Chapter 11 #2
“Let me call my friend Arnie, and I’ll have him give you a ring.” Her father huffed another irritated sigh and then stalked toward the foyer. “You’re going to be working from a position of weakness, obviously. This should have all been spelled out before your first episode aired.”
“Thank you, Dad. I really appreciate it.” Tara figured it had been a good thing Randall was already so preoccupied with whatever was going on with her half-brother that he didn’t bother to lecture her further for neglecting the partnership agreement.
He waved a hand in acknowledgement, but he was already hurrying up the stairs to pack whatever it was he needed for the trip downstate.
Beside her, her mother looped an arm through hers. “Come sit and tell me what’s really happening with Sophie while we have dinner. I heard she financed Destiny Griffin’s new gym.”
“Maybe?” Tara shrugged, uneasy as she let her mother lead her into the dining room where Callie was filling the wine glasses at three place settings.
Destiny had asked Tara for a loan as well, so she was surprised to hear that she’d needed financing from Sophie too. Was Destiny in financial trouble?
“Well I hope it’s a good investment,” Lauren explained before telling Callie to clear Randall’s place. When they were alone again in the round dining room that seated twelve, her mother continued, “Is Sophie overbearing to work with?”
Yes.
But she didn’t say that. There’d been a time when Sophie had felt more like a friend and less like someone trying to manipulate her. Even now, it felt disloyal to complain about her. Especially when the gossip mill in their town could be swift and brutal.
“Not at all,” Tara lied, sipping the white wine that accompanied the salad course and wondering how she could maneuver the conversation around to what she really needed to ask her mom.
“I think we complement each other creatively. She has a lot of great ideas, and I help her refine her focus to shape the best of them into actionable steps.”
“Ever the diplomat.” Her mother sat up straighter as she said it, and Tara knew that the comment wasn’t intended as praise.
They meandered through their usual safe topics over a meal of Icelandic cod francese.
The social missteps of the first Mrs. Hughes.
The Seychelles trip Lauren had planned for the holidays.
Randall’s poor diet and lack of commitment to Lauren.
By the time Lauren refused the offered dessert and suggested Callie bring them hot toddies instead, Tara realized she couldn’t put off the topic she needed to discuss with her mom any longer.
Following Lauren into the den where she’d asked for the drinks to be served, Tara rolled out the admission she’d been practicing in her head.
“You remember how one of the things I was working on with my therapist was to explore that dissociative amnesia episode I had after we moved here?” Tara had been in and out of counseling ever since her parents had adopted her.
In her teen years, her mother had told her that therapy would help her navigate the changes in her life.
Yet Lauren had pulled her out of treatment once she learned that Tara had asked the counselor to help her recover her lost memories, convinced that recalling past trauma would only be damaging to Tara in the long run.
As soon as Tara turned twenty-one and could call her own shots, however, she’d quietly gone back into therapy.
For a while she’d been content simply to gain more perspective on her life and all that she’d experienced at a young age.
But eventually, she’d come back to the key question that had haunted her for years.
Why had she blocked out almost two years of memories?
“And you remember that I told you I think your mind almost certainly gave you the gift of disassociation to protect you from whatever horrors you endured before you joined our family.”
Lauren chose her favorite seat on one end of a white sectional sofa in the room at odds with the rest of the carefully restored Victorian home.
She had never particularly liked the historic structure with its overly fussy features and elaborate woodwork, preferring minimalist lines and neutral colors.
But despite her personal preferences, Lauren also believed in supporting the architectural integrity of an area, which was why Sophie’s new home irritated her.
The drinks had already been delivered on a wooden tray that rested on the corner table between the sofa and a buff-colored leather occasional chair.
Sitting, Tara grabbed one of the warm glass mugs from the tray.
She didn’t really want the heavy beverage when her stomach was already in knots over a topic she dreaded discussing, but she appreciated having something to hold in her nervous hands.
“I understand that’s how you view it, Mom.
” The last word had never flowed off her tongue easily, but she’d always felt it was one she owed this woman.
Randall hadn’t wanted any more offspring, particularly not one who didn’t share his blood.
But Lauren had lobbied for a child she could call her own and because of her steely determination, Tara’s life had changed in an instant.
Though it was an instant she couldn’t recall with clarity thanks to the amnesia that had stolen details from so much of that transitional time in her life.
A long-suffering sigh hissed from her mother’s lips as she collected a drink for herself, her weighty pear-shaped diamond clanking against the glass handle of the delicate mug. “Okay, so how is your exploration of the episode going?”
“Not great,” Tara admitted, knowing she needed to circle back to that.
But first and foremost she wanted to confess the secret she’d kept from her parents for two years.
“I’m still working to figure out what caused the episode in the first place.
But I have had better luck recovering older memories. Things from my time in foster care.”
Her mother froze for a moment. Then, she carefully returned her drink to the tray. Leaning forward, she looked directly at Tara.
“Your older memories are the ones that caused you to lose time in the first place. Your experience in foster care is the whole reason your brain had to create an elaborate system to protect you. Why are you doing this, Tara? Why do you insist on picking through the biggest pain points of your life? Just to hurt all over again? To hurt your whole family?”
And there it was.
The idea might be wrapped in different language tonight, but beneath the words lurked the same old accusation that she wasn’t grateful enough for being plucked from her former existence. That she had dragged past baggage with her and made her adoptive family suffer for it.
“I never want to hurt you or Dad—”
“Yet you do. Every time this comes up it’s hurtful to both of us.” Her mother flipped her long hair behind one shoulder impatiently. “You’re an intelligent woman. I know you must see how this … fixation on your past drives a wedge between you and your father and me.”
“I’d hardly call my efforts to heal a fixation.”
She just wanted answers. A cohesive understanding of her past. Unlike her friend Jordyn, Tara had been raised in a warm and loving home before her single-parent mother died of ovarian cancer.
Before she’d gone into the foster system, she’d known what it felt like to be loved unconditionally.
The relationship she had with her adoptive mother had never felt that way.
“And what exactly are you trying to heal? The winters we spent in Aspen? The private tutoring and riding lessons? The graduation trip to Capri along with a ring from Cartier to celebrate?” Lauren shook her head.
“Because clearly none of that was good enough for our artsy, complicated daughter who was too busy navel-gazing to see she had everything in the world a girl could ask for.”
Stunned at the outburst, and at this perception of her as overly entitled, Tara wasn’t sure how to react. She scrambled to summon her therapist’s suggestions for dealing with confrontation. Stay calm and composed. Focus on the issue and not the feelings.
“You did give me everything a child could have wanted,” she assured her mother quietly, knowing it wasn’t true.
She would have traded the ring and the trips and the riding lessons she secretly despised for a genuine sense that she was valued for herself and not as an imperfect reflection of her glamorous mother.
“But I’m not a child anymore. And I don’t think it’s uncommon for people to want to understand their pasts. ”
She needed to account for that missing time. To know if she’d formed any other relationships like the one she’d discovered with Jordyn. Or to find out what kind of trauma she’d faced to make her memories shut down.
“Okay then. Since you want to discuss this—what great things have you learned about your foster care experience now that you’ve recovered some memories?
” Lauren stretched her lips into a mask of a smile.
“You might as well share now that you’ve already shredded a layer of my skin.
” She retrieved her cup again and this time, took a long swig of the drink before settling back into the corner of the sectional.
The ticking of the grandfather clock seemed to count down the seconds until Tara admitted what she’d done.
“I connected with a friend that I remembered from that time. Her name is Jordyn Lawson, and she lives in Austin. I visited her last summer when I attended that design conference.” She’d made really happy memories there, feeling like she was doing more than just rediscovering a friendship.
She’d rediscovered herself. The adolescent girl she had been before she became a Hughes.
Her mother’s face fell.
“Meaning you broke the promise you made to your father and me not to have anything to do with those people.”
The accusation hit a sore spot, and Tara couldn’t seem to find her composure or any distance from her feelings. Which hurt.
“The promise you coerced from me when I was a fifteen-year-old? I’m not sure you can enforce it for a lifetime.
I did keep it while I lived under your roof.
” She couldn’t stop herself from defending Jordyn.
“And Jordyn is leading a successful life, something tougher to achieve without millions of dollars backing her every move.”
Lauren sat up again, putting both of her taupe high heels on the floor and smoothing her skirt to where it ended just above her knee. “You may not live under this roof, but you still enjoy the privileges of a trust fund, don’t you?”
Tara blinked. Her mouth went dry. “And you view that money as some kind of payment to ensure I only behave the way you want me to?”
It was the first time either of her parents had suggested such a thing.
While she wasn’t nearly as motivated by money as her parents were and could surely forge a good future without that generous bank account balance, she had also never conceived of her life as bought and paid for because of that money.
“I’m saying a broken promise isn’t very honorable, Tara. And you might have just forced me to admit something your father has been trying to convince me of for twenty years.” She pursed her lips. Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe the old adage is true. Blood will always out.”
Shooting to her feet, her mother walked toward the door.
Tara stood more slowly. She felt herself trembling. The conversation had gone every bit as badly as she’d feared.
Worse.
“Mom, wait.” She’d risked her mother’s wrath and now fully incurred it.
She might as well go for broke. “Sooner or later, I’ll remember what happened to me to cause the big hole in my memory.
Because I know it happened after you adopted me.
Are you sure you don’t want to just tell me what you think happened before I recover that memory on my own? ”
Her mother’s shoulders tensed visibly. When she turned around again, her voice was cool. Calm.
“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe your brain isn’t protecting you from something that happened to you, but from some awful thing you did?”
The words echoed inside Tara. Rebounding. Rever- berating.
Rewriting her whole concept of self.
Could it possibly be true? Or was her mother’s accusation simply a new form of deflection?
Tara didn’t even notice when Lauren walked away, her high heels hammering home what Tara had suspected all along.
She would never discover the missing pieces of her past from her parents. Tonight would be the last time she would ever try.