested?” Getting specifics could take some work. She needed to get Aunt Viv to focus and stop haphazardly jumping from one subject to another.

  “Her doctor wants her on bed rest, but that’s easier said than done with two boys to take care of.”

  “Well, she has no choice.” Even though she hadn’t practiced in over two years, Ashleigh’s physician-educated brain reviewed the possible outcomes if Paula’s condition worsened. Preeclampsia, preterm labor...a multitude of possibilities. High blood pressure could mean a lot of things. How high was high? Slightly high or very high? “Do you know her actual blood pressure numbers?”

  “Paula didn’t say.” Aunt Viv hesitated a few seconds before adding, “Maybe you should call her and find out.”

  Ashleigh swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” How would she begin a conversation with the sister she hadn’t spoken to in almost two years?