Buch lesen: «Once a Family»

CHAPTER TWO

WHOEVER SAID WINE grape growing was easy had obviously never cane-pruned twenty acres of pinot vines. The pruning had to be done in its own time, not by a calendar man had planned, during the dormant season, when the dead leaves had fallen and just as buds were beginning to grow. In the winter. Or early spring. Depending on the vines. Sometimes it had to happen in April, too.

And it had to be done by hand. With clippers. One vine at a time.

For some vintners this meant having someone on staff, maybe a farm or winery manager, who would keep close watch and disperse employees out to the arduous but artful task, as needed.

For Tanner Malone, it meant that even though his little sister had a day off school on Tuesday for teacher in-service meetings, he had to be out in the groves all day—leaving her to get into whatever trouble she could manage with too much time on her hands and the house all to herself.

He hired a couple of seasonal helpers during harvest, but the rest of the work he did himself to save money for Tatum’s college expenses.

Letting himself in the back door of their sizable but very old farmhouse, as the early April sun was setting, Tanner prepared himself for make-up, tight jeans and blonde hair styled to perfection. There’d be attitude for sure.

But maybe there’d be some dinner on the table. Even boxed macaroni and cheese would be welcome to his empty stomach.

“Tatum?” he called as, walking through the spotless untouched kitchen, he headed into the equally undisturbed living room.

His sister was good about picking up after herself, but the couch pillows were just as he’d tossed them that morning on his way out the door. He knew because one had fallen sideways and it still lay there, cock-eyed.

With a hand on the banister leading upstairs, he leaned over to see the landing at the top and called, “Sis?”

Could it be that she was in her room studying? Getting ready for the intensive college entrance exams she had coming up the following fall? Tanner and Tatum’s brother, Thomas, had spent a good six months in preparation for his SATs, resulting in a full scholarship to an Ivy League school back east.

And he hadn’t come back to California since he left. That was ten years ago. Tatum had been five. Talia sixteen. And Tanner? The big brother who’d managed somehow to keep his family together after their mother, Tammy, had finally done them a favor and skipped out on them, had been a mere twenty-three.

Was he only thirty-three now? He’d felt forty ten years ago.

But then he’d been the unofficial guardian and sole supporter of his younger siblings for a couple of years by then.

Thankfully there’d been enough money left from his father’s life insurance policy to buy this farm with an ancient house that still needed a lot of work, but enough land to grow grapes that partially supplied a couple of California’s premier wineries.

He was a moderate vintner himself now, too. Which was another reason why getting the pruning done was so important. He had a shipment of recoopered oak barrels arriving in a couple of days and had to prepare the framework upon which they were going to sit.

Tatum wasn’t answering his calls.

Which wasn’t all that unusual these days.

But she wasn’t on her phone, either. He hadn’t heard that sweet laugh of hers. Or the irritated tone she took on when someone said or did something that she deemed stupid.

Del Harcourt...

If the asshole was here...

Taking the steps two at a time, Tanner was upstairs, bursting through his sister’s bedroom door before he’d finished the thought.

He stopped short. Tatum’s bed was made. Her desk neat. The books he’d brought her, study guides for the big test, lay neatly stacked in front of her computer screen.

The room had one purple wall while the others were painted off white, just as his sister had wanted. The quilted bedspread covering her queen-size bed was bedecked with butterflies. The furniture was old, but she’d had her pick of anything she wanted in the barn filled with who knew how many decades of discarded antiques they’d inherited when he bought the place.

One of the jobs on Tatum’s list for the summer, other than preparing for her October test, was to look up the pieces in the barn on the internet, catalog what they had and see if they could make some money on them. Which meant he’d have to get an entire barn’s worth of furniture unstacked so she could begin going through it....

“Tatum?” He couldn’t hold the panic at bay any longer. Tatum’s bedroom, like the rest of the house, was empty.

In one stride he was at her closet, hand on the antique glass doorknob, pulling with such force the knob came off in his hand. It had been loose for a while.

Another jerk on the door, with his fingers through the hole left by the fallen knob, and the small, wood-floored space where Tatum’s relatively meager but expensive wardrobe hung came into view.

He’d been fearing emptiness. Empty hangers at least. Instead, his sister’s clothes hung in order, just as they’d been the last time he’d seen them. Shirts with shirts. Pants with pants. And dresses on the far right.

What happened to the days when she was a little sprite too busy exploring anything she could get into to pick her clothes up off the floor? Too busy even to put them in the laundry hamper he’d placed right in the middle of her floor to make it easy for her?

Spinning, he took in the rest of the room. Opened some drawers to satisfy him that they weren’t empty, and then moved on to the bathroom he shared with her.

The drawers, split three to one in her favor, were neatly filled, and the bathroom with its pedestal sink and claw-footed iron tub looked just as it had that morning. Tatum’s wire rack hanging from the shower head was still filled with her salon-purchased shampoo, conditioners and lotion-dispensing razor.

Back downstairs, he checked every room. The little library, the formal dining room he used as an office, the mudroom that doubled as a laundry room. The huge kitchen. The only thing missing, other than his recalcitrant fifteen-year-old sister, seemed to be the tie-dyed hippie bag she called a purse.

Tatum wasn’t old enough to drive. For the past three months, he’d been keeping all vehicle keys on his person, in any case.

But she had friends with mothers who drove—who’d been known to help him out when he couldn’t be two places at once.

Grabbing his cell phone off the holster on his belt, Tanner dialed his sister’s cell number. Not surprisingly, it went straight to voice mail. And then he dialed first one and then another of the girls Tatum hung out with.

Only to find that she hadn’t been hanging out with them.

Not since Harcourt. The girls didn’t sound any happier about the asshole’s advent into his sister’s life than he was.

Taking deep steady breaths, Tanner walked, very deliberately, out to the far barn—the one that they never used because half of it was missing. In the standing half was a small tack room—the only room inside, enclosed with drywall, as though someone had once used the place as a getaway. A hideout. Maybe yesterday’s version of a man cave.

An old round wooden table, with one rotted leg, stood in the middle of the room. On the walls hung several framed photos—or a rendition thereof. The frames were falling apart at the seams. The glass was broken.

And there was one unframed poster hanging there. A newer poster. One he’d hung as a reminder of why he worked and sacrificed every day. The anti-drug poster depicted a meth addict. A woman with stringy, dirt-blond hair and black gaps where her teeth should be. There were sores all over her face, so much so that you couldn’t tell if the woman had ever been beautiful, or just plain. Her eyes held no light, but he still saw something there. He didn’t know the woman, but every time he looked at that poster, he felt as if he did. He saw a woman he knew.

A woman his siblings knew, as well. She’d given birth to them.

Anytime he was feeling overwhelmed all it took was a look at that poster, a reminder of what they’d escaped, and he found the strength to climb one more mountain.

Every problem had a solution. He just had to find it.

Tanner took a step back, feeling calmer.

Until he thought of finding Tatum with that big-spending rich daddy’s boy...

Very carefully, he removed the top two tacks holding the poster in place, exposing a piece of drywall with a couple of fist-size holes in it.

With one powerful thrust he added a third. Pinned the poster back in place. And, ignoring his red, throbbing knuckles, went out to his truck, started the ignition and tore out the circular drive, his tires spitting rocks and dust behind him.

He wasn’t going to touch Del Harcourt, but he was going to bring his little sister home.

Period.

* * *

“WE’VE GOT A bed for you for tonight, Talia.” Lila McDaniels’s steady presence seemed to calm the girl as they sat on a leather sofa in her office Tuesday just before dinner. Sedona, sitting on the other side of the girl, took note. With her gray hair and no-nonsense slacks and blouse, Lila didn’t draw attention to herself. But while some people might overlook her, think they could ignore her, they’d soon find that she was always there. Always everywhere.

“Thank you.” Talia’s tremulous smile was clearly genuine.

“I’ll take you to dinner in a few minutes,” Lila continued. “You’ll be staying in Maddie Estes’s bungalow tonight. She has an extra room.”

Sedona knew a female Lemonade Stand staff member would also be in the bungalow alongside Maddie and Talia, just as she was every night in case Maddie, who had special needs, woke up and was frightened or confused. Talia wouldn’t be unsupervised for a moment.

“Maddie’s going to be getting married soon,” Lila said. “I’m sure you’ll hear all about it.”

Talia’s glance showed interest. “You help people get married here? Like they can stay until they get married and move in with their husbands?”

“Some women leave here to marry, but not many,” Lila explained. “The Lemonade Stand is a place where women come to heal when they’ve been mistreated. It’s a place where, hopefully, they can live with respect while being exposed to healthy relationships and learning how to love well. It’s also a safe house. Those who don’t treat our residents well are kept away from them.”

When Talia’s shoulders visibly relaxed, Sedona exchanged a glance with Lila. The older woman nodded.

“Tell us what happened to you, Talia.”

The girl looked from one to the other of them. Her lips were trembling.

“You told Ms. Campbell that you were hit.”

Talia nodded, her eyes brimming with tears.

“More than once?” Lila conducted the interview like the professional she was, and once again Sedona was filled with admiration for this woman who’d given up any chance of a life of her own, a family of her own, to run this wonderful, beach-front shelter and to give abused women a chance to know how it felt to be treated well. To give hundreds of women and children the chance to have happy families of their own.

“Maybe I was hit a couple of times.”

“Maybe?”

Talia stared downward. “Okay, a couple of times.”

“Recently?”

The girl shook her head. Shrugged. And then nodded.

“We need to know who you are, Talia.”

“I’m Talia Malone.”

“The ID you showed me bearing the name Talia Malone said that you live in an apartment in Los Angeles.”

“That’s right.” Talia picked at the side of her finger with a perfectly manicured purple nail.

“That apartment complex was torn down a couple of years ago. After a fire. The address is an empty lot.”

The slender shoulders between the two women shrugged again. “I moved.”

“The ID also says you’re nineteen, but you told Ms. Campbell you’re only fifteen.”

With her head bowed, the girl looked right, then left, and didn’t look up at either of them.

Sedona ached to help her.

Did the girl have family who would report her missing? Anyone who would care about her absence that night?

The same person who’d hurt her?

Right now, Sedona’s only concern was the girl.

“Talia?”

Those gray-blue eyes trained on her, and the wealth of hurt—and confusion—pooling in their depths grabbed at Sedona.

“You said I could have until tomorrow morning.”

“You can. We won’t call anyone until then. But at least tell us your name.”

The girl shook her head. “I told you, I’m Talia Malone.”

“Tell us who hurt you. Who are you afraid of? Who are you running from?”

Talia picked at her nails some more, around the edge of the nails, not touching the glossy purple paint.

“What if the person you’re afraid of followed you?”

“He didn’t.”

So it was a “he.”

“How do you know?” Lila’s quiet concern continued to flow around them, holding them all in a sacred place. For the moment.

“Because.”

“He could have had someone else follow you. Or someone might have seen you and told him they saw you get on a bus.”

Talia’s hands shook. She continued to pick. And if she kept it up, she’d soon draw blood.

Sedona covered the girl’s hands with her own. Holding on. She had no idea how it felt to have a trusted loved one turn on you with hate in his eyes, or violence in his words or hands.

But she knew, instinctively, that this young girl did. And knew she had to do something about it.

“Tell, me, Talia, please. I can’t help you until I know the problem. Who are we protecting you from?”

Talia’s fingers stilled and Sedona held her breath.

“My brother.”

The words fell into the room like a ton of bricks.