The Truth About Tara

“Oh, please, Tara.” Her mother laid a hand on Tara’s arm. “Say you’re not mad.”

Tara should have been more irritated than she was. She might have been if the trip had excited her more. But the bottom line was that her mom’s kind heart was in the right place.

“How can I be angry?” Tara asked. “Like you said, you’re only thinking of Danny.”

Her mom’s lips curved upward, relief evident in her smile. She touched Tara’s hand, her blue eyes sparkling. “I am so darn lucky to have a daughter as wonderful as you.”

Tara was the one who was lucky.

After losing her husband and her oldest child when Tara was a baby, her mom had showered all her love and attention on Tara.

Not for a single second of her childhood had Tara doubted she was loved. Mom had been there every step of the way: volunteering to be homeroom mother, sitting in the stands at her athletic events, chairing the all-night grad party committee, chaperoning the prom.

And because a handsome stranger had spun a wild tale, Tara had been prepared to ask her mother for proof that they belonged together.

So what if beneath the hair dye Tara’s natural color was the same golden-brown as Hayley Cooper’s would be? And there could be plenty of explanations for why Tara had never seen baby photos of herself.

As for the flashes Tara sometimes got of a woman shaking her and yelling that she should stop crying, the woman could be anybody. Or nobody. Maybe she was simply the stuff of nightmares.

“I love you, too, Mom,” Tara said.

Her mother beamed and ran a gentle hand over Tara’s cheek the way she’d done so many times before.

You don’t want to believe your mother could have abducted a child, a little voice inside Tara’s head insisted.

True enough.

It was a moot point. As far as Tara was concerned, the absurd matter was closed.

The only person who had ever raised the possibility that Tara hadn’t been born a Greer was a stranger passing through town. When Jack DiMarco left Wawpaney, he’d taken the question with him.

CHAPTER 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.