Chapter 26
CHAPTER
Tara
One Year Ago
THE THERAPY brEAKTHROUGH happened one day before Halloween.
Tara struggled to process it three hours after the milestone appointment, pouring more bath salts into the jetted tub in her primary suite while steam filled the bathroom. She still couldn’t believe she’d finally recovered her memories.
The morning had started out just like any other day.
Then, during her lunch break, she had been seated in her psychologist’s office, answering the same kinds of questions she’d been fielding for years during bilateral stimulation.
Basically, she and her therapist worked together to find an array of alternate activities and eye movements that helped remove the stress of recalling her past. In the breakthrough session, Tara had been playing with a bright pink fidget spinner while her therapist walked her through some vague memories about her homecoming day with the Hughes family.
Tara had been cautioned not to think too hard about that time on her own after recovering some of those memories the week before, and she trusted the process enough to do as she’d been told.
She’d been eager to get back to work on those memories, however, feeling certain they were close to recovering everything.
Then, the next moment, when her therapist asked her to think about what she noticed about that homecoming day?
Memory deluge.
Now, Tara sank deeper into the small tub, punching the button that would add a blast of heat to the cooling water. Or at least, she thought the water had chilled. She’d been shivering nonstop since the memories of her adoption day had returned to her in vivid—terrifying—detail.
Thank God she’d scheduled herself to work from home that afternoon, telling Sophie she needed a few undisturbed hours to research potential new guests for the podcast. Because there was no way she could have performed any of her usual job tasks right now, when she couldn’t quit trembling.
It had required all of her acting skills to convince her therapist that she would be fine at home with an extra dose of Ativan.
A dose she had not taken.
Even now, as she closed her eyes and tipped her head against the tub’s foam headrest, events from that day in the Hughes’s historic Manhattan townhouse replayed over and over.
One of her new half-brothers had offered to show her around the architectural masterpiece near Central Park West that spanned five floors plus a basement where the live-in nanny stayed.
The live-in nanny who had taken Evander’s younger brother to a visitation with their mother that afternoon. A fact that Tara hadn’t known until she found herself utterly alone with Evander, locked in his father’s office, three floors away from her new parents.
Briefly, the shock of what he’d done silenced her. It was ironic really, considering all the stereotypes about the pitfalls of the foster system, that Tara had been that innocent before her arrogant, entitled new brother had put his hand up her dress.
It was almost like her brain refused to believe that this boy would hurt her when she had—against all odds—found a seemingly fairy tale family who wanted to make her one of their own.
Oddly, it was her foster sister’s voice in her head that had broken through the wall of disbelief in that critical moment when Evander began to unzip his pants.
While Tara struggled to make sense of what was happening, from the back of her stunned brain, Jordyn’s voice screamed at her to take action. To do something. Anything to stop him.
And she had.
Brutally.
She’d seized a letter opener from the desk that he’d pinned her against. Jammed it into his roving hand.
She recalled the hot rush of blood from Evander’s hand onto her thigh.
Although she’d punctured her own leg in the process, she couldn’t remember feeling hurt in any way.
She just had a vivid impression of his blood steaming over her skin where she’d stabbed the back of his hand.
The aftermath of those moments were still a little hazy, but her counselor said that time might be lost forever since it was possible Tara had gone into shock afterward, making it impossible for her mind to absorb anymore.
At the end of the day’s dramatic session, her therapist had given her extra prescriptions for more sedating medication, eliciting a promise from Tara that she would engage in protracted self-care for the next two weeks.
All in all, the woman had made Tara feel like the walking wounded for recovering a traumatic memory.
Yet the anguish was only a small facet of what she felt now.
Beneath the raw wound, a wellspring of anger bubbled up hotter than Evander’s blood had been on that life-changing day.
Fury that she’d blocked out the one time when she’d fought for herself.
Rage that Evander’s action and her lack of coping skills to deal with it resulted in over a decade of blank space in her brain where the memory of Jordyn should have been.
Instead, her spineless stepmother had allowed Tara to believe there had been some scarring incident in the foster home that made her lose that chunk of time.
But it hadn’t been her foster family who had hurt her.
It had been the overprivileged vipers who’d adopted her.
Far from wanting to forget it, Tara now wished to commemorate the moment when she’d possessed the inner strength to advocate for herself. She would claim ownership of that assertiveness, a quality she’d spent a lifetime believing that she lacked.
Now, staring at the untouched new prescription bottle near the tub, Tara turned down the hot tub heater and clicked off the jets. She didn’t want to spend another moment of her life people-pleasing or making herself small so that those around her felt good about themselves.
Toweling off, she made a plan to print a boilerplate partnership agreement to bring to Sophie tomorrow.
She might have missed her appointment with the attorney while she’d met with the too-full-of-himself football player, Mark Ribeki.
But that didn’t mean Tara needed to delay the conversation with Sophie about their partnership any longer.
Her father was right that she’d made a huge mistake not hammering out something before now.
Tomorrow night at book club, she would show the agreement to Sophie and insist her partner sign it. She’d also refute Mei’s outrageous claim that Tara was sleeping with Nikolai and, if necessary, point Mei in Sophie’s direction. As for Luke?
If she saw him, she planned to settle that score too.
Because today’s therapy appointment hadn’t just helped Tara recover her past. It had freed her to find her voice. With it, she planned to make sure the rest of the world knew she was no longer anyone’s doormat.
How fitting that she would be wearing the Maleficent costume for Halloween.
She’d been overshadowed by villains wearing masks of social acceptability for too long.
When she swept into Sophie’s home tomorrow night all in black from her horned headpiece to her winged collar and long train, Tara would rewrite her whitewashed history and—finally—speak her truth.