Once a Family

“Have you heard from Tatum?” Why was he doing this? It wasn’t like Talia would be able to help. The sisters hadn’t spoken in more than a year.

“Of course not. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have broken my word to you. No contact, just like we agreed. She’ll be eighteen soon enough and free to make her own choices. And I don’t want her making mine. You were right about that. I don’t want her future on my shoulders.”

“She mimicked your every move.”

“And that’s why you’re checking up on her? Because you think she’s like me and will go behind your back and get into trouble?”

Wincing at the sarcasm in his twenty-six-year-old sister’s voice, Tanner pinched the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes, in an effort to make the pain stop. The pain in his heart...

“I shouldn’t have humiliated you at your place of business, Talia, I’m sorry.” The irony in the words choked him. His hauling her away from a client on the way to a lap dance was humiliating to her, and undressing onstage was not?

“You say you love me, Tanner, but you don’t accept that I’ve made a choice I can live with.”

“You’re a...” He wasn’t going to do this.

“What? A hooker? Go ahead and say it, big brother. It won’t kill you.”

Talia was beautiful. Had so much going for her...

He loved her. But not enough, apparently. Or maybe it was their mother, and her father, who’d failed to give her the validation she’d needed—driving her to find it in the eager paws of men who were so hot for her they’d pay her for privileges.

Or pay just to see her swing around a bar and take her clothes off.

“Tatum’s missing.”

“What does that mean, missing?” She sounded sharp, but he heard a note of concern, too.

Because, deep down, they were family. They loved each other.

And that was why he’d made the call.

“I don’t know, sis.” In one long breath Tanner summarized the hellish couple of hours he’d just spent. “They’ve put out a bulletin and now we wait. I just... They took some things...for her DNA...and I... You should know.”

“They think someone snatched her?”

“They don’t have any evidence of that. They’ve searched all around the house, outside and in, and around the area, too, and so far there’s no sign of struggle and no one saw anything.”

“Have they considered the possibility that she ran away?”

“Yes.”

“It’s what you think, isn’t it?”

Part of him wanted to believe she had, because it meant there was more of a chance that she was safe. But Tatum had been angry with him before and stayed put. You couldn’t parent a child without pissing her off sometimes. Tatum’s anger always passed.

“What did you do to her, Tanner?”

“I threw her punk boyfriend out of the house and forbid her from seeing him.”

“That’s the first place I’d look for her, then.”

“I did. She wasn’t there.”

“Sounds like she learned from my example, after all.” Talia’s words brought back more memories than he needed at the moment. “I ran straight to Rex, making it far too easy for you to find me.”

He’d brought Talia home that first time. The next time, she’d been eighteen, legally allowed to go, and determined that he wouldn’t find her.

He’d been just as determined that he would. And hadn’t stopped looking. Not for years.

She’d already been working in Vegas when he finally had.

“You were only sixteen.” He stood by his long-ago choice. “Besides, this guy’s a real jerk.”

“Rex wasn’t. He was a college graduate with a good job and he wanted to marry me. It was three months before my seventeenth birthday and we’d already set a date.”

But Rex had lost his job and gone to jail for statutory rape. Because at twenty-three Tanner had been Talia’s legal guardian and he’d pressed charges against the twenty-seven-year-old high school teacher he’d caught bedding his sister.

Talia had been pregnant, too. She’d given up the baby for adoption—her choice. But she’d never forgiven Tanner for any of it. If he hadn’t put Rex away, she would’ve been able to keep her son, to give him a good, stable secure life. Or so she’d believed. He’d told her that if he hadn’t pressed charges, Rex would still have been charged and lost his job. She hadn’t wanted to hear a word of it. She’d said Rex had been willing to lose his job, but that he wouldn’t have done jail time. With the certainty of youth, she’d believed that no one else would’ve filed charges against the man.

Whether, deep down, she’d realized the truth or not, she’d blamed him for her broken heart and broken life.

And no good would come of reopening the old wound.

“Harcourt’s into drugs.” Tanner shoved his free hand into the pocket of his jeans and wondered if Tatum could be out there in the vineyard someplace. Close by. Safe. And just making him suffer.

“Selling or taking?”

“Taking, for sure. And I think selling.”

“Tatum knows better than to get involved with drugs.”

Their mother had been an addict. A couple of her baby daddies had been dealers. And not one of the Malone children had ever touched illegal substances. It was like an oath with them.

“He was smoking a pipe out in the barn. There was more than just marijuana in it.”

Like Pavlov’s dogs, they’d all been trained from the womb to know what certain smells meant. And the consequences that would result.

“I’m guessing Tatum didn’t know?”

He’d have guessed the same.

He’d have been wrong.

But there was no good to come from bad-mouthing one sister to another. Or disillusioning Talia any further, either.

“I asked her if she’s ever used drugs. She said no. I believed her,” he said. “I still do.”

For the time being. Too much time with the punk kid who seemed to have more influence over Tatum than Tanner did, and chances were, Tatum would succumb eventually. He’d heard Harcourt pressuring Tatum to “try it” Sunday, when he’d passed the barn on his way back out to the vineyard. Hell, if he hadn’t broken his clippers, he wouldn’t even have known the two were home.