Lost & Found Love. Laura Browning

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СКАЧАТЬ succeeding up until the time Tabby started school. It was easy enough to hide the artistic talent that had shown up the moment she had first picked up a crayon. Most children weren’t putting together complex compositions, especially ones that already revealed an understanding of life’s harsher realities.

      As dusk transitioned into darkness, Tabby continued to sit in the window seat. The memories of a childhood filled with rejection battered her.

      Within a week of starting kindergarten, the school was already on the phone. They had samples of her drawings they wanted her parents to see. Her daddy had beaten her black and blue that night, stripping her room of every crayon, marker, and watercolor. He had thrown out every blank piece of paper in the house.

      “You are not to draw,” he’d ordered. “Not here. Not anywhere. I’ve talked to the school. If you draw anything other than what the teacher tells you to, I’ll break your fingers. Then you won’t be able to draw.”

      She had been five years old. Eighteen years later didn’t make handling rejection any easier. Whatever grounded, realistic self-talk she’d created about her sister—about how they were really strangers to each other, and would have to get to know each other—in her heart she had hoped there would be some instant communion. Instead, Jenny seemed to hate her.

      Tabby’s daddy hated her, but she hadn’t understood why. It wasn’t until she’d grown a few years older that she realized drawing pictures of children and women being beaten made adults nervous.

      For Tabby it had simply been reality. A reality she was trapped in.

      Her art had been her only outlet. Not drawing wasn’t a choice. It didn’t matter that her father thought she was possessed. He followed his own upbringing and tried to beat the evil out of Tabby. With each whack, he told her he would “break” her from her sneaking around, drawing pictures that had to be from the devil. Only the devil would draw such lies.

      Except, they weren’t lies. They were the truth that Tabby lived, and she still didn’t understand why her daddy seemed to hate her so. When Mary tried to stop him, he shoved her against the wall and continued thrashing Tabby until she passed out.

      Sometimes Tommy’s beatings left welts and bruises. More often they drew blood, but never in places where it showed. Oh no. Tommy was far too smart for that. If Mary tried to interfere or stop him, then he beat her too.

      Tabby rested her cheek on her knees as she rocked back and forth in the window seat. She wished Jenny had known just how bravely their mama had tried to defend Tabby. She swallowed, though her throat felt thick and tight.

      No matter how her daddy tried to keep her from drawing, Tabby couldn’t stop, not even for her mama. She used the dirt on the playground, any scrap of paper she could sneak out of school. Tabby couldn’t make her unusual artistic ability go away, so she learned to hide it and the horror she lived through at home.

      Tabby scrubbed her cheeks, but the tears kept coming as she mourned not only her mother but the relationship it now appeared she would never have with her older sister.

      Tabby and her mama had been enablers as well as victims. She knew that now. She understood that she should have spoken up. She had tried to get her message out several times through her pictures, but Tommy had already convinced everyone in the school system that she was simply a disturbed girl they were trying to help.

      She didn’t want that following her now. She wanted a new life without the garbage of her past.

      And she wanted her sister.

      * * * *

      Jenny stared at the envelope in her hands as if she had caught hold of a copperhead. Opening it would change everything. She had yet to unseal it, though she’d carried it with her all evening. Evan had talked her into coming back down, but when they did, it was to find the envelope propped against the hall tree and no sign of Tabby. Evan made excuses that she was feeling ill and had decided to go home, but Tyler was the only one still young enough to believe it.

      Jenny felt like an idiot, and for the first time since her reunion with Evan last Christmas, she felt his censure. It was there in the tightness of his mouth, the shadows around his gray eyes.

      “Are you going to open it?” he asked her now as they lay side by side in their big bed. Evan skimmed through the latest Law Review and didn’t even glance over as he asked the question.

      Jenny sighed. She had propped several pillows around herself in an attempt to get comfortable, but with little success. She tapped her fingers on the envelope, seeing the creases in it that showed it had been carried around for quite some time. “It’s not her handwriting,” she said stiffly.

      “Whose?” Evan asked mildly, finally closing his magazine.

      “My mother’s. I saw some letters she wrote when I was going through my father’s things. This isn’t her handwriting. This is too bold.”

      Evan slid his arm around her shoulders and gently squeezed. “There’s only one way to find out what it says and who it’s from. Open it.”

      Jenny turned her gaze to him, pleading for understanding. “I—I can’t, Ev. Would you?”

      He took the envelope and slid one long finger beneath the flap. His elegant hands were steady as he removed the two sheets of paper. “You want me to read it to you?” At Jenny’s nod, he unfolded the sheets. “It’s dated summer a year ago. Tabby must have carried it with her all that time.”

      “Just read it.”

      He began:

      My Dearest Jenny,

      Tabitha is writing this for me because I can no longer write. I’m dying. It began as breast cancer, and I found the lump early on, but I was too afraid to see the doctor. When I did, the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes and beyond. By the time Tabby finds you, I know I’ll be gone. I know you probably won’t have a good opinion of me—after all, what Mama runs off and leaves her young daughter behind? And I’m sure your daddy made sure to point that out.

      But I kept track of you, honey. I know you’re a doctor, and I’m so proud of you because I know you’ll be able to take care of yourself. You won’t have to depend on any man for food and shelter. I made sure Tabby was looked after, too, so she can get away from here and never come back. I want her to find you. I want you to find each other. Sisters should stick together.

      Tabby is finding out about you as she writes this for me, and I expect she’s as shocked right now as you’ll be when you read it, but you both need to know what happened.

      Jenny, as I’m sure you already know, your daddy was a moonshiner. I was still in high school when I first met Billy at the harvest dance there in Mountain Meadow. Do they still have that at Halloween? I was a good girl, but your daddy caught my eye. He was a classic bad boy with his long hair and his fast cars. I guess we were drawn to each other. I was looking for excitement, and he was looking for—I don’t know—maybe someone to corrupt. At any rate, we married against the wishes of my family. When you came along eight months after our marriage, there was talk. A lot of folks around Mountain Meadow and Castle County turned their backs on me. They had already turned them on your daddy and the rest of the Owens family a long time before.

      Things went along fairly smooth at first. I pretended I didn’t know how your daddy made his money, and he was content to let me think it was from СКАЧАТЬ