The Truth About Tara Read Free Page B

run faster than his classmates. Ashley was more interested in the flight of a shorebird than the game. Jorge was half a head shorter than everybody else but made up for it by trying the hardest.
    Observing the children made what the stranger had suggested this morning even more preposterous. Surely any one of her students would know if they’d been taken against their will from a shopping mall only two short years before. They’d know if their mother wasn’t really their mother—even if, like Tara, they’d never seen a baby photo of themselves.
    “Tara!” Mary Dee Larson, the kindergarten teacher who was Tara’s best friend on the staff, approached from the direction of the sprawling brick school. She wasn’t any taller than five foot two, but her short, quick steps ate up the ground. Tara had avoided her since earlier that morning when Mary Dee alerted her that she expected to get the scoop on the hot guy she’d seen Tara talking to. Mary Dee wouldn’t interrupt Tara’s PE class to talk men, though. She wouldn’t be walking so fast, either.
    “Your mom’s waiting for you in the school office.” Mary Dee was slightly out of breath, concern pinching her sharp features. “She says it’s an emergency.”
    Tara’s heart sped up. Her mother called and left urgent messages at least once or twice a week. However, she rarely stopped by the school. “Did she say what kind of emergency?”
    Mary Dee shook her head, rustling her silky black hair. “I didn’t ask. I just volunteered to come get you and keep an eye on your class.”
    “Thanks.” Tara took off at a jog, her head emptying of the questions about her childhood she’d intended to ask her mother. They seemed unimportant now.
    She burst through the double doors and hurried along the wide empty hall, the soles of her tennis shoes squeaking on the tile floor. A colorful Enjoy Your Summer! banner hung on the wall outside the office. Beside it stood Tara’s mother.
    She was dressed in the same flowing print dress she’d worn that morning to her job at the bakery. With flyaway long blond hair she couldn’t manage to tame, her mom never looked quite pulled together. She seemed even less so now, with her lipstick worn off and her hands fluttering.
    “Tara, honey!” Her mother rushed forward to meet Tara, the skirt of her dress flowing behind her. Though she’d spoken only two words, her North Carolina drawl came through loud and clear. In her wedged sandals, she was still a good four inches shorter than Tara. “I know you’re busy, but I just had to come on over here and see you.”
    Her mom seemed physically fine, eliminating one of Tara’s worries. On the heels of it came another.
    “Did something happen to Danny?” Tara asked, referring to the ten-year-old who was her mother’s latest foster child. Her mom had hooked up with the program the same year Tara went off to college, which was already a dozen years ago.
    “Why ever would you think something like that?” Her mother sounded truly stumped. “Danny’s fine as can be.”
    Tara felt her pulse rate slow down. “Then what is it?”
    Her mother tapped her index finger against her lips, the way she did when she was thinking about how to phrase something. What would Mom consider an emergency? Tara wondered.
    “Wait a minute. Why aren’t you at work?”
    “Would you believe Mr. Calvert said no when I asked for time off this summer to be around for Danny?” her mother asked, her tone conversational. “What could I do but quit?”
    Tara let out a surprised, involuntary breath. “But you loved that job.”
    “I liked it,” her mother corrected. “I never will put work before family. Danny needs me, the same way you did when you were younger.”
    While Tara was growing up, her mother had switched jobs as often as some women changed hairstyles. Her mom had once walked away from the reception desk of a dental office because she couldn’t get permission to leave early to attend Tara’s high