The Truth About Tara. Darlene Gardner

misbehaved. She placed the potato chips back on the shelf. “Let’s go find you something else.”

      “No-o-o-o-o!” Danny screamed, his face turning red. “Want chips!”

      Although her mother had warned her about Danny’s tantrums, Tara had never seen one. Her calm voice hadn’t worked. Time to try something else.

      “Quiet down this instant, Danny!” she said sharply.

      “Want chips!” His cry was even more ferocious than the last one. With a defiant look, he snatched the chips from the shelf and took off down the aisle as fast as his short legs would carry him.

      “Danny! Come back!” she yelled after him.

      He didn’t even slow down. With the bag of chips slapping against his hip, he veered right when he reached the end of the aisle.

      Tara got behind the cart and followed him. “Sorry about this,” she called to Laura and her two daughters as she passed by. She tried to speed up, but the rickety cart slowed her.

      “Forget this,” she said aloud and abandoned the buggy.

      At the end of the aisle she turned in the direction Danny had gone. She stopped in her tracks. The child was nowhere in sight. She couldn’t hear him, either.

      Her heartbeat sped up and her throat closed. Hayley Cooper sprang to mind. Was this panic what Hayley’s mother had experienced when she first realized her little girl was gone?

      Tara usually felt safe in Wawpaney, which encompassed a few square miles and had a population of about four hundred. Even during the height of summer, the small inland town didn’t get a lot of strangers. Hayley had reportedly been abducted from a small town in Kentucky, proof that bad things can happen anywhere.

      Her heart thudded so hard it felt as if it was slamming against her chest. The store had dual exits and one of them was in the general direction Danny had headed. Tara set off again, checking each aisle for any sign of Danny. She spotted people she recognized as she went, but didn’t want to linger, asking them if they’d seen Danny. Her panic grew by the second until there was only one more aisle to go.

      She was almost afraid to look for fear she wouldn’t see him. But, yes! There he was. Not alone, though. A man was crouched down so that he and Danny were at eye level.

      Not just any man.

      Jack DiMarco.

      Her fear over losing Danny subsided, and her heart gave a little leap. If he’d been any other man, she would have attributed the reaction to excitement. But no good reason could exist for Jack to still be in Wawpaney. At the thought, adrenaline of another sort surged through her. She glanced back over her shoulder, battling the urge to flee. Retreat wasn’t an option, however, not without Danny.

      Gathering her courage, she started forward.

      CHAPTER THREE

      “HEY, BUDDY, WHERE’RE you going in such a hurry?” Jack crouched so he was eye-to-eye with the boy he’d seen in the parking lot of the grocery store with Tara Greer, the one who’d plowed into him about five seconds ago. The boy

      didn’t seem to be suffering any ill effects from the collision. Jack couldn’t say the same for the bag of chips he was clutching to his chest.

      “She won’t let me have my chips!” the boy cried.

      He was different from most other little boys, Jack realized instantly. From his almond-shaped eyes, somewhat flat nose and round face, Jack guessed he had Down syndrome. Like his first cousin’s son back in Kentucky.

      From the corner of his eye, Jack spotted Tara approaching. Was she the boy’s mother? She hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring when he’d confronted her the other day, but plenty of women had children outside marriage. She might even be living with the boy’s father. Something inside him deflated at the thought.

      The boy pointed to Tara. “She’s mean!”

      It didn’t take much brainpower to figure out what was going on.

      “She looks pretty nice to me,” Jack said. An understatement, he thought.

      The boy gazed at him warily and held the chips tighter. He wasn’t surrendering them without a fight. Okay. Jack could deal with that.

      “You want to see some gross magic?” Jack asked, using two words sure to appeal to any boy.

      Just as Jack knew he would, the child nodded.

      “I can separate my thumb from the rest of my hand,” Jack announced. “Watch.”

      He placed his left hand palm down with the fingers together and stuck out his thumb. With his right hand, he covered his thumb with a fist and pretended he was trying to detach it. At the exact moment he tucked his left thumb into his palm and jerked his right fist forward, he snapped two of his hidden fingers together.

      “Ow!” Jack cried.

      “Gross!” the boy yelled, the bag of potato chips falling to the floor.

      Just as quickly, Jack brought his hands together and pretended to screw his thumb back on. Then he opened both hands to show that all ten of his fingers were intact.

      “Again!” the boy cried, all his attention focused on Jack’s hand.

      Tara had almost reached them. Jack turned his head to look at her fully. In a sleeveless yellow shirt, sandals and tight-fitting khaki shorts that extended almost to her knees, she looked even better than she had the first time he’d seen her. Her skin had a healthy glow from her tan and her reddish-brown hair swung loose around her shoulders.

      “Let’s make sure it’s okay with your mom first,” Jack said.

      “I’m his foster sister,” she said shortly. She barely met his eyes, but relief hit him hard at her pronouncement. He checked her ring finger again. Still bare.

      Tara stooped in front of the boy. “You shouldn’t have run from me, Danny. And you’re not supposed to talk to strangers.”

      So that was how she thought of him. He shouldn’t have been surprised after he’d practically accosted her in the street. In retrospect, that probably hadn’t been the best way to approach her.

      “He took off his thumb!” Danny said. “Do it again!”

      “Is it okay with you?” Jack asked.

      She didn’t answer immediately. Even unsmiling, she was pretty. About the only thing he didn’t like about her was the unfriendly gleam in her eyes. There had been nothing frosty about her when she was in the parking lot with her foster brother. She’d been laughing as she leaned over and gave him a warm hug, affection pouring off her. That women, he thought, was the real Tara.

      “Use your manners, Danny,” she said. “You’re supposed to say please.”

      “Please take off your thumb,” he cried.

      “Everything okay, Tara?” One of her neighbors, a heavyset man in his sixties, called from the end of the aisle.

      “Thanks for checking up on us, Mr. Ganz,” Tara called back, geniality radiating from her. “We’re fine now.”

      Jack repeated the trick. It had been one of his younger brother’s favorites when they were kids. A wave of sadness hit Jack, as it always did when he thought of Mike. He thrust the melancholy feeling aside, concentrating instead on snapping his fingers to make it sound as though his thumb were breaking off. He winced and grimaced his way through the reattachment sequence until he was supposedly whole again.

      Danny clapped his hands.

      “Thanks,” Jack said. “How ’bout I introduce myself so we’re not strangers. I know your name is Danny. Mine’s Jack.”

      “Will you be my friend, Jack?” Danny asked.

      “Sure,”