The Truth About Tara Read Online Free

school volleyball game. Another time she’d quit her job at the grocery store to go on a school field trip to the National Wildlife Refuge.
    Tara swallowed a sigh. “I wish you’d talked it over with me first. I already told you I could help out with Danny this summer.”
    “Then what I did wasn’t so awful, now was it?” Her mother grabbed Tara’s upper arm and squeezed. Finally, Tara thought. Her mother was ready to reveal the reason she’d come to the school. “It’s about that summer day camp where I want to send Danny.”
    “The one in Cape Charles that’s just starting out?”
    “That’s the one.” Her mother clapped her hands. “I volunteered to help and got a break on Danny’s tuition!”
    Tara would bet anything there was more to the story. If all her mother had to report was good news, she would have waited until Tara arrived home from school.
    “What aren’t you telling me?” Tara asked.
    Her mom sucked in a breath through her teeth. “I volunteered you, too.”
    “You what?”
    “Before you say anything else, hear me out.” Her mother talked so fast her words tripped over each other. “You know how hard it is to find a camp for children like Danny. This one’s a gift from God, being that it’s new and fifteen miles away in Cape Charles. There are only ten children signed up, but they still need lots of volunteer counselors. With your background, why, you’re perfect. So I filled out the paperwork for both of us.”
    Tara could have predicted the next answer, but asked the question, anyway. “When is this camp?”
    “It starts Monday and goes for two weeks. But you don’t have to be there all day, every day.” Her mother worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “Orientation’s at seven o’clock tonight. Now you see why I had to rush on over here and tell you?”
    Tara sighed. “You could have told me before today.”
    “I know, honey. I should have,” her mom said. “I was so excited for Danny when I heard about the camp that I didn’t think. And you will be able to get time off here and there to do all those other things you do.”
    Tara worked at some businesses in the summer on an as-needed basis to help out friends and keep busy, but in order to volunteer at the camp she’d have to cancel the kayaking trip she’d impulsively booked. But then, Tara hadn’t shared her plans with her mother yet.
    “Oh, please, Tara.” Her mother laid a hand on Tara’s arm. “Say you’re not mad.”
    Tara should have been more irritated than she was. She might have been if the trip had excited her more. But the bottom line was that her mom’s kind heart was in the right place.
    “How can I be angry?” Tara asked. “Like you said, you’re only thinking of Danny.”
    Her mom’s lips curved upward, relief evident in her smile. She touched Tara’s hand, her blue eyes sparkling. “I am so darn lucky to have a daughter as wonderful as you.”
    Tara was the one who was lucky.
    After losing her husband and her oldest child when Tara was a baby, her mom had showered all her love and attention on Tara.
    Not for a single second of her childhood had Tara doubted she was loved. Mom had been there every step of the way: volunteering to be homeroom mother, sitting in the stands at her athletic events, chairing the all-night grad party committee, chaperoning the prom.
    And because a handsome stranger had spun a wild tale, Tara had been prepared to ask her mother for proof that they belonged together.
    So what if beneath the hair dye Tara’s natural color was the same golden-brown as Hayley Cooper’s would be? And there could be plenty of explanations for why Tara had never seen baby photos of herself.
    As for the flashes Tara sometimes got of a woman shaking her and yelling that she should stop crying, the woman could be anybody. Or nobody. Maybe she was simply the stuff of nightmares.
    “I love you, too, Mom,” Tara said.
    Her mother beamed and ran a gentle hand over Tara’s cheek the way