The Truth About Tara. Darlene Gardner
and got a whiff of the bacon cooking inside the diner. “Accept that I need some time alone.”
“Of course you do,” Maria said. “You’ve never wanted to be anything but a pro baseball player, but you’re not getting any younger. You need to figure out what to do with the rest of your life.”
Jack had fallen in love with baseball at his first T-ball game when his ball soared to the outfield. Even though he now realized the ball had gone only about sixty feet, he’d felt as powerful as Babe Ruth. Later he’d gotten that same feeling when he took the mound. He’d had his future mapped out since he was a kid. He wasn’t about to change his mind now. He wasn’t going to share the particulars with Maria, either.
“Hey,” he said. “I checked out that lead for you.”
“Already? I thought you just got to Virginia this morning.”
“She wasn’t hard to find in a place as small as Wawpaney,” he said, even though it had been a shock to see a woman matching the age-progression photo walking on the sidewalk toward the school. “But she wasn’t your missing person.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Jack had experienced a moment’s doubt that the woman was being entirely truthful, but it made no sense for her to lie. It was human nature to want to know where you came from. She obviously already knew. Add to that her reddish-colored hair, her age and her comment about baby photos and Jack was convinced.
“It’s not Hayley,” Jack maintained.
He heard what sounded like a sigh. “I didn’t really expect her to be.”
“Any luck with the other leads?”
“Not so far. I’ve checked out more than half of them and they’re all dead ends. But as I told Hayley’s mother from the start, finding her daughter is the longest of long shots.”
Jack leaned against the sun-warmed passenger door of his pickup. Five years ago Maria had left the Fayette County sheriff’s office to become a private investigator and had never looked back. “Then why take the case?”
“She said not a day goes by that she doesn’t think of her missing daughter,” Maria said. “She doesn’t care if the odds of finding Hayley are one in a million, as long as that one chance exists.”
Jack reached into his back pocket, withdrew the paper with the age-progression photo and unfolded it. Unlike an actual photograph, where personality could shine through, the computer-generated likeness seemed flat and lifeless.
What would it be like to know nothing about the person your loved one had become? Or if they were even alive at all?
“Why look for her now?” he asked. “It’s been almost thirty years. The trail must be ice-cold.”
“Lots of reasons. Her husband is making noises about moving to be near their grandchildren, but it’s probably mostly because she just had a scare with breast cancer.”
“Is the father on board with the search?”
“Interesting that you ask. She didn’t tell him she was hiring me. Apparently their marriage barely survived the tragedy the first time.”
Jack felt for the couple, but their plight didn’t concern him now that he’d eliminated the pretty Wawpaney Elementary schoolteacher as a victim. He had pressing problems of his own.
“Wait a minute,” Maria said abruptly. “How did we start talking about the case? I wasn’t through asking about you.”
“Some other time,” he said. “I came outside the diner to talk to you. My food’s probably ready by now.”
“At least you’re eating,” she said.
“Bye, Maria.” He ended the call and was back at the counter at about the same time the waitress arrived with his Southern breakfast. The paper with the age-progression
photo was still in his right hand. He set it on the counter.
“Here you go.” The waitress placed a plate of steaming food in front of him. She started to walk away, then paused, a curious expression on her face. She pointed to the paper. He’d refolded it so that the top half of the woman’s
face was visible. “Is that Tara Greer?”
The waitress didn’t wait for his answer. She picked up the paper, shook it out and stared down at it. “Why, yes, it is. Why do you have a drawing of Tara?”
The anonymous person who’d given Jack’s sister the tip hadn’t provided the name of the woman who looked like Hayley Cooper, only the information that she taught physical education at Wawpaney Elementary. Jack probably should have thought to ask the woman he’d stopped her name. If he didn’t follow up on the waitress’s remark, his sister might disown him.
“Tara’s the teacher who works at Wawpaney Elementary, right?” he asked.
“That’s right,” the waitress said. “She teaches PE.”
At least he’d stopped the right woman, although even he could deduce she was a PE teacher from her shorts and Wawpaney Elementary T-shirt. The athletic clothes called attention to her toned arms and legs and the general glow of health surrounding her. He’d thought she looked fantastic.
Jack nodded at the sketch. “That isn’t Tara.”
The waitress took another look before she put the paper back down. “I’m a little farsighted, but that sure looks like her to me.”
Jack thought of all the other false leads that his sister was chasing down. “Turns out lots of people look like this woman.”
The waitress tilted her head. “Is that the reason you’re on the Eastern Shore? Because you’re searching for the woman in the photo?”
“Not even close.” Jack folded the paper and put it back into his pocket. The waitress regarded him expectantly, waiting for him to expand on his reply.
It wouldn’t hurt to tell her at least part of the truth, Jack thought.
He dredged up his favorite line from the inspirational poem he’d hung in his locker after his first shoulder surgery, the one about sticking to the fight when you’re hardest hit.
“I’m here because I still believe in myself,” he said.
The orthopedist in Owensboro had written him off, but Jack hadn’t lasted almost ten years in the minor leagues by giving up when the going got tough.
Quitting had never been an option before.
It wasn’t now, either.
* * *
LAUGHTER AND EXUBERANT shouts rang out from the field adjacent to Wawpaney Elementary. Sixteen kindergartners, eight to a side, swarmed around the soccer ball. Tara referred to the phenomenon as the clump. No matter how many times she explained spacing to the children, they abandoned the knowledge in favor of running to where the action was.
Tara watched from the sideline, leaving the whistle hanging from the lanyard around her neck. With summer vacation only hours away, she decided in favor of fun and exercise over the fine points of playing soccer. She opted against telling them to tone it down, too. They probably wouldn’t be able to, anyway.
Especially Bryan, who did everything with gusto. He was only five, just a few years older than Hayley Cooper had been when she’d been snatched from the mall, yet he had a stronger personality than most adults.
All of the children were distinct.
Dwayne could 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