The Truth About Tara

by Darlene Gardner

  “Danny.” She frowned. “The boy who wouldn’t get in the pool. He does the same thing at his swimming classes, darn him.”

  “Some kids just take a little longer than others to do things,” Jack said, although he wasn’t sure that was Danny’s

  problem. This wasn’t the first activity Danny had refused to attempt. In his peripheral vision he noticed Tara wading through the shallow end of the pool at a fast clip. “If you’re Danny’s foster mother, you must be Tara’s mother.”

  “And proud of it,” Carrie said. “I couldn’t ask for a better daughter.”

  Tara reached the ladder and hoisted herself out of the pool. Water sluiced down her body, causing her skin to glisten.

  “Or a prettier one.” Jack liked the way Tara looked with her wet hair slicked back from her face. It drew her high cheekbones into prominence and called attention to her bow-shaped mouth. She reached for a dry towel somebody had left draped over the fence and wrapped herself in it.

  “I believe I’m going to like you, Jack.” Carrie edged nearer to him. “She’s completely available, in case you were wondering. No husband. No fiancé. She hasn’t even had a boyfriend in a while.”

  “I was wondering,” Jack said in an equally quiet voice. “And I think I’m gonna like you, too, Carrie.”

  “Speak of the devil.” Carrie gestured to her daughter, who was closing the distance between them. “Tara! We were just talking about you.”

  Tara, who’d been full of smiles during the aqua Zumba, didn’t lift her lips. Her eyes seemed to bore into him. “Mom, would you give me a minute alone with Jack?”

  “Certainly.” Carrie winked hugely at Jack. “I need to take the children inside to change out of their wet clothes, anyway.”

  Tara waited until her mother was no longer within earshot before she spoke. “I don’t appreciate you showing up here and cozying up to my mother.”

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “If you have something to say, you can say it to me.” She spoke in a soft, succinct voice. “There’s no reason to—”

  “Jack, c-can you do another magic trick?” Danny was behind Jack, tugging at his towel, ignoring the assistant director who was gathering the rest of the children to take into the community center.

  “Not right now,” Jack said. “Aren’t you supposed to be with the other campers, buddy?”

  Danny thrust his lower lip forward. “I told you. My name’s not Buddy. It’s Danny.”

  “Buddy means the same thing as friend,” Jack said. “That’s why I call you buddy. I think of you as my friend.”

  “Buddy,” Danny repeated, the pout gone.

  “So what do you say, buddy? Ready to go inside?” Jack asked. He raised his eyebrows at Tara in a silent question. It was starting to look as if one of them needed to accompany the child into the community center.

  “Go with Jack, Dan the man,” Tara told the child in an affectionate voice. To Jack, she said, “Camp’s almost done for the day. We can talk when it’s over.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PARENTS, MOST OF THEM in minivans, started arriving about an hour later to pick up their children at the same time senior citizens were setting up a beginner’s line-dancing class. Jack stayed beside the door, alerting the mothers and fathers that their children were inside finishing up an arts and craft project and introducing himself as the new volunteer. After a while, Danny joined him.

  “Jack’s my buddy,” Danny told a woman in a sundress and floppy hat who was the mother of the male camper closest to his own age. “He’s not Vince’s buddy.”

  “Only because I don’t know Vince very well yet,” Jack hastened to reassure his mother. “I didn’t get here until after lunch.”

  “Jack will still like me better tomorrow,” Danny said, puffing out his chest.

  To her credit, Vince’s mother didn’t rise to the bait. “You seem like a very likable young man, Danny.”

  Danny nodded vigorously. “I am.”

  “There you are, sweet boy.” Carrie talked as she crossed the room toward them. “Are you ready to go? Remember I promised to make you my extra-special pancakes for dinner.”

  “I’m ready!” Danny said.

  “Just let me go tell Tara we’re leaving.” Carrie started to turn away.

  “Did the three of you come together?” Jack asked.

  Carrie paused to regard him. “We sure did. Why do you ask?”

  “Tara and I still haven’t had a chance to talk,” Jack said. “I thought maybe I could drive her home.”

  “Excellent idea!” Carrie said. “Unless it’d take you out of your way. She lives in Wawpaney, just a stone’s throw from the elementary school.”

  “That’s no trouble,” Jack said. He’d pass through Wawpaney on the way to the remote beach community where he was renting the cottage.

  “She’s still talking to one of the parents.” Carrie gestured to where Tara stood across the room with Vince and his mother. Tara’s hand rested on Vince’s shoulder and her body was angled toward the boy’s mother as though every word she said was important. “Will you do me a favor and tell her Danny and I left?”

  “Sure.” Jack wasn’t about to ask Carrie if she thought her daughter would mind if he drove her home. He knew the answer.

  Only a few stragglers remained inside the building. Jack leaned against the wall, waiting until Vince and his mother left. Tara glanced right and left as she walked toward him, the overhead lights making her yellow Camp Daybreak T-shirt seem even brighter. She had lovely legs, with well-shaped calves and good muscle definition. The closer she got to him, the more slowly they moved.

  “Have you seen my mother and Danny?” she asked, her demeanor completely different than it had been with Vince and his mother. Again, he wished she’d show him her true self.

  “They’re gone,” he said, raising his voice a little to be heard above the live dance music. “No need to worry, though. I’ll drive you home.”

  Her mouth dropped open and her eyes glinted. “I don’t believe this. You got my mother to leave so you could drive me home?”

  “She thought it was a good idea,” he said.

  “Only because she doesn’t know you’ve been following me for the past few days,” she retorted.

  “What?” He shook his head, finally understanding her cool reception. “I haven’t been following you.”

  “That wasn’t you watching my spinning class at the fitness club Sunday night?”

  He hadn’t realized she’d seen him. No wonder she was so suspicious of him. “Well, yeah, but that was a coincidence.”

  “How about you turning up here, at the camp, after Danny mentioned it. Was that a coincidence, too?”

  “No,” he admitted. “When I saw the newspaper ad, I knew it was the same camp.”

  “I’ve already told you. I’m not who you think I am,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of private eye you are, but—”

  “I’m not a P.I,” he interrupted. “I’m a minor league baseball player.”

  She shook her head. “Why should I believe you? You told Gus you worked at a sportsplex.”

  “I do in the off-season,” he said.

  “Isn’t it baseball season now?” she asked. “If you really are a baseball player, why aren’t you playing?”

  He hesitated, wondering how to phrase it. “I’m recovering from a shoulder injury.”

  “Why would a baseball player from Kentucky come to the Eastern Shore to rehab?” she asked. “Aren’t your doctors and your physical therapist back home?”

  The only way to gain her trust was with complete honesty, Jack thought.

  “I wanted a second opinion from a specialist who’s vacationing on Tangier Island,” he said. “I saw him on Friday, the day I talked to you. I didn’t intend to stay in Virginia, but the area tugged at me. It seems like a good place to recover.”

  Her eyes narrowed. Gaining her trust would be harder than he thought.

  “Then why volunteer
at the camp?” she asked.

  “There’s only so much rehab you can do in a day,” he said. “I’ll go crazy if I don’t have something else to fill the time.”

  She seemed to digest his words. “Then you being here at the camp, you’re saying it doesn’t have anything to do with me?”

  Was she always so suspicious? Jack wondered.

  “I didn’t say that.” He kicked up a corner of his mouth. His reaction to the woman he’d glimpsed when she wasn’t dealing with him was so strong, he longed for the opportunity to get to know her better. “I was hoping we could be friends.”

  She resumed shaking her head even before he finished the sentence. “I have enough friends.”

  He winced. “I deserved that. I don’t blame you for not trusting me, but I’m really not such a bad guy.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and withdrew a business card for the Lexington Sportsplex. He held it out to her. “Call the sportsplex and ask for Kyle Brady, the owner. He’s also my brother-in-law. He’ll verify everything I’ve told you.”

  She kept her hands clasped in front of her. “Why should I do that?”

  “Because we’ll be working together for the next few weeks,” he said. “It’d be nice not to be adversaries.”

  She hesitated so long, he thought she still might refuse. Then slowly she unclasped her hands and reached for the card. Their hands brushed for an electric moment. She quickly drew hers back.

  “Kyle usually works till nine or ten, so you can call him tonight,” Jack said. “He’s married to my sister Annalise, but he can confirm that our other sister, Maria, is a P.I. If you want Maria’s number, I’ll give you that, too.”

  “No,” she insisted. “I don’t need her number.”

  “Okay, then.” He opened the door and stepped aside. “Ready to go?”

  She regarded him warily, making no move to leave. When she finally went out the door and walked with him to the parking lot, it was in silence. He unlocked the passenger door to his pickup with his remote, then pulled it open.

  The rumble of a car engine cut through the quiet. The blue minivan driven by Vince’s mother turned into the lot. She pulled up beside Jack’s pickup and got out of her van. Vince waved from the passenger seat.

  “Vince forgot his lunch box,” his mother explained, seeming more serene than annoyed. “Could one of you keep an eye on him while I run inside and get it?”

  “It’s the lunch box with the sharks, right?” Tara asked in a friendly voice.

  “Right. Don’t ask me why, but Vince adores sharks.”

  “I know where he left it,” Tara said. “Tell you what, I’ll get it for you if you give me a ride home. You did say you lived near Wawpaney, right?”

  “Right. It’s a deal,” Vince’s mother said. It didn’t seem to occur to her that the passenger door to Jack’s pickup was standing open.

  “Great,” Tara said.

  Without looking at Jack, Tara jogged toward the community center. It felt to Jack as if they’d played a game and he’d come out the loser. He didn’t like the feeling. He was a man who set goals and expected to achieve them.

  For the past few years the goal to pitch in the major leagues had been so all-consuming he’d had no room for another. That had changed.

  He intended to get Tara to trust him, no matter what.

  * * *

  THE BEACH WAS DESERTED Tuesday morning except for the lone woman sitting on the sand with her arms wrapped around her knees. She was facing the surf, well beyond the tide line. Waves rolled gently to shore, plovers foraged for food and the scent of the salt water carried on the Chesapeake Bay breeze.

  Tara crossed the empty beach toward the woman, her running shoes sinking into the sand, the breeze drying the sweat on her brow from the three-and-a-half miles she’d just run.

  With the temperature in the low seventies and the sun starting to rise in the hazy sky, it should have been the start of a beautiful day. Tara didn’t even have to worry about Jack DiMarco anymore. She’d called the sportsplex in Kentucky last night as he’d suggested and verified he was indeed a baseball player and not a private investigator.

  But the day wasn’t beginning well because the woman sitting by herself was her mother.

  Tara nearly hadn’t come to the beach this morning. She’d almost believed her mother about today being just another day rather than the anniversary of the date she’d lost her husband and older daughter.

  Almost, but not quite.

  A pelican dived into the bay and emerged on the surface of the water with its breakfast. The unfortunate fish flopped in the pelican’s bill before being swallowed whole, its life snatched away in an instant.

  The lapping of the waves was gentle, but her mother didn’t react to the sound of Tara’s approach. Even when Tara sat down beside her on the grainy sand, her mother kept staring out at the bay. A trickle of tears dampened her cheeks. One minute stretched into another, each one more telling than the last.

  “I didn’t mean to come to the beach today.” Her mother finally broke the silence, speaking in a soft, shaky voice that Tara had to strain to hear. “But I woke up before dawn and I happened to see Mrs. Jorgenson getting her newspaper. Before I knew it, I was outside asking her to come and stay with Danny.”

  Tara heard what her mother didn’t say.

  “Dad and Sunny were on my mind when I woke up, too,” she said. Tara’s first waking thought had actually been of her mother. She’d lain in bed in the weak light of dawn, rejecting the notion to go back to sleep until her alarm went off.

  As she laced up her running shoes a short time later, she’d been aware that the morning jog she planned to take due west to the nearest beach was for more than exercise.

  No matter what her mother claimed, Tara had known she’d find her there. The beach was where her mother had spent the morning of this date for as long as Tara could remember.

  “Even after all this time, it hurts like a thorn in my heart to think about them,” her mother said. “Looking at the water brings it all rushing back. It doesn’t matter that this is the bay and it happened a long way from here at the ocean.”

  Tara never pressed her mother for the details of the tragic day. Over the years, however, she’d picked up bits and pieces of information. She knew, for example, that the tragedy had occurred at one of the beaches on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. After saving up for months for their first beach vacation, her parents had chosen one of the little towns on the Outer Banks. The location made sense because it was a manageable drive from their home in Charlotte.

  “If it hurts so much, why do you do this to yourself, Mom?” Tara asked gently.

  “I don’t seem to know how to stop.” Her mother’s gaze was still on the water. “I can picture them clear as day. Sunny was running full tilt for the ocean, laughing and shouting. Scott was coming up right behind her. He swept Sunny into his arms and lifted her into the air, twirling her around.”

  Tara should stop her mother before she got any further. She parted her lips to speak, but her vocal cords froze. She’d never heard the entire story. So help her, no matter how painful it was, she wanted to hear it.

  “I was smiling on my way back to the hotel. I left my beach chair there. Scott didn’t want me to go back for it. He said the beach blanket was plenty good enough. He wanted me in the water with him and Sunny. But I wanted that chair.”

  She took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling raggedly.

  “Our hotel was but a couple blocks from the ocean,” she said. “Still, it couldn’t have taken me more than fifteen minutes to get the chair. I remember humming on the walk back, that song about what a beautiful morning it was.”

  Her mother swallowed. Again Tara thought about stopping her. Again she let her continue.

  “I could tell right off the bat something was dreadfully wrong.” Her mother spoke in a monotone. “There were a dozen or so people in a half circle at the shoreline, standing around something. One woman was s
creaming. Another was crying. I couldn’t figure what they were staring at. I thought maybe Scott would know. I looked around for him. Except I couldn’t find him. And that’s when I knew.”

  Her mother’s pain was so raw that Tara felt it, too. She put her arm around her mother’s shoulder, drawing her close.

  “A man was trying to do CPR on Scott. He’s the one who pulled them out. He said it happened really fast. They were in water about waist-deep when a big wave came. Scott must have lost hold of Sunny, because he started shouting for help. When the man got to him, the water was over Scott’s head. He was caught in an undertow.” Her mother’s lips trembled. “The man maybe could have saved him, but Scott told him to find our little girl. When he did, it was too late for both Scott and Sunny.”

  Tara squeezed her mother’s shoulders tighter, horrified at the scene her mother described. She’d always known her father and sister had drowned, but without the specifics the story didn’t have the power to grab her by the heart and squeeze.

  “If only I hadn’t gone back for that stupid chair,” her mother said in a small voice. “Maybe things would have turned out different.”

  Tara shifted her body so she could look into her mother’s

  face. “It wasn’t your fault, Mom. You know that, don’t you?”

  “That’s what my therapist said.” Her mother’s eyes dropped to the sand. “You didn’t know I’d seen one of those, did you now? If I hadn’t, we probably wouldn’t be living here.”

  “I don’t understand,” Tara said.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder why we live so close to the water when I hate it so?” her mother asked.

  “On occasion,” Tara admitted. Except for her yearly pilgrimage on the anniversary of the deaths, her mother hadn’t spent any time at the beach in years. She’d gone with Tara when she was a child, but only to the parts of the bay where the water was calmest. She’d stayed out of the water herself and had strict rules about how far Tara was allowed to venture into the water. She even stayed out of the pool, although she’d made sure Tara could swim.

  “I was still wallowing in grief a year later. My therapist said what I needed was a fresh start away from Charlotte,” her mother said. “A friend of mine invited us to come live with her in Wawpaney.”