Читать книгу The Truth About Tara - Darlene Gardner, Darlene Gardner - Страница 10
ОглавлениеCHAPTER TWO
TANGIER ISLAND WAS A THROWBACK, a tiny slice of land in the Chesapeake Bay with nothing near it but crab shanties on stilts and miles of water. The teacher in Wawpaney who looked so much like the age progression of Hayley Cooper seemed very far away. So did civilization as Jack had come to know it. If not for the tour guides who greeted the ferry from Onancock, Jack imagined Tangier hadn’t changed much in hundreds of years. The guides stood in front of golf carts, which according to the ferry captain was the main method of transportation on the island aside from walking. The boat had been about a third full, which apparently was typical for a weekday before summer kicked in. The other passengers, all of them dragging suitcases, went directly to carts. Jack hung back.
“Ten dollars for a tour of the island,” a short middle-aged woman, wearing a straw hat, called to Jack. She had the same formal English accent as the ferry captain, which supposedly didn’t sound much different than the way Tangier residents had spoken in the 1600s.
“How much to take me to the Marsh Harbor B and B?” Jack asked.
“The same.” The woman smiled at him, revealing a gold front tooth. She swept a hand toward her golf cart.
Why not? Jack thought. He hopped in, resting his large cardboard folder on his lap.
“Do you have any bags?” the woman asked.
Jack tapped the folder. “This is all I need.”
The woman nodded and joined Jack in the cart, pressing her foot down on the accelerator. The canopy over the cart provided welcome relief from the blazing June sun that made the day feel warmer than eighty degrees.
The cart crawled ahead more slowly than the posted fifteen-miles-per-hour speed limit down a quiet, narrow street leading away from the dock. People wandered from shop to shop. None of them seemed to be in a hurry.
“This is Main Street,” the guide said, pride evident in her voice. A few restaurants shared space with a place to rent bikes and a smattering of gift shops, one of which proclaimed Tangier The Soft Crab Capital of the World. There wasn’t a fast-food chain or department store in sight. In the distance, a church steeple pointed to the sky.
“Legend has it that Tangier Island was settled in the middle of the 1680s by the Crockett family. No relation to Davy,” she said in her accented English. “This was after Captain John Smith discovered Tangier in 1608. Not counting the tourists, we have about seven hundred residents, most of them watermen.”
After a few blocks, she veered the golf cart off the main thoroughfare onto an equally narrow street. She chatted about the island’s eclectic mix of styles while they passed Victorian cottages that were next door to double-wide trailers. A few homes had weathered gravestones in their front yards.
Jack breathed in the earthy smell of the marsh. He wasn’t in Tangier as a tourist, but the guide had aroused his curiosity. “How big is the island?”
“Three miles long, one-and-a-half miles wide.” She turned the golf cart down another street that had a partial view of the bay. “We have room for some churches, a few grocery stores, a school, a health center and not much else. Even in the high season, we’re not crowded. Exactly how we like it.”
She pulled up in front of a large yellow clapboard house with turn-of-the-century Victorian architecture and a steeply pitched white roof. A wide porch wrapped around the house.
“Here we are,” she said.
If Jack had known exactly how close the dock was to the B and B, he would have skipped the golf cart and set off on foot. But then, he would have missed the nuggets of information about Tangier.
He pulled out his wallet and withdrew enough money for her fee plus a healthy tip. “Thanks for the ride.”
“I hope you have a wonderful time here on our little piece of paradise,” she said, puttering away with a wave of her hand.
The house had none of the trappings of tourism except the Marsh Harbor B and B sign suspended from one of the porch railings. Jack climbed the three wooden steps leading to the front door, stopping abruptly when he noticed a gently swaying hammock occupied by a man with white hair. Could it be? Jack narrowed his eyes. Yes, it was Robert Reese.
Although they’d never been introduced, Jack recognized the other man from his website photo. Not many guys sported a full head of prematurely white hair before they were forty years old.
Jack strode forward, the soles of his sturdy sport sandals clapping against the wooden slats of the porch. “Dr. Reese?”
The man rested his book against his stomach spine first. It was a mystery Jack recognized as one of the blockbuster hits of the year. He looked up at Jack with a quizzical expression, as though Jack presented a bigger puzzle than the book.
“You are Dr. Robert Reese, aren’t you?” Jack asked.
The other man scrunched up his brow, contorting his regular features. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
Jack stuck out his hand. “Jack DiMarco.”
Reese took it, a wary look in his eyes. “Refresh my memory.”
“The pitcher with the torn labrum,” Jack said. “We spoke a few days ago. You said you were on your way here, that the only people you’d be seeing in the next three weeks were on Tangier.”
Reese swung his legs over the side of the hammock and stood up. His book slid off his lap, falling to the porch floor with a loud thunk. Several inches shorter than Jack, he carried himself with the confident air of a successful man. “I remember now. Don’t tell me you took that as an invitation?”
Jack wasn’t about to admit he realized Reese had been brushing him off. He inhaled the scent of island flowers before answering. “I tried to call ahead to let you know when I was coming, but I couldn’t get through to your cell.”
“There’s no cell phone reception on the island,” Reese said, then stopped. “Wait. You never did tell me how you got my number.”
Where there’s a will, Jack thought, there’s a way. He’d called in a favor from a former teammate who’d become golf buddies with Reese after the doctor operated on his shoulder.
“Does it matter?” Jack asked.
“I suppose not.” Reese bent and picked up his book. “So, tell me. Why exactly are you here?”
“My goal is to play ball again. To achieve it, I need to be operated on by somebody who’s tops in the field.” Jack omitted the fact that the team doctor of the Owensboro Mud Dogs had advised against surgery, leading to the team releasing Jack. “Lots of people say you’re the best.”
“Are you trying to flatter me?” Reese asked.
“That depends.” Jack cocked his head. “Is it working?”
Reese ran a hand through his white hair. “The reason I vacation on Tangier, that anybody vacations here, is to get away from it all. I should tell you to leave me alone.”
“But?” Jack asked, starting to hope.
“But vanity is a weakness of mine,” Reese finished. “You understand I can’t do the surgery on the island?”
“I just want to get it scheduled. The sooner, the better,” Jack said.
Reese walked over to one of two large wicker chairs on the porch and sat down. Jack took the other seat.
“Tell me how the injury happened,” he said.
“About a year ago I collided with a base runner and broke my collarbone.” Jack stated the barest facts when there was so much more to the story.
“I thought you tore your labrum,” Reese said.
“I didn’t know the labrum was torn until the collarbone healed. The MRI I had a month ago confirmed it.” Jack held up his cardboard folder. “I brought my films, present and past.”
“You do understand I need a computer to look at those,” Reese said, making no attempt to take the films. “Wait a minute. What do you mean, past?”
“I’ve had two rotator-cuff surgeries.”
“And you want to go through surgery a third time?” The tail end of Reese’s question rose.
“If it means I can pitch at a competitive level again, hell, yeah.”
“Stand up and show me your range of motion,” Reese said.
Jack raised his arms over his head. The right one touched his ear. The left one came close.
“Not bad after a rotator-cuff injury,” Reese said, “especially considering you have that tear.”
“Tears,” Jack corrected. “There is no one big tear, just a number of smaller ones.”
Reese stroked his chin. “How old are you, Jack?”
“Thirty-one.”
Reese whistled. “Too bad I didn’t know about the other surgeries or I could have saved you a trip. A third surgery won’t get you where you want to be.”
“How can you say that without looking at my films?”
“I don’t need to see them,” Reese said. “The labrum is collagen based. It can’t be strengthened.”
“People have surgeries to repair their labrums all the time,” Jack argued.
“Yes, they do. But if they’re athletes who use an overhead motion, like a pitcher, it’s highly unlikely that surgery will yield the desired result,” Reese said. “My advice is to go with rehab to strengthen your shoulder muscles and increase flexibility.”
“Does rehab ever work?” Jack asked.
“Depends on how aggressive the rehab is,” Reese said. “I know of a swimmer with a mild tear who came back to compete in the Olympics. But he was ten years younger than you.”
“I’m tough,” Jack said. “I’ve already rebounded from two surgeries. I can rehab with the best of them.”
“That may be true, but you’ve got to understand how far-fetched it is to think you’ll improve to the point where you can pitch at a major league level.” Reese’s pronouncement was distressingly close to what the Owensboro team doctor had said. “Let me give you a piece of advice, Jack. Find something else to do with your life.”
Later that afternoon, after an hour-long ferry ride under the unrelenting sun, Jack arrived back at the dock at Onancock. It was larger and more tourist oriented than some of the other small towns and quaint villages that dotted the finger of land that made up the Eastern Shore of Virginia, with a prominent downtown and several hotels and B and Bs. He walked the block into town to find a place to eat. His head hurt from thinking about what the specialist had said.
Find something else to do with your life.
“Like hell,” he said aloud.
He’d been working toward pitching in the major leagues since he was a boy. He’d gotten there three times, twice as a September call-up and once as a roster player. Because of the injuries, however, his big-league stat line was meager: three games, four total innings. He refused to believe the dream was over.
He walked past a gift shop and an insurance office before coming to a storefront that looked more like a house than a business. Real estate listings plastered the front window. He slowed, then stopped. The sign above the door said the Realtor dealt in rentals as well as sales, not only in Onancock, but throughout the Eastern Shore.
Jack thought about the Olympic swimmer who’d returned to his previous form. He’d take bets that the swimmer didn’t have sisters who popped in on him whenever they felt like it and parents who kept telling him that life didn’t end when athletic careers did.
No, the swimmer had probably rehabbed somewhere peaceful and tranquil where he could devote his energy to healing. Somewhere like the Eastern Shore.
Jack pushed through the door of the Realtor’s office. The woman at the reception desk looked up, a smile on her face. “Can I help you?”
“You sure can,” he said. “I need to get away from it all.”
* * *
THE SALTY BREEZE BLEW over the rustic outdoor patio of the restaurant, one of the few establishments near Wawpaney with a water view. This view was of a shimmering bay that eventually led to the Atlantic Ocean. The sight didn’t have its usual soothing effect on Tara. No surprise. Mary Dee Larson was gazing at her as though Tara had just bitten the head off a seagull.
“You can’t be serious!” Mary Dee exclaimed. “That kayaking trip sounded amazing. How could you cancel it?”
Tara popped a coconut shrimp into her mouth and washed it down with some of her happy-hour margarita. Strawberry, her favorite flavor. She intended to enjoy it. Most of the Eastern Shore’s hundreds of miles of coastline was bordered by salt marshes, not restaurants. They’d been lucky to snag a table in a prime location. This marked the first Friday after school had been let out for the summer and the place was full, mostly with tourists. Even so, the atmosphere was laid-back. Visitors came to the Eastern Shore for a quiet getaway, usually at a
B and B with a semiprivate beach on the bay. The eastern side of the peninsula was largely bordered by marshland and waterways that led to the secluded barrier islands. The hordes of tourists were an hour north in Ocean City, Maryland, and an hour south in Virginia Beach.
“Canceling was surprisingly easy,” Tara said. “I got all but fifty dollars back from my deposit, and the airline gave me a flight credit.”
Mary Dee set her own margarita glass down on the table with a clink. She thrust out her glossy red lower lip that matched her red blouse. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. That trip would have been great for you.”
Tara wasn’t sure she agreed. Since none of their other friends were kayakers, Mary Dee had persuaded Tara to check out an organization that set up outdoor excursions for singles. The closest kayak trip was on the Snake River in Wyoming. The more Tara thought about it, however, the less attractive the trip seemed.
“I probably would have gotten cold feet, anyway,” Tara said. “I mean, why should I go all the way to Wyoming when I can kayak here?”
“For adventure,” Mary Dee said.
“And can you imagine the kind of guys who sign up for those sorts of trips?” Tara continued as though she hadn’t heard her. “They’re probably out for sex.”
“So what? Some sex would do you good.” She nodded in the direction of four guys they’d known in high school who were across the patio hoisting beers and singing. Tara had dated two of them. “You seem to have already ruled out every man around here.”
“The timing is bad, too,” Tara said, ignoring her friend’s comment. She gazed out into the bay, where the sun was sinking below the horizon in a blaze of red and yellow. “I don’t know what I was thinking when I made the reservation, with the anniversary coming up on Tuesday.”
Tara had been friends with Mary Dee long enough that she didn’t need to explain the significance of the date. The other woman was well aware that was when Tara’s father and sister had died.
“You weren’t planning to leave until Wednesday,” Mary Dee pointed out. “And I thought your mother was going to treat the anniversary like any other day this year.”
“I’m not entirely sure she can do it,” Tara said. “She might need me to—”
“How about what you need?” Mary Dee interrupted. “They’ve been gone thirty years, Tara, but you’re here and you’re alive. When was the last time you did anything for yourself?”
Tara watched the last of the sun disappear before she answered. “I ran five miles last night and had a yogurt smoothie for breakfast this morning.”
“Would you stop doing that?”
“Stop doing what?”
“Pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.” Mary Dee shook her head. “It used to work but not anymore. I’m on to you, Tara Greer.”
Was that really her name? Or was it Hayley Cooper? Tara thrust the ridiculous though from her mind, dismayed that she’d allowed it to surface.
“I’m sorry, M.D.,” Tara said. “I know you’re only trying to look out for me. But missing the trip isn’t a big deal. And it’s not like I have a choice.”
“You could have chosen to tell your mom no,” Mary Dee said. “She didn’t have any right to volunteer you like that without asking first.”
“I hadn’t gotten a chance to tell her about Wyoming yet,” Tara said. “Besides, the camp sounds like fun.”
Mary Dee thumped the table with a manicured hand. “Doesn’t matter. She still shouldn’t have volunteered you.”
“It’s for a good cause,” Tara said.
“Yeah, but why are her causes more important than yours?” Mary Dee asked. “She always needs something from you.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
Mary Dee raised her dark eyebrows. “Then why do you live two blocks away from her?”
“You know why,” Tara said. “My place was such a great deal, I couldn’t pass it up.”
“Was that really the reason?” Mary Dee asked. “Or did your mother need you to live close by?”
Tara twirled the tiny straw in her margarita glass, not bothering to point out that while she relished her own space she liked being available for her mother. Mary Dee would probably find fault with that, too. “You’re being awfully hard on me today.”
Mary Dee laid her hand on Tara’s arm. “I don’t mean to be. I’m only trying to get you to be a little more selfish.”
Tara reached across the table, plucked one of Mary Dee’s breaded mushrooms from her plate and popped it into her mouth.
“How’s that?” she asked.
Mary Dee laughed. “Better. Now, are you going to tell me about that guy I saw you with yesterday?”
Tara blinked, blindsided by the question.
“You didn’t really think I’d forgotten about it, did you? So spill.”
“He was nobody,” Tara said.
“What? A guy that hot—he was definitely somebody.”
“A tourist,” Tara clarified.
“What did he want?”
It was on the tip of Tara’s tongue to repeat the crazy tale Jack DiMarco had spun of the abducted three-year-old and Tara’s own uncanny resemblance to the age-progression photo.
“Directions.” Tara wasn’t sure why she lied, especially because she seldom censored herself in front of Mary Dee. Tara often felt as though her sister’s death had created a void in her life that hadn’t been filled until Tara had become friends with Mary Dee.
“That’s it?” Mary Dee’s expression crumbled. “I had such high hopes for you two.”
“You’re a real pain with that stuff since you got married,” Tara complained. “Just because you’re in love doesn’t mean I have to be.”
“Being in love is wonderful.” Mary Dee’s lips rose in the dreamy smile she got whenever anyone referred to marriage or husbands or love. Then again, she was still a newlywed. “If you’d make room in your life for a relationship, you could feel wonderful, too.”
“I’ve had plenty of relationships,” Tara countered.
“Short ones,” Mary Dee said. “You find fault with everybody you date.”
“That’s not true,” Tara said. “I’m just not willing to settle for anything less than fireworks, like you have with Bill and my mom had with my dad.”
“You should have gone to Wyoming to increase your chances of finding someone, then.” Mary Dee gestured to the happy-hour crowd, made up of almost all couples. “Speaking of that, did you at least give that tourist your number?”
“No, Mary Dee,” Tara said with exaggerated patience. “I did not give my number to the stranger who stopped to ask for directions.”
“What good are you, girl?” Mary Dee asked, shaking her head. “I know you want children some day. You need a man for that.”
Tara laid a finger on her cheek. “So now you think the tourist who asked for directions should be the father of my children? I don’t even know if he’s single.”
“You didn’t check out his ring finger?” Mary Dee asked.
She had, actually. It was bare. She was uncomfortably aware that she’d found him attractive. No, not merely attractive. Appealing. If he’d been anybody else, she might have found a way to give him her number.
Mary Dee pointed a finger at her. “You did, didn’t you? I knew you were attracted to him. Too bad you don’t know where he’s staying. You could at least have a fling with him while he’s visiting.”
Tara’s heartbeat sped up at the prospect, although she should not have been thinking about Jack DiMarco in those terms. She had ample reason to hope she never saw him again. “I guess I missed my chance, then.”
“Too bad.” Mary Dee fanned herself. “Now, that’s a man who could get a woman thinking about her needs.”
Tara’s cell phone vibrated and skittered a few inches on the table, as if it were alive. With an apologetic look at Mary Dee, Tara picked it up and checked the display. Her mother. Not that she’d tell her friend that.
“Sorry,” Tara said. “I’ve got to take this.”
Mary Dee nodded, watching Tara over the rim of her glass as she sipped her margarita.
“Hey, what’s up?” Tara asked, careful not to call her mom by name.
“I think I smell gas in the kitchen!” her mother cried. “I checked and the pilot light’s not on. Wouldn’t you know the shut-off valve’s behind the stove, which is way too heavy for me to move.”
Tara turned away from Mary Dee and spoke directly into the phone so her mother could hear and her friend couldn’t. “Did you call the gas company?”
“Yes, but what if it takes them an hour to get here like it did the last time?” her mother asked. “I can’t stay outside on the porch with Danny for an hour. You know how he gets when his routine is disrupted.”
Tara tapped her nails on the table, trying to come up with the best solution to the problem. “I guess I could be there in about twenty minutes.”
“Could you?” her mother asked. “That would be wonderful.”
Tara cast a glance at Mary Dee, who was still watching her. Tara wouldn’t be leaving her friend high and dry if she cut out early. Mary Dee had mentioned that her husband had rented a movie they were planning to watch tonight.
“I’ll leave right now,” she told her mom. “In the meantime, open some windows and stay out of the kitchen.”
“Already done. Bless you!” Her mother made a few more gratifying noises before Tara disconnected the call.
Taking a deep breath, Tara addressed Mary Dee. “I’m sorry. Something’s come up. I’ve gotta go.”
“Of course you do.”
Tara finished off the last swallow of her margarita, set enough money on the table to cover their tab and stood up. “I really am sorry, M.D.”
“I know you are,” Mary Dee said.
Tara turned away from her friend and started for the exit. She hadn’t gotten two steps when she heard Mary Dee’s voice calling after her.
“Say hey to your mom for me.”
* * *
TARA GRABBED FOR HER foster brother Danny’s soft hand the following afternoon, holding it securely in hers as they crossed the parking lot to the Kroger in Wawpaney. There weren’t a lot of choices. The next closest grocery store was twenty miles away.
“You’re a good boy to come with me.” After picking up Danny from his Saturday swimming lesson at the community center in Cape Charles, where the camp was being held, she’d announced she needed to make a stop. “If I don’t buy a few things, my cupboards will be bare. Like Mother Hubbard.”
“Your mother’s name isn’t Hubbard.” Danny gazed up at her out of small brown eyes with the distinctive slant characteristic of people with Down syndrome. He was short for his age, another trait common to children like him.
“You’re right.” Tara sometimes forgot how literal children with Down’s were. “It’s Carrie. She’s your foster mother and my mother.”
No matter what the stranger who’d stopped her on the street had suggested.
Tara released Danny’s hand to take one of the grocery carts in front of the store, careful to keep him in sight. During the time it had taken Tara to get to her mother’s house the night before, Danny had wandered close to the street to follow a butterfly.
“C-Carrie is getting pretty,” Danny announced. He had a good vocabulary, although his speech was halting and not quite clear. He also stuttered occasionally. Once school started again, he’d be in speech therapy.
“Right again,” Tara said. “Carrie’s at the beauty shop. That’s why I picked you up from swimming.”
Her mother had insisted Danny take the lessons, maintaining that anyone who lived in an area surrounded by water should know how to swim.
Danny scrunched up his face. “Don’t like swimming.”
That was an understatement. Today had been lesson number two and Danny had yet to agree to get into the water. Afterward the instructor had advised Tara to suspend the lessons until he had a change of heart.
“You can’t know you don’t like it until you try it,” Tara said.
“Know it now,” Danny insisted.
“Oh, yeah?” Tara asked. “What if I refused to learn how to drive because I thought I wouldn’t like it? Then how would we get to the grocery store?”
Danny looked thoughtful. “Walking.”
“Good answer,” she said, laughing. It served her right for asking a question with such an easy answer. “Dan the Man strikes again.”
Danny giggled at the favorite nickname, and she bent down and gave him a hug. He loved hugs. He’d also been laughing more and more in the three weeks since he’d come to live with her mother. It was a welcome change from the sad little boy who’d kept asking where his real mother was.
She waited for Danny to precede her through the automatic door into the store. “Stay close,” she told him.
He moved a step nearer to her.
Tara stopped at a table of navel oranges at the front of the produce section and tore a plastic bag off the roll. “You want me to buy a couple extra for you?”
“Don’t like oranges.”
“I love them.” Tara injected enthusiasm into her voice. She picked out four oranges and dropped the bag into the cart, then pointed to the refrigerated section containing precut bags of vegetables. “How about some baby carrots?”
“No,” he said. “No c-carrots.”
Her mother was in the process of ensuring that Danny ate healthy foods. Like a lot of Down syndrome children, he was on the chubby side. Diet, however, was only one factor. Many children like Danny weren’t active early in life because they had decreased motor skills. Add stunted growth to the mix and weight problems resulted. In Danny’s
case, they were compounded because he loved to eat with a rare passion.
“I’ll give you a hint about what I need next.” Tara turned the cart with difficulty, noticing for the first time she’d chosen one with a bum wheel. “Cluck cluck cluck cluck.”
“Chicken!” Danny said.
“Right you are.” She maneuvered the cart to the top of one of the long aisles and got ready to push it to the refrigerated section in the back of the store.
“Tara!” Mrs. Jorgenson, who’d been her mother’s neighbor for as long as Tara could remember, headed toward them with the help of a cane. Otherwise, she was in admirable shape for a woman of eighty-plus, with a trim figure and dark blond hair without a trace of gray. “How nice to see you. You, too, Danny.”
“Who are you?” Danny asked.
“You know Mrs. Jorgenson, Danny,” Tara said. “She lives in the white house across the street from you.”
“Old lady in white house,” Danny said. Tara winced.
“That’s me,” Mrs. Jorgenson said cheerfully. “I’ll be eighty-seven on my next birthday.”
“I’m ten,” Danny said.
“Lucky you,” Mrs. Jorgenson said. “Where’s your mother, Tara?”
“At the beauty salon,” Tara said. “School’s out for the summer so I have more time to help her with Danny.”
“Such a good heart your mother has,” Mrs. Jorgenson said. “I don’t know what I would have done without her when Artie was in the hospital. She drove me there every day. Now that he’s home, she stops by a few times a week to check on us. Always brings us something home cooked, too.”
Tara hadn’t known that, but it didn’t surprise her—not when frozen dinners filled Mrs. Jorgenson’s buggy.
“Artie doesn’t feel up to cooking these days,” Mrs. Jorgenson said, gesturing to the food she was going to buy. “I was never much good at it.”
Danny started down the nearest aisle, darting back and forth as he checked out the items on the shelves. Tara debated whether to call him back and decided against it. The attention span of a ten-year-old, disabled or not, was only so long.
“Nice talking to you, Mrs. Jorgenson,” Tara said. “But I’ve got to go after Danny.”
“Certainly dear,” the older woman said, shooing Tara away with the motion of her hand.
Tara gave chase, the bad wheel on her buggy causing the entire cart to wobble. “Danny, wait up!”
She needn’t have bothered calling out anything. The child had stopped, transfixed by an item on the shelves. Tara groaned even before he reached out and grabbed a jumbo-sized bag of potato chips.
“Look what I found!” Danny thudded toward her on heavy feet. “Chips!”
He put the bag in her cart, his face creased in a broad smile. Tara did not smile. The salty snack was a terrible choice for a little boy with a weight problem.
She reached inside the cart for the chips and held them out to Danny. “Please put those back, Danny.”
“I like chips!” Danny cried.
“I know you do,” Tara said. “But they’re not good for you.”
“They are good!” he protested, his voice rising.
“Not every food that tastes good is good for you.” Tara gave up trying to get Danny to reshelve the chips. “I’ll buy you a healthy snack.”
She headed for the spot where the chips had been with Danny following close behind.
“Want chips!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
The other people in the aisle, Laura Thompson and her two young daughters, stopped and stared. Tara had taught the older girl, Shelly, in PE last year. She groaned inwardly. Tara was a teacher. She was supposed to be able to handle situations like this.
“Anything I can do to help?” Laura asked.
“Thanks, but no,” Tara said. “Please stop yelling, Danny.” She kept her voice as calm as possible, the way she did when one of the students at school misbehaved. She placed the potato chips back on the shelf. “Let’s go find you something else.”
“No-o-o-o-o!” Danny screamed, his face turning red. “Want chips!”
Although her mother had warned her about Danny’s tantrums, Tara had never seen one. Her calm voice hadn’t worked. Time to try something else.
“Quiet down this instant, Danny!” she said sharply.
“Want chips!” His cry was even more ferocious than the last one. With a defiant look, he snatched the chips from the shelf and took off down the aisle as fast as his short legs would carry him.
“Danny! Come back!” she yelled after him.
He didn’t even slow down. With the bag of chips slapping against his hip, he veered right when he reached the end of the aisle.
Tara got behind the cart and followed him. “Sorry about this,” she called to Laura and her two daughters as she passed by. She tried to speed up, but the rickety cart slowed her.
“Forget this,” she said aloud and abandoned the buggy.
At the end of the aisle she turned in the direction Danny had gone. She stopped in her tracks. The child was nowhere in sight. She couldn’t hear him, either.
Her heartbeat sped up and her throat closed. Hayley Cooper sprang to mind. Was this panic what Hayley’s mother had experienced when she first realized her little girl was gone?
Tara usually felt safe in Wawpaney, which encompassed a few square miles and had a population of about four hundred. Even during the height of summer, the small inland town didn’t get a lot of strangers. Hayley had reportedly been abducted from a small town in Kentucky, proof that bad things can happen anywhere.
Her heart thudded so hard it felt as if it was slamming against her chest. The store had dual exits and one of them was in the general direction Danny had headed. Tara set off again, checking each aisle for any sign of Danny. She spotted people she recognized as she went, but didn’t want to linger, asking them if they’d seen Danny. Her panic grew by the second until there was only one more aisle to go.
She was almost afraid to look for fear she wouldn’t see him. But, yes! There he was. Not alone, though. A man was crouched down so that he and Danny were at eye level.
Not just any man.
Jack DiMarco.
Her fear over losing Danny subsided, and her heart gave a little leap. If he’d been any other man, she would have attributed the reaction to excitement. But no good reason could exist for Jack to still be in Wawpaney. At the thought, adrenaline of another sort surged through her. She glanced back over her shoulder, battling the urge to flee. Retreat wasn’t an option, however, not without Danny.
Gathering her courage, she started forward.
