Smooth Talking Stranger

Although Dane had never met my mother or sister, I had told him a lot about them, furtively unearthing memories like fragile artifacts. It wasn't easy to talk about my past, any part of it. I had managed to trust Dane with the basics: my parents had divorced and my father had left us when I was five. All I heard of my dad after that was that he had gotten a new wife, new children, and there was no place for Tara and me in his second time around.

Regardless of his failure as a dad, I could hardly blame him for wanting to escape. It bothered me, however, that my father knew what kind of parent he had left us alone with. Maybe he reasoned that daughters were better off with their mothers. Maybe he had hoped my mother would get better over time. Or maybe he feared one or both of his daughters would turn out exactly like her, and that was not something he could handle.

There had been no significant man in my life until I had met Dane at the University of Texas. He was always gentle, reading my signals, never demanding too much. He made me feel safe for the first time ever.

And yet for all that, there was something missing between us, something that nagged at me like a pebble that had worked its way into my shoe. Whatever that missing thing was, it kept Dane and me from reaching absolute closeness.

As we stood in the apartment kitchen, Dane put a warm hand on my shoulder. The shaky-cold feeling began to subside. "From what I was able to hear," Dane said, " Tara dumped off a surprise baby with your mother, who's pla

"Social Services," I said. "She hasn't thought of eBay yet."

"What does she expect you to do?"

"She wants me to take the baby off her hands," I said, wrapping my arms around myself. "I don't think she's given much thought to anything beyond that."

"No one knows where Tara is?"

I shook my head.

"Want me to go with you?" he asked gently.

"No," I said, almost before he could finish the question. "You have too much to do here." Dane had started his own environmental monitoring equipment company, and business was expanding almost too fast for him to handle. It would be difficult for him to take the time off. "Besides," I said, "I don't know how long it will take to find Tara, or what shape she'll be in when I do."

"What if you get stuck with this kid? No, let me rephrase-what are you going to do to avoid being stuck with this kid?"

"Maybe I could just bring it here for a few days? Just long enough

Dane was shaking his head firmly. "Don't bring it here, Ella. No babies."

I gave him a dark look. "What if it were a baby polar bear or a baby Galapagos penguin? I bet you'd want it then."

"I'd make an exception for endangered species," he allowed.

"This baby is endangered. It's with my mother."

"Go to Houston and take care of the situation. I'll be waiting for you when you come back." Dane paused and added firmly, "Alone." Turning to the stove, he picked up the pan of veggie sauce and dumped it over a bowl of whole-grain pasta. He sprinkled shredded soy cheese over the top. "Eat something before you go-this'll give you sustained energy."

"No, thanks," I said. "I've lost my appetite."

A wry grin crossed his lips. "Like hell you have. Ten minutes after you leave, you're heading to the drive-through window of the nearest Whataburger."

"You think I'd cheat on you?" I demanded with all the i

"With another guy, no. With a cheeseburger… in a heartbeat."

TWO

I had always hated the three-hour druve between Austin and Houston. But the long stretch of quiet time gave me the opportunity to sift through childhood memories, and try to figure out what had led Tara to have a baby she wasn't ready to care for.

I had realized early in life that too much of anything wasn't good for you, and that included beauty. I'd had the good luck to be born moderately pretty, with blue eyes and blond hair, and a milk-colored complexion that, when exposed to the cruel blaze of the Texas sun, went straight to sizzling-red. ("You have no melatonin," Dane had once marveled. "It's like you were meant to live in the library.") At five-four I was average height with decent measurements and good legs.

Tara, however, belonged in the realm of goddesses. It was as if nature, having done the necessary experimentation with me, had decided to create the piece de resistance. Tara had hit the genetic jackpot with her fine-chiseled features, luxuriant platinum hair, and pillowy lips that no amount of collagen could mimic. At five-ten, she was a long-stemmed size two and was often mistaken for a supermodel. The only reason Tara hadn't gone on that predestined career path was that even the minimal stores of discipline and ambition required of a model were beyond her.

For those and other reasons, I had never envied Tara. Her beauty, the sheer magnitude of it, simultaneously distanced people and invited them to take advantage of her. It caused people to assume she was stupid, and truth be told, it had not exactly driven Tara to prove her intellectual mettle. A gorgeous woman was never expected to be smart, and if she was, most people found it off-putting. There was only so much good fortune a normal person could forgive in another. So a surfeit of beauty had only earned trouble for my sister. When I'd last seen Tara, there had already been too many men in her life.

Just like our mother.

Some of Mom's boyfriends had been nice men. They had first seen her as a beautiful and vivacious woman, a single working mom who was devoted to her two daughters. Eventually, however, they came to under-stand what she was, a woman who badly needed love and yet was unable to return it… a woman who struggled to control and dominate the people who tried to get close to her. She drove them all away and brought in new ones, a constant and exhausting turnover of lovers and friends.

Her second husband, Steve, had only lasted four months before he'd filed for divorce. He'd been a kind and rational presence in our household, and even that short time of living with him had shown me that not all adults were like Mom. When he had said goodbye to Tara and me, he had told us regretfully that we were good girls, and he wished he could take us with him. But later Mom had said that Steve had left because of Tara and me. We would never have a family, she had added, if we didn't behave better.

When I was nine, Mom had married Roger, the last husband, without even telling Tara and me about it beforehand. He was charismatic and good-looking, and he took such a friendly interest in his new stepdaughters that at first we loved him. But before long the man who read us bedtime stories was also showing us pages from porn magazines. He was fond of playing tickling games that went on too long and were not at all what grown men should have been doing with little girls.

Roger took a particular interest in Tara, taking her on father-daughter outings and buying her special presents. Tara began to have nightmares and nervous tics, and she picked at her food without eating. She asked me not to leave her alone with Roger.

Mom went into a fury when Tara and I tried to tell her. She even punished us for lying. We were afraid to tell anyone outside the family, certain that if our own mother wouldn't believe us, no one else would, either. The only option I had was to protect Tara as much as I could. When we were at home, I stayed with her every minute. She slept next to me at night, and I kept a chair against the door.

One night Roger tapped at the door for nearly ten minutes.

"Come on, Tara. Let me in, or I won't buy you any more presents. I just want to talk to you. Tara -" He pushed harder at the door, and the chair creaked in protest. "I was nice to you the other day, wasn't I? I told you I loved you. But I won't be nice anymore if you don't move that chair out of the way. Open it, Tara, or I'll tell your mama you've been acting up. You'll get punished."