Lost & Found Love. Laura Browning

My mother was a slut.”

      “Jenny!” Evan snapped. “Stop it. Tabby is a guest in our home.”

      “She is your guest, not mine,” and with that, Jenny stomped up the stairs.

      Evan stared after his wife, then looked at Tabby with embarrassment. He spread his hands wide in a frustrated and helpless gesture. “I’m sorry. She’s usually not… Maybe it’s the pregnancy….”

      Tabby smiled thinly. Why had she ever imagined this would be easy, that in an instant she would gain the family she had always dreamed of having? “You should go to her. She needs you even if she is angry at you.”

      Evan spared her one quizzical glance before he sprinted up the steps.

      Tabby studied the beautiful house. Her mother had told Tabby what childhood had been like for Jenny, and how it had probably continued even after Mama had run away. The light and furnishings in this house made it obvious that her sister’s life was far different now. And even if she was angry with her husband at the moment, anyone could see how devoted Evan was to her.

      Tabby had known her reception might not be a warm one, but she hadn’t anticipated the extent to which Jenny would reject her. She probably should have. Rejection was certainly not a new experience.

      Head tilted, she listened for a moment to the laughter floating down the hallway from the kitchen. Giggles from Tyler and Noelle, easygoing rumbles from Jake, and Holly’s gentle chuckle…all the sounds of a happy family. She had no right to be here. Family had never been happy for her.

      After reaching into the deep pocket of her skirt, Tabby removed the envelope she had carried with her for more than a year. She knew its contents because she had written them as her mother dictated to her. It was the explanation Jenny Richardson wasn’t ready to hear. She would be, at some point, so Tabby propped the envelope against the drawer of the hall tree and quietly let herself out. She retraced the steps she and Joe had taken just a few minutes ago.

      After letting herself into her house, Tabby allowed the screen door to bang shut and ran for her studio, but she didn’t turn on the lights. She curled up in the corner of the window seat and wrapped her arms around her bent knees, rocking and remembering.

      Chapter 3

      Tabby swiped a tear from the corner of her eye. So much for the fairy tale ending. She should be used to it. Conflict and fear were two things she was way too familiar with. As Tabby stared out the window, raised voices echoed down the long years separating memory from reality. Mama had tried to protect her from Tommy MacVie, largely succeeding up until the time Tabby started school. It was easy enough to hide the artistic talent that had shown up the moment she had first picked up a crayon. Most children weren’t putting together complex compositions, especially ones that already revealed an understanding of life’s harsher realities.

      As dusk transitioned into darkness, Tabby continued to sit in the window seat. The memories of a childhood filled with rejection battered her.

      Within a week of starting kindergarten, the school was already on the phone. They had samples of her drawings they wanted her parents to see. Her daddy had beaten her black and blue that night, stripping her room of every crayon, marker, and watercolor. He had thrown out every blank piece of paper in the house.

      “You are not to draw,” he’d ordered. “Not here. Not anywhere. I’ve talked to the school. If you draw anything other than what the teacher tells you to, I’ll break your fingers. Then you won’t be able to draw.”

      She had been five years old. Eighteen years later didn’t make handling rejection any easier. Whatever grounded, realistic self-talk she’d created about her sister—about how they were really strangers to each other, and would have to get to know each other—in her heart she had hoped there would be some instant communion. Instead, Jenny seemed to hate her.

      Tabby’s daddy hated her, but she hadn’t understood why. It wasn’t until she’d grown a few years older that she realized drawing pictures of children and women being beaten made adults nervous.

      For Tabby it had simply been reality. A reality she was trapped in.

      Her art had been her only outlet. Not drawing wasn’t a choice. It didn’t matter that her father thought she was possessed. He followed his own upbringing and tried to beat the evil out of Tabby. With each whack, he told her he would “break” her from her sneaking around, drawing pictures that had to be from the devil. Only the devil would draw such lies.

      Except, they weren’t lies. They were the truth that Tabby lived, and she still didn’t understand why her daddy seemed to hate her so. When Mary tried to stop him, he shoved her against the wall and continued thrashing Tabby until she passed out.

      Sometimes Tommy’s beatings left welts and bruises. More often they drew blood, but never in places where it showed. Oh no. Tommy was far too smart for that. If Mary tried to interfere or stop him, then he beat her too.

      Tabby rested her cheek on her knees as she rocked back and forth in the window seat. She wished Jenny had known just how bravely their mama had tried to defend Tabby. She swallowed, though her throat felt thick and tight.

      No matter how her daddy tried to keep her from drawing, Tabby couldn’t stop, not even for her mama. She used the dirt on the playground, any scrap of paper she could sneak out of school. Tabby couldn’t make her unusual artistic ability go away, so she learned to hide it and the horror she lived through at home.

      Tabby scrubbed her cheeks, but the tears kept coming as she mourned not only her mother but the relationship it now appeared she would never have with her older sister.

      Tabby and her mama had been enablers as well as victims. She knew that now. She understood that she should have spoken up. She had tried to get her message out several times through her pictures, but Tommy had already convinced everyone in the school system that she was simply a disturbed girl they were trying to help.

      She didn’t want that following her now. She wanted a new life without the garbage of her past.

      And she wanted her sister.

      * * * *

      Jenny stared at the envelope in her hands as if she had caught hold of a copperhead. Opening it would change everything. She had yet to unseal it, though she’d carried it with her all evening. Evan had talked her into coming back down, but when they did, it was to find the envelope propped against the hall tree and no sign of Tabby. Evan made excuses that she was feeling ill and had decided to go home, but Tyler was the only one still young enough to believe it.

      Jenny felt like an idiot, and for the first time since her reunion with Evan last Christmas, she felt his censure. It was there in the tightness of his mouth, the shadows around his gray eyes.

      “Are you going to open it?” he asked her now as they lay side by side in their big bed. Evan skimmed through the latest Law Review and didn’t even glance over as he asked the question.

      Jenny sighed. She had propped several pillows around herself in an attempt to get comfortable, but with little success. She tapped her fingers on the envelope, seeing the creases in it that showed it had been carried around for quite some time. “It’s not her handwriting,” she said stiffly.

      “Whose?” Evan asked mildly, finally closing his magazine.

      “My mother’s. I saw some letters she wrote when I was going through my father’s things. This isn’t her handwriting. This is too bold.”

      Evan slid his arm around her shoulders and gently squeezed. “There’s only one way to find out what it says and who it’s from. Open it.”

      Jenny turned her gaze to him, pleading for understanding. “I—I can’t, Ev. Would you?”

      He took the envelope and slid one long finger beneath the flap. His elegant hands were steady as he removed the two sheets of paper. “You want me to read it to you?” At Jenny’s nod, he unfolded the sheets. “It’s dated summer a year