The Truth About Tara

by Darlene Gardner

  “Yeah. See how fast he moves,” Susie said, her attention on the spider. Her speech was quite good, clearer than Danny’s. Down syndrome children commonly had significant language delays. She must have had a good speech therapist.

  “He’s trying to get away.” Gustavo blocked a side of the table so the spider didn’t scramble to the floor.

  “Why?” Susie asked. “We won’t hurt him.”

  “He doesn’t know that.” Gustavo set his daughter back on the floor and got to his feet. He easily caught the spider in his cupped hands. “Let’s take him outside where he belongs.”

  Susie’s face fell. “I didn’t mean to make him sad.”

  “Are you kidding me, sweetheart? If not for you, he might never find his way outside.” He slanted a look at Carrie. “You’ll have to excuse me. Fatherhood calls.”

  “Go,” Carrie said.

  He smiled at Carrie. The bulk of his attention, however, was on his daughter, where it rightly should be. She watched them leave, forming the impression that Gustavo Miller was a very nice man and an even better father.

  It wasn’t until he was almost out of sight that she realized she never had gotten around to asking him to waive the second half of Danny’s tuition.

  * * *

  TARA BLINKED ONCE, then twice. It did no good. Jack

  DiMarco was still walking toward the community-center pool where in a few minutes she’d be joined by the ten campers and the rest of the staff. She’d volunteered to put up the safety rope between the shallow and deep ends of the pool after the director said it was an ideal time for a water activity. The day was cloudy and a bit gray, perfect pool weather for children who weren’t used to spending much time in the sun.

  The pool would usually be teeming with kids, but a recent downpour had thinned out the crowd considerably. Half a dozen teenagers swam in the deep end. Otherwise, Tara was alone.

  Her heart thudded as Jack got closer. He’d almost certainly lied about his sister being a private investigator. Considering how many times she’d seen him around town, it made far more sense that he was the P.I. in the family.

  A P.I. who wasn’t satisfied that she wasn’t Hayley Cooper.

  Her mind raced and her heart beat double time. Where was her mother? Could Tara get rid of Jack before they ran into each other? What could she say to get him to leave her alone?

  She’d been about to toss the safety rope with attached floats into the pool. She told herself to act normally, and she threw one end of the blue plastic rope into the water. She bent to fasten the hook to the edge of the pool, drew in a deep breath and got a lungful of chlorine-scented air.

  “Let me help you with that,” Jack called.

  Reluctantly she turned her head to watch him unfastening the lock on the gate and striding to the opposite end of the pool.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off him. His shorts and

  T-shirt called attention to his broad shoulders and athletic build. A wave of attraction swept through her. She quickly squashed it, noting the way he exuded confidence. Like a man who was used to getting what he wanted.

  He knelt on the concrete, as though he weren’t an interloper, as though he belonged.

  She needed to accept there was no getting away from him.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  He lifted his head, revealing the hint of a smile. “Reaching for the rope.”

  He dipped his right hand into the water, stretched out his arm to forage for the rope and winced. Or at least Tara thought he winced. She didn’t have time to wonder about it. She had other things on her mind.

  He hooked the safety rope in place, straightened to his full six foot plus and stared at her across the pool. Despite the overcast sky, it was in the mid-eighties. Goose bumps still broke out on her skin.

  Her modest one-piece bathing suit was more suitable for swimming laps than sunbathing, yet she felt naked. She fought the urge to cross her arms over her chest. She would not let him guess how much he unnerved her.

  “You know what I meant,” she said crisply. “Wherever I go, there you are.”

  “I can explain that,” he began.

  She braced herself to hear the reasons he didn’t buy her denial that she wasn’t Hayley Cooper, wondering if she could counteract them and convince him to go.

  Would it be enough to tell him that if she had been Hayley in another life, she didn’t want to know?

  “Jack! You came!” Danny’s excited voice rang out. Moving with unusual speed, Tara’s foster brother led a contingent of children and camp counselors to the pool. He was clad in a floral-print bathing suit and so much sunscreen it left streaks of white on his skin.

  “Hey, Danny.” Jack moved toward the gate and opened it for Danny. “Good to see you again.”

  He stuck out a hand. Danny ignored it and launched himself into Jack’s arms, giving him a huge hug. Jack grinned and hugged him back.

  “Will you take off your thumb again?” Danny asked, then added almost as an afterthought, “Please.”

  “Sure thing.” Jack grabbed his thumb and repeated the trick Tara had watched him perform at the grocery store. It really did seem as though he could yank off the digit. This time he made it look as if the detached end of his thumb was wiggling before he brought his hands together and became whole again.

  “Yay!” Danny clapped his hands. He turned toward the other campers, who were proceeding more slowly to the pool area. “Come watch Jack take off his thumb!”

  Nine-year-old Kim, who was dressed in a pink bathing suit decorated with butterflies, stopped walking and covered her eyes. So did Samantha, the youngest camper at age seven. Neither of the girls had Down syndrome, but their mothers had used the same two words to describe them—mentally challenged.

  “Yuck,” Kim said.

  “Yuck,” Samantha repeated.

  “I wanna see!” A teenager named Brandon who’d suffered a brain injury as a boy spoke for the first time. He used a loping, uneven stride to reach the pool area.

  “Me, too!” Susie Miller shouted.

  “Again, please!” Danny told Jack. “When I say please, you have to do it.”

  Jack chuckled. “Please is a good enough incentive for me. But let’s wait until everybody who wants to see the magic trick gets here.”

  A teenager named Brandy, who was volunteering as a counselor to get community service hours, joined the campers gathered around Jack. Tara’s mother guided the two youngest girls to the pool area, where they stood back from the group and covered their eyes.

  Her mom walked toward Tara, half her attention on Jack and the giggling group of children around him. Tara felt her pulse race.

  “How did that man know Danny’s name, honey?” Her mother sounded more curious than concerned. “Do you know him?”

  Here was another opportunity for Tara to tell her mother about the age-progression photo. If her mom regarded her blankly, Tara could put the matter out of her mind once and for all. But what if her mother looked

  displeased before answering, the way she had when Tara inquired about the baby photo? What then?

  She wouldn’t confront her mother, Tara decided. She liked her life precisely the way it was. She wasn’t about to do anything to jeopardize that.

  “Not exactly.” Tara drew out the words to buy herself time while she figured out how to answer. “Remember me telling you about Danny’s meltdown at the grocery store? Jack was there. He distracted Danny with a magic trick.”

  “Oooh,” Carrie said, admiration practically oozing from the exclamation. “You’ve got to like a man who’s quick thinking as well as good-looking.”

  “Can you do any other tricks?” The excited voice belonged not to a camper, but to Brandy.

  “I can turn a pencil into rubber.” Jack produced a pencil from his pocket with a flourish. “I need one of you to verify that it’s a solid lead pencil first. Any volunteers?”

  Danny’s arm shot into the air. “Me!”

&
nbsp; Her foster brother took the pencil. His brows knit together as he carefully examined it for a good fifteen seconds before handing it back to Jack.

  “It’s solid,” Danny said.

  “Watch carefully,” Jack said.

  He held the end of the pencil loosely between his right thumb and pointer finger. With a vertical motion, he moved his hand up and down until the pencil did indeed appear as if it were bending. None of the children seemed to realize it was a clever optical illusion.

  “C-cool!” Danny cried.

  “He’s very good with children, your Jack,” her mother said.

  Tara had been thinking the same thing. “My Jack?” she exclaimed. “Why do you think he’s my Jack?”

  “There’s gotta be more to the story than you’re telling me,” her mother said. “Some stranger you met at the grocery wouldn’t show up out of the blue at the camp where you’re volunteering.”

  A lump of what felt like panic stuck in Tara’s throat. Those were her thoughts exactly.

  “It’s possible,” she said, not believing it.

  “Don’t worry yourself about it.” Her mother wiggled her fingers in the air. “I have my ways of extracting information.”

  Jack DiMarco, however, dug up information for a living. She didn’t truly believe her mother could kidnap a child, but neither could she entirely discount it. A wave of protectiveness swept over Tara, fierce enough that she balled her fists. Whatever her mother might have done, Tara owed Carrie. She needed to make sure Jack didn’t go anywhere near her.

  She noticed Gus Miller, the camp director, approaching the pool area with Aggie McCorkle, the perpetually cheerful assistant director. Surely he’d notice there was a stranger in their midst? Would he help Tara’s cause by asking Jack to leave?

  “I’ll show you more magic tricks later,” Jack told the campers. “Right now, I believe it’s time for water aerobics.”

  How did Jack know what activity was next on the camp agenda?

  “Before the children get in the pool, perhaps you’d like to introduce yourself.” Tara’s mother took a few steps toward Jack. Tara had to call upon all her willpower not to clutch her mother’s arm and draw her back. “Some of us haven’t had the pleasure.”

  “Sorry,” Jack said. “I should have done that already.”

  Tara’s entire body tensed. It seemed unlikely that Jack would air his suspicions in front of the entire group. Then again, he was a wild card. Who knew what he’d do?

  “I’m the one who should make the introductions.” Gus edged closer to Jack and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Listen up, everyone. This is Jack, our new volunteer.”

  Tara’s breath caught. How could that be? When camp had started this morning, there were four volunteer counselors in addition to the three-person staff. There had been one more volunteer at orientation last Thursday, but she’d had to drop out because of a family emergency.

  Tara gulped, but the ball of panic wouldn’t dissolve. Was Jack using an investigative tactic to go undercover as a camp volunteer? Was his objective to gather more information about her?

  “Let’s make Jack feel welcome,” Gus said.

  “Hi, Jack!”

  “Welcome!”

  “Hello!”

  While childish voices blended together in greeting, Tara headed straight for Gus. “Can I speak to you for a minute?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Certainly,” he said, moving with her to a quieter corner of the pool area. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us about him before?” She couldn’t make herself say Jack’s name. She didn’t want to be on a first-name basis with the man set on disrupting her life.

  “He just volunteered today,” Gus said. “He saw a notice in the newspaper. Lucky for us, because the listing about the camp needing volunteers was supposed to have expired.”

  Tara didn’t believe a newspaper ad had led Jack to volunteer, not when Danny had mentioned the camp to Jack at the grocery store. How hard could it be for a P.I. to find out where on the Eastern Shore a camp for mentally challenged children was being held?

  “What about the paperwork? I thought volunteers needed to have a TB test on file and a criminal background check,” Tara said. Providing the proper documentation hadn’t been a problem for Tara and her mother. Both the school system and the Virginia Department of Social Services had thorough screening processes.

  “Another lucky break,” Gus said. “Jack works for an indoor sports complex in Kentucky that screens its employees very carefully. They faxed over his paperwork. I gave him an orientation crash course and he was ready to go.”

  “But...but you don’t know anything about him,” Tara protested.

  “I know enough. I got the owner of the sportsplex on the phone and he gave Jack a glowing recommendation,” Gus explained. “Besides, the more volunteers at a camp like this, the better. With Jack, we have the two-to-one camper-to-counselor ratio I was looking for.”

  Gus tilted his head. “Why are you asking all these questions? Do you have a problem with him?”

  Admitting she did would only complicate matters further. “No. No problem.”

  Another lie. Since Jack had arrived on the scene, she was making a habit of telling them.

  * * *

  WATER SPLASHED UP FROM the pool, the sound loud enough that Jack had to strain to hear Tara. She was leading the water aerobics, which made sense considering she was a PE teacher.

  “That’s good. Lift your knees. Land on the balls of your feet and push off from your toes,” she shouted. “Brandon, we’re jogging in place, not running around the pool.”

  Seven of the ten campers had joined Jack, Tara and the female teen counselor in the shallow end of the pool. The two youngest girls in the camp sat on the edge with their legs dangling in the water. They were both so timid that Jack had felt triumphant when he got them to submerge their feet, especially because the tenth camper steadfastly refused to get near the water.

  Danny sat on a chair beside the pool, his arms crossed over his chest. Next to him was a counselor Jack had been told was a developmental disability nurse.

  “No!” he’d repeated whenever anyone invited him to join the class. Eventually they’d had no choice but to let him be.

  Tara had begun the water-aerobics class by instructing the children to walk in place, which had gone over fairly well. Now that they’d graduated to jogging, however, problems were cropping up.

  “I like the way you’re chopping your hands through the water, Garrett,” Tara called to a twelve-year-old boy who seemed as if he’d rather do anything but exercise. “But you’ve got to move your feet, too.”

  “It’s hard!” Garrett protested.

  “Too hard.” A boy named Vince stopped moving altogether.

  “Okay, let’s all stop jogging,” Tara said, as though it were her idea. Very smart, Jack thought. That way, she could keep control of the class. “We’ll do something a little more fun. How does that sound?”

  Nobody said a word. Many of the children were breathing hard even though they hadn’t even been exercising for ten minutes.

  “Sounds great,” Jack said to help her out. “What’s next?”

  Tara’s eyes briefly touched on him, one of the few times she’d acknowledged his presence since he’d showed up at camp. He hadn’t expected a warm welcome, but the chilly reception took him aback.

  “I’ve got an idea,” she said. “Be right back.”

  She waded over to the side of the pool and hopped out, the pool water glistening on her skin. Wrapping a towel around herself and thrusting her feet into flip-flops, she left the pool area and headed for the community center. The children hardly had enough time to splash each other before she was back, carrying a boom box.

  “Who’s ready for aqua Zumba?” she asked in a loud voice.

  She set the boom box down on an umbrella table beside the pool and switched it on. Latin music poured out, the beat catchy enough that Jack felt like
tapping his toes. Tara draped her towel over the chair and stood at the foot of the pool.

  “Let’s dance!” she called, and proceeded to do exactly that. Her hips gyrated, her long legs moved to the rhythm and her slender arms lifted in the air. The motion called attention to her breasts. They were neither too large nor too small. Like the rest of her, they were practically perfect.

  “C’mon!” she yelled above the music. “Let’s get moving!”

  Jack felt properly chastised for being caught staring. Except Tara was talking to the children, not to him. Half of the campers seemed frozen in place.

  “You heard Miss Tara,” Jack called. “It’s time to shake, rattle and roll.”

  He moved in conjunction with the beat, exaggerating his movements so the campers got the idea. Brandy followed his lead. Susie Miller giggled and copied their dance moves. One by one, the other campers joined in. Except Danny.

  The rest of the class passed in a flash, with the children laughing and smiling and creating their own dance moves. As a group, they had a terrific sense of rhythm. Tara abandoned the pool deck for dancing in the water. The assistant director, whose name he couldn’t remember, clapping her hands from dry land. Kim and Samantha, the two young wallflowers, even got into the pool and joined in, as did some of the neighborhood kids who’d started to arrive now that the sun was coming out. The only downside was Danny’s continued refusal to participate.

  “Okay, that’s it for today,” Tara finally said.

  A few of the children groaned. “Already?” Susie called.

  “We’ll do it again tomorrow,” she said. “But now it’s time to get out of the pool.”

  The other volunteers and staff members stood by the pool ladder helping the children out and handing out fluffy white towels. One of them was a petite attractive blonde who could have been anywhere from forty to her early fifties. Jack took a towel from her.

  “Thanks,” he said while he dried off his upper body. He was lucky that the shorts he wore were fashioned from a lightweight material that would dry quickly. “I’m Jack. We haven’t been introduced yet.”

  “Carrie,” she said. “Camp volunteer.”

  “Which child is yours?”