Читать книгу The Truth About Tara - Darlene Gardner, Darlene Gardner - Страница 12

CHAPTER FOUR

CARRIE GREER FIGURED now was as good a time as any to get this over with. Actually, considering camp had started a few hours before and the children were settling down to lunch, it was past time.

If nothing else, the confrontation would take her mind off the approaching anniversary of the saddest day of her life and Tara’s odd plea to see a baby photo of herself. Carrie always had trouble sleeping in the days leading up to the anniversary. Last night she’d tossed and turned even more than usual, wondering what had prompted Tara’s request and worrying that her daughter hadn’t bought her explanation.

She shoved the problem to the back of her mind. Now wasn’t the time to obsess over things she couldn’t change, not when the director of Camp Daybreak was alone in the community center’s small office.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Tara.

“Sure thing.” Her daughter glanced up from the long table in the all-purpose room where she was helping one of the ten campers unpack his lunch. The other nine were happily munching on the sandwiches, chips, fruit and assorted goodies they’d brought from home in their packed lunches.

“Bye, C-Carrie!” Danny waved, his face wreathed in the biggest smile he’d worn since coming to live with her. Just as Carrie suspected, this camp was exactly what Danny needed.

She forgave herself for tricking Tara into volunteering by telling her Danny’s tuition would be waived. There was a kernel of truth in the claim, since the children of volunteers got the first week free. With both Carrie and Tara helping out at the camp, Carrie had a strong argument for not having to pay for the second week.

If she couldn’t sway the director to her way of thinking, Carrie would have to ask Tara for the money. She was loath to do that. Even at half the cost, camps like these were expensive.

The facilities were top-notch. Camp Daybreak had rented space at a privately owned community center that boasted an oversize air-conditioned room. On rainy days, tables could be pushed aside to create an empty space in the center of the room. Campers also had access to a playground and a community pool. The staff was impressive, too. The director was not only the father of one of the campers but a special education teacher, his assistant was a developmental disability nurse and one of the four volunteer camp counselors was a physiotherapist. Another staff member was a speech therapist.

Carrie walked across the all-purpose room, the heels of her sandals making clicking sounds on the linoleum floor, the skirt of her sleeveless cotton dress swishing about her legs. Gustavo Miller was in the cramped office, his head bent over paperwork, one hand poised over a calculator. He didn’t look up.

Here goes, Carrie thought.

“Hey there, Gustavo,” she said.

His head jerked up, his green eyes fastening on her. The color was quite remarkable, considering his dark hair and swarthy complexion. After a few brief meetings, she’d already noticed he was a man of contradictions. Take his name. Miller was as common as names in the United States came. Gustavo was not.

The intent expression on his face morphed into a smile. “Call me Gus. Most people do.”

“I don’t believe I will,” Carrie said. “Gustavo suits the tall, dark and Latin thing you’ve got going on.”

If he’d been seven or eight years older—in other words, her age—she wouldn’t have worded the compliment quite that way. With men as old as she was and older, she was very careful not to flirt.

He laughed, a nice rumbling sound. “My mother’s from Argentina, but I’m only half Latin. My father grew up near here in Exeter.”

“How interesting. How did your parents meet?” she asked.

“Dad was a month into what was supposed to be a trip around the world when he saw her on a beach in Mar del Plata,” he said. “He stayed in Argentina to romance her and six months later they were married. I spent the first ten years of my life in Buenos Aires.”

“Now I understand why you have an accent.”

“You can hear it, then?” He shook his head, as though he didn’t realize how attractive his slightly different pronunciations were. “I learned to speak Spanish first. I’ve lived in the States so long, though, I keep expecting to lose it. You’ve got an accent, too. Southern?”

“That’s right,” she said. “Nothing exotic. I’m just an American girl from Charlotte.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Gustavo said. “I quite like Southern girls.”

Was he flirting with her? No, that was highly unlikely given their age difference.

She nodded to the empty chair at the table. “Mind if I sit down?”

“Not at all.” He folded his hands on top of the papers while she settled into the chair. “Is there something I can help you with, Carrie?”

She shouldn’t be flattered that he remembered her name. She’d been at orientation last week and they were more than halfway through the first day of camp. She’d never heard Carrie pronounced quite that way, though, with the slight rolling of the r’s.

Strangely reluctant to bring up the reason she’d sought him out, she asked, “Aren’t you going to have lunch?”

“A little later,” he said. “But that’s not what you came to see me about, is it?”

Still not ready to talk money, Carrie smiled at him. It wasn’t difficult. Gustavo had a face that made her want to smile. She got a whiff of something. Not cologne. Something clean and fresh like soap or shampoo. Whatever it was, it made him smell good. “I’m wondering how you got to be director of a camp like this?”

“It’s important to me that Susie have the camp experience,” he said. “There wasn’t a special-needs camp close enough, so I decided to start one. First I had to set up as a nonprofit agency. Then I was lucky enough to get a grant to offset some of the costs. We’re starting small this year with the ten campers, but my plan is to keep growing. We might even make next year’s camp residential.”

“I’m impressed,” she said. “You can’t have lived here very long or we’d have run into each other.”

“About six months,” he said. “I’ve been homeschooling Susie, so haven’t met a lot of people yet. We moved from Baltimore when my grandmother had a heart attack. She was running a bed-and-breakfast. Maybe you know it? The Bay Breeze?”

“That sounds familiar,” Carrie said. “It’s a two-story house on the water, right? Not far from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel?”

“Right,” he said. “My parents moved back to Argentina a few years ago. Dad couldn’t get away, so it made the most sense for me to help Grandma run the place until she got better, even though I had to quit my teaching job in Baltimore. Except she never made it out of the hospital.”

Carrie’s heart twisted and she laid her hand on his. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. She was a great lady.”

“Will you and your wife keep the B and B going?” she asked, realizing she was fishing around for his marital status. His daughter, Susie, was a camper, but thus far he hadn’t mentioned a wife.

“I’m divorced,” he said. “And no. I’ve got a special ed job lined up for the fall. I closed the Bay Breeze to guests after my grandma died. I’m putting it on the market once I find another place for Susie and me to live. The place needs too much—how can I put it?—TLC.”

“If you’re in charge of a camp like this, you must be awfully good at TLC,” she pointed out.

He looked down at the table, where her hand still rested on his, and lifted his green eyes. “Thank you.”

She drew her hand back quickly, breaking the contact. Oh, no. Now she’d gone and done it. When she broached the subject of Danny’s tuition, he could get the wrong idea.

“I wasn’t flirting with you,” she blurted out.

“You weren’t?” He actually looked disappointed. “You’re not married, are you?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Widowed.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Me, too.” She sensed he was about to ask her questions she’d rather not answer and cast around for something else to say. “Besides, you’re way too young for the likes of me.”

“I doubt that,” he said. “I’m forty-seven.”

She usually wouldn’t reveal her true age unless threatened at gunpoint, but she was trying to make a point. “I’ll have you know I’m fifty-four.”

“You don’t look it.” His accented words seemed to glide over her skin. She should be gracious and thank him. Surely she’d blush if she did, though.

“Believe it,” she said. “You’re the first person I haven’t lied to about my age in years.”

He threw back his head and laughed, revealing even teeth that looked very white against his tanned skin.

“Is Susie your only child?” she asked, partly because she wanted to know, but mostly to change the subject.

“Yes,” he said. “How about you? Do you have other children besides Tara and Danny?”

Carrie didn’t pause before answering. “Another daughter. We call her Sunny because she’s happy all the time.”

“Cute,” Gustavo said.

Carrie didn’t care to examine why she talked about Sunny as though she were alive. She was about to explain that Danny was her foster child when Susie Miller came running into the office, her face split in a wide smile.

“Daddy!” Susie cried. If she hadn’t made sure the entire camp knew she was eleven, Carrie never would have guessed her age. She was short and on the stocky side, with a round, flat face that was always smiling. In her fine, straight brownish-blond hair, she wore a pink bow. “Look what I found!”

Her hands were cradled together. She opened them and a spider with eight spindly legs jumped out on the table. Carrie took an involuntary step backward. It was a daddy longlegs.

“Look how cute it is!” Susie cried.

Gustavo laughed and hoisted his daughter onto his lap. “Only you would call a spider cute. You were careful with him, weren’t you, mi hija dulce?”

Carrie knew enough Spanish to figure out that translated to “my sweet daughter.”

“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