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“No idea. But I didn’t just walk away.”
“I never thought you would.”
Tatum’s grin made her belly flop. She hated that. And loved it, too. All she’d ever wanted was a loving home and family of her own. Before she’d figured out that an open heart hurt too much.
Still, here she was, giving it all another chance. The family part, not the loving-home-of-her-own part. A permanent chance. She wasn’t going back to a world that didn’t see her as a human being. That only saw her as a body others could use for their pleasure. She’d failed Tanner. And worse, she’d been absent when Tatum had needed her most. Her little sister had paid a heavy price for Talia’s easy way out.
Talia would spend the rest of her life paying off that debt.
The decision wasn’t negotiable. But neither did it make the implementation easy. Or in any way comfortable.
“I talked to the principal,” Talia said.
“Mrs. Barbour?” Tatum’s frown was cute, scrunching up her nose in a way that reminded Talia of a time when Tatum had been about three and had walked by the bathroom after someone had just been in there. She’d walked around the house with her nose scrunched up for half an hour after that. When Talia had asked her what she was doing, she’d said she was keeping the bad smell out. She’d been too young to realize that it had only been a temporary thing.
“She was in charge of a spring fling production that involved all the area elementary schools when I was in sixth grade,” Tatum said. “We called her Mrs. B.”
“They still do,” Talia said. “I asked if I could try some collage making with him. She said he was going to be spending the next week in her office and as far as she was concerned I could see him every day.”
“So, you’re planning to work with him all five days, right?” Tatum’s voice was chipper, and her smile hit bone-deep.
“I think so. Yeah.”
“Are you nervous?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re going to spend the entire weekend pretending that you don’t care and that this is really nothing more than making sure he’s okay.”
“It isn’t. And how can I care for a child I’ve never known?”
“You knew him for nine long months. And never stopped loving him...”
Talia couldn’t go there. Not now.
Not ever.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_dd1aeb86-7ebd-538a-bda9-b4f746e695b6)
SHERMAN HAD TICKETS to a basketball game in LA on Friday night. He was sitting in a box with a man who he believed would support his candidate for the county auditor seat, most particularly after Sherman finished explaining to him how his candidate played into what the moneyed gentleman wanted most.
Sherman didn’t really have an opinion on the man’s politics. That wasn’t part of his job. Showing the man how he could help Sherman’s candidate—one of the campaigns Sherman and his team were currently managing—was what he cared most about at the moment.
Apart from his son, of course.
He’d planned to surprise Kent with the tickets and the trip to the city—with an overnight stay in a hotel—when he’d picked him up from school on Friday. He’d known about the game since Tuesday—the first day he’d received a call from Mrs. Barbour that week. He’d hardly been able to reward the boy then.
And not any of the days between then and Friday, either.
But Kent had promised to have a good day at school on Friday. And Sherman had been going to use the tickets as a reward.
He could hardly reward being suspended from class.
Instead, he dropped Kent off at home with his favorite sitters, the childless couple next door who spoiled him rotten, and headed into the city by himself.
* * *
FINDING KENT HADN’T been difficult. His adoption had provided for the eventuality. If either party wanted to seek out the other, contact information could be passed through the agency.
Because Kent was a minor, his contact information had been that of his father. And had included a sentence about his mother being deceased. Talia had found out a few more details on the internet. But very few.
She’d come back from the agency with a name. Knew he was in Santa Raquel. And from his address had found out what school he’d most likely attend. Finding his classroom hadn’t been that difficult once she’d been in the school. The fourth grades were all clustered together.
Seeing him had been so easy.
And had upended her in a way being sold by her husband to his friends hadn’t even done.
She’d given birth to someone else’s child. That was how she looked at her pregnancy and the adoption. She’d been growing a child for someone else to love and cherish because they couldn’t grow one for themselves.
She’d had it all worked out.
Until she saw that little boy strutting his preppy stuff down the hall on Friday.
Friday nights were set aside for online study. Three of her five classes that semester were online. And if she was going to be ready to graduate by December, she had to adhere to her schedule.
Weekends were for work. By the time she drove to LA, worked an eight-hour shift at the high-end retail store at the Beverly Center, a mall in Beverly Hills, and drove back, the day was pretty much done.
Her schedule was tight. She couldn’t afford to be flexible.
So she sat diligently at her computer Friday night. Tried to focus. And kept seeing a little face in place of the text on the screen.
Picking up her laptop she moved from the spare bedroom she was using for an office out to the kitchen table. There were no lights on the private beach, but she knew it was out there. That the ocean beckoned beyond.
A child needs to be touched, to be held, to be nurtured. Scientific studies show that a baby that is not held often or at all is far more prone to exhibiting signs of antisocial personality disorder or sociopathic tendencies.
She read the paragraph three times.
She’d given him up so he’d have a great mother to see him through all of the difficult times of growing up.
He didn’t have a mother anymore.
A child needs boundaries. He will test them. He is doing so, not to have them moved, but to assure himself that they don’t.
Was Kent testing his boundaries?
In part, he finds his security in unmoving boundaries, in the things he can count on.
A kid should be able to count on his mother. On having her be a boundary that didn’t change. Just always there.
Unlike the woman who’d given birth to Tanner, Thomas, Talia and Tatum.
Where had Kent’s mother been driving to, or coming from, that night she’d been killed? Why had she been alone in the car?
Careful. The inner voice that had decided to show up a little late in her life was speaking loud and clear suddenly. She couldn’t cross the boundary she was standing behind. She wouldn’t. Because she’d be hurting someone other than herself.
She’d looked up her son to assure herself he was okay.
She was going to work with him the following week for the same reason.
Anything beyond that was clearly out of her jurisdiction and not her business.
Tonight, child development was her business.
For the rest of the night, she stuck to it.
Mostly.
* * *
“NO, DAD, I don’t want to go putt some balls and get ice cream.”
The knife in Sherman’s hand was in danger of losing its blob of butter as it stilled, suspended over the toast he’d been buttering Saturday morning. “What do you mean you don’t want to go? It’s already planned,” he explained patiently.
The grief counselor had told him to be patient. Two years ago.
“I thought you’d like the surprise,” he added.
“I don’t.” Kent sat at the table, already dressed in jeans, a button-down shirt and a sweater—green today—with his hands in his lap. Awaiting the cold cereal and toast Sherman was in the process of getting for him.
The butter dropped from his knife to the toast, catching the side of his hand, as well. Sherman spread quickly, dropped the toast to the counter and licked the side of his hand.
He poured milk. Added a spoon to the bowl of Kent’s latest choice in sugared cereal, took that and the toast to the table, a smile on his face. “Why not?”
“Where’s your cereal?”
“I’m not having any this morning.” He’d pulled off at a twenty-four-hour diner on his way home from the city and wasn’t hungry.
“What time did you get home?”
“Sometime after midnight.”
“Way after midnight. I got up at 2:00 a.m. to pee and Ben and Sandy were still here, sleeping in the recliners.”
The love seat portion of the leather sectional he and Brooke had purchased the year before she...
Yes, well, he was glad that Ben and Sandy made use of the love seat.
“I was with a client.”
“I don’t care if you’re out screwing someone, Dad.”
Anger burst through him. He very carefully took the space between stimulus and response, to make certain that, for his son’s sake, he didn’t say something he’d regret.
Then he sat. Crossed his hands. Leaned over. And looked his son square in the eyeballs. “There are many things wrong with that comment,” he said slowly, but with no doubt to his seriousness. “First, screwing is an inappropriate way to describe any relationship I might have with a woman. Second, if I was making love with a woman it would be absolutely none of your business. And third, I was with a sixty-year-old man at a basketball game and then we went to a restaurant, where I had a glass of sparkling water and he had a whiskey sour while we discussed Sadie Bishop’s county auditor campaign, after which I got in the BMW and drove home, stopping only for a plate of greasy scrambled eggs, hash browns and toast. I have done nothing to deserve your disrespect.”
Kent chewed. Crunching his cereal as if he was set to win a contest. His throat bulged when he swallowed.
“Yes, sir,” he said then. “You’re right. On all three counts. I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted.”
Kent crunched some more. And Sherman sought to understand the boy.
Patience was the key. He was certain of that. He just wished he knew what to say sometimes, while he was waiting for patience to work its magic.
“So...how about that trip to the driving range?” he asked, back to his cheery self, when no other words presented themselves. Clark Vanderpohl and his son were meeting them at the course in less than an hour.
“Uh-uh.”
Patience.
“Why not?” His tone was right on cue. Easy and nonthreatening.
“You’re only taking me because you have business to do,” he said.
“That’s not true, son.” He was completely sure about that.
“So we’re not meeting someone who has something to do with one of your precious campaigns?”
Kent’s tone wasn’t easy. Or in any way upbeat or even particularly kind. But then, he was only ten.
Sherman was the adult here. Didn’t matter how much he hurt, too, he had to maintain the order in their lives.
“I didn’t say that,” he said after giving himself the few seconds pause he needed to choose his response.
“Ha! See, I knew it.” Kent slurped his milk.
Brooke would have said something about that. Sherman started to. But pulled himself back.
“What I said,” Sherman continued, his tone as even as ever, “was that I’m not just taking you because I have business to do. It’s the complete opposite, in fact. I invited Mr. Vanderpohl and his son to join us because I’d already planned to take you to the driving range, as I promised last weekend, and I wasn’t going to disappoint you.”
Kent came first. He always had.
“Cole’s going to be there?” Kent’s face lit up as he mentioned the banker’s son.
“Yes.”
“Cool!” Picking up his bowl, Kent put it to his lips, emptied it, licked the spoon and then very carefully wiped his mouth with his napkin, put the spoon in the bowl and carried the ensemble over to the sink.
