Child by Chance

The idea had come to her after spending time with some of the residents at the Lemonade Stand, the domestic violence shelter her little sister had lived at the previous year.

Inspired by the notion that she might be able to help some of the women who’d befriended Tatum, she’d designed a program that used collage as a means of self-expression. To her surprise she’d discovered that the same skill that served her well in the fashion industry—an ability to see past the clothes on a body to the person they reflected—was an asset for collage reading, as well. Through her collage work, she’d been hoping to help women find their value within rather than relying on their outer beauty to give them their sense of worth. If victims could let go of their negative self-images and replace them with visuals of things that spoke to them, things that made them feel good, things that they liked, perhaps that would help them on their way to starting a new life. Her hope was that once the women realized their inner beauty they would gain the confidence to express themselves and make positive outward choices. Her work jibed with the Lemonade Stand’s philosophy to give battered women a sense of their value to counteract the damage abuse had done to their psyches.

And somehow, the program had branched out. She was working with kids now, too. Test-running the concept in a total of six elementary schools. Her initial plan had been to present a variation of her Lemonade Stand workshop to high-school girls, with the idea to help them love their inner selves so they didn’t give in to the pressure to feel that their value came from how they looked. So that they could make fashion and life choices that expressed their personalities rather than their sexuality. Such a class might have saved her life in high school.

And could have helped Tatum, too.

But the school board wanted her to start on a smaller scale, with both girls and boys, in elementary-level art classes. She’d been thrilled to win that much support and knew that a reference from her new sister-in-law, Sedona Malone, who was a well-respected lawyer in their community, had gone a long way to making this happen.

Collages were glimpses into the soul of those who made them. Or at least glimpses into their lives, their perspectives.

So what would a collage Kent made look like?

At an isolated desk against the far wall in the outer area of the principal’s office, the little kid from that morning sat up straight with attitude emanating out of every pore of his body. Talia glanced at the woman by her side, Carina Forsythe, the art teacher in whose classes she’d been working all day.

“That’s him,” she said, having told the woman about the disturbing scene she’d witnessed that morning, wondering if maybe she could help. As a professional.

The boy might not even be her Kent. All day she’d wondered, going back and forth in her mind with certainty that he was, and then with just as much certainty that the chance of him having been in the hallway at the exact moment that she’d been wondering about him was little more than nil.

“Kent Paulson.” Carina’s young brow furrowed as she identified the student. Talia noticed the little details of those lines on the woman’s forehead. Focused on them as her lungs squeezed the air out of her body.

He was her boy...her son.

She’d found him.

No one could know.

“...should have seen him a couple of years ago. He was everyone’s favorite—not that we really have favorites—it’s just that he was precocious, smart and so polite, too. But after his mother was killed...”

His adopted mother.

Talia had no idea if Kent knew that Brooke wasn’t his biological mother.

Oh, my God. My son!

She glanced at the boy again. And couldn’t look away. Was it possible that an invisible umbilical cord ran between them? One that hadn’t been severed when she’d picked up that pen ten years ago and signed her name, severing her rights to her own flesh and blood?

She tried to speak but her throat wouldn’t work.

“Anyway, you’d said you wanted to work with troubled kids, and I think it sounds like a good idea. Mrs. B.’s in her office. Why don’t you go talk to her?”

“I...will...” The dryness in her throat choked her, and she coughed. Until she started to choke. Carina led her to a nearby drinking fountain. She sipped. Coughed some more.

And was finally able to suck air into her too-tight lungs.

When she could, she thanked the other woman. Said something about not knowing what the coughing fit was about. Assured the art teacher that she was fine. Waited for Carina to continue about her day. Waited for the lump in her throat to dissipate enough for her to pull off the pretense of her life. And then, careful to avoid another glance at the child sitting along the far wall, she opened the door to the principal’s office.

She wasn’t a mother. She’d just grown a baby once.

* * *

“SO? HOW’D IT GO?” Sixteen-year-old Tatum Malone climbed out of the driver’s seat of their sister-in-law’s Mustang, addressing Talia.

You’d never know by looking at her that the beautiful, vivacious blonde teenager had been a resident at a shelter for victims of domestic violence the previous year.

Talia, who was standing in the driveway of Sedona Malone’s beach house, smiled as she greeted her baby sister, avoiding the hug with which Tatum usually greeted her family members. She never had been a touchy-feely person, always having to keep a barrier up. But now, after the choices she’d made, it was as if she couldn’t let her family get too close to her. Or maybe it was that she was afraid that once they saw the woman she’d become, they’d withdraw. And if she was all-in with them, their rejection would be too much to bear.

That was Talia. Always holding something back just in case.

“It went fine,” she said, pulling out her key as she headed up the back steps to the deck and the French doors that allowed her to sit at the kitchen table and watch the sun set over the beach just yards away. “The kids were great,” she continued as she let them into the borrowed beach house, dropping her keys on the counter and heading to get sodas for both of them. “You should have seen some of the collages they made. I could spend a year analyzing them.”

“Cool,” Tatum said, sliding her slim, jeans-clad body into a seat at the table. “But that’s not what I was talking about.” Those intense gray-blue eyes pinned Talia and, not for the first time in the year she’d been back, Talia felt completely off-kilter. As though her almost ten-year age advantage over Tatum had disappeared and she was the younger of the two.

“Does Tanner know you’re here?” Talia asked, sending a bold and piercing look back.

“Of course. I’ve got Sedona’s car, don’t I?”

Tatum could’ve had her own car, if she’d wanted it. But for now, she was sticking close to home—to Tanner and to Sedona, the lawyer who’d seen through Tatum’s confused attempt to get help the year before, and ended up marrying their big brother.

“He pretty much asked me to come,” Tatum said, her look steady, “or he would have if I hadn’t already said I was coming.”

Still not completely used to having someone on her side, most particularly not someone she actually loved, Talia nodded.

“I saw him,” she said, her fingers curling the edges of the place mat in front of her. Picking up her can, she took a long drink of cola, pretended that it had some magical strengthening power and said, “He’s little. Like Thomas. Smaller boned than Tanner.”

“Is he short like Thomas, too, or tall like you and me and Tanner?”

“I don’t know. He’s a lot shorter than I am, but he’s only ten. How do I know how tall a ten-year-old is supposed to be?”

This was Tatum’s nephew they were talking about. And family meant everything to Tatum. Talia understood. It was just taking some getting used to, this whole support system thing. She’d been alone in a rough world for a long time.

“Did you talk to him?”

Talia shook her head. “He’s in trouble, Tay,” she said. Instincts told her to keep the bad stuff a secret from her little sister, wanting her to only see the good in the world. But they’d all learned how much damage those kinds of secrets, that kind of protection, could do. Most particularly where Tatum was concerned.

Tatum’s eyes shadowed, and her pretty blond hair fell around her shoulders. “What kind of trouble?” Her voice had softened.

“I’m not sure,” Talia said.

Kent was supposed to have had the perfect fairy-tale life. That was why she’d given him up. To protect him from any chance that he’d grow up the way she had.

Then she and Tatum had found out on the internet that Kent’s adopted mother had been killed in an accident. By a drunk driver in a stolen vehicle. He’d fled the scene on foot and there’d been no identifying fingerprints on the car or on the nearly empty bottle they’d found inside it.

Tanner was all for Talia approaching Kent’s father, introducing herself and proposing some kind of arrangement that would allow her to see her son now and then. Tatum understood why Talia couldn’t even think about doing that.

“He’s been suspended from class for the next week.”

“What? Why? It’s kinda hard to get suspended from the fourth grade.”