right, Mr. Paulson. Starting Monday, for one week, I’ll see that Kent gets his education from here, in our office, but I don’t think for one second that his time with me is going to solve his problems.”
Of course it wasn’t. She was just a step.
To provide the way to get to the next step.
Or, in this case, to give him time to figure out what in the hell the next step would be.
WHILE SHE HAD a joint degree in fashion merchandising and design, Talia still had more than a year of work left on her degree in psychology. She was due to graduate in December and was determined to make that happen. She’d thought maybe she’d teach someday, if she could find a school system that would hire an ex-stripper, but somehow her life had once again redefined itself. Without any conscious direction on her part, she’d become someone new. A collage expert.
The idea had come to her after spending time with some of the residents at the Lemonade Stand, the domestic violence shelter her little sister had lived at the previous year.
Inspired by the notion that she might be able to help some of the women who’d befriended Tatum, she’d designed a program that used collage as a means of self-expression. To her surprise she’d discovered that the same skill that served her well in the fashion industry—an ability to see past the clothes on a body to the person they reflected—was an asset for collage reading, as well. Through her collage work, she’d been hoping to help women find their value within rather than relying on their outer beauty to give them their sense of worth. If victims could let go of their negative self-images and replace them with visuals of things that spoke to them, things that made them feel good, things that they liked, perhaps that would help them on their way to starting a new life. Her hope was that once the women realized their inner beauty they would gain the confidence to express themselves and make positive outward choices. Her work jibed with the Lemonade Stand’s philosophy to give battered women a sense of their value to counteract the damage abuse had done to their psyches.
And somehow, the program had branched out. She was working with kids now, too. Test-running the concept in a total of six elementary schools. Her initial plan had been to present a variation of her Lemonade Stand workshop to high-school girls, with the idea to help them love their inner selves so they didn’t give in to the pressure to feel that their value came from how they looked. So that they could make fashion and life choices that expressed their personalities rather than their sexuality. Such a class might have saved her life in high school.
And could have helped Tatum, too.
But the school board wanted her to start on a smaller scale, with both girls and boys, in elementary-level art classes. She’d been thrilled to win that much support and knew that a reference from her new sister-in-law, Sedona Malone, who was a well-respected lawyer in their community, had gone a long way to making this happen.
Collages were glimpses into the soul of those who made them. Or at least glimpses into their lives, their perspectives.
So what would a collage Kent made look like?
At an isolated desk against the far wall in the outer area of the principal’s office, the little kid from that morning sat up straight with attitude emanating out of every pore of his body. Talia glanced at the woman by her side, Carina Forsythe, the art teacher in whose classes she’d been working all day.
“That’s him,” she said, having told the woman about the disturbing scene she’d witnessed that morning, wondering if maybe she could help. As a professional.
The boy might not even be her Kent. All day she’d wondered, going back and forth in her mind with certainty that he was, and then with just as much certainty that the chance of him having been in the hallway at the exact moment that she’d been wondering about him was little more than nil.
“Kent Paulson.” Carina’s young brow furrowed as she identified the student. Talia noticed the little details of those lines on the woman’s forehead. Focused on them as her lungs squeezed the air out of her body.
He was her boy...her son.
She’d found him.
No one could know.
“...should have seen him a couple of years ago. He was everyone’s favorite—not that we really have favorites—it’s just that he was precocious, smart and so polite, too. But after his mother was killed...”
His adopted mother.
Talia had no idea if Kent knew that Brooke wasn’t his biological mother.
Oh, my God. My son!
She glanced at the boy again. And couldn’t look away. Was it possible that an invisible umbilical cord ran between them? One that hadn’t been severed when she’d picked up that pen ten years ago and signed her name, severing her rights to her own flesh and blood?
She tried to speak but her throat wouldn’t work.
“Anyway, you’d said you wanted to work with troubled kids, and I think it sounds like a good idea. Mrs. B.’s in her office. Why don’t you go talk to her?”
“I...will...” The dryness in her throat choked her, and she coughed. Until she started to choke. Carina led her to a nearby drinking fountain. She sipped. Coughed some more.
And was finally able to suck air into her too-tight lungs.
When she could, she thanked the other woman. Said something about not knowing what the coughing fit was about. Assured the art teacher that she was fine. Waited for Carina to continue about her day. Waited for the lump in her throat to dissipate enough for her to pull off the pretense of her life. And then, careful to avoid another glance at the child sitting along the far wall, she opened the door to the principal’s office.
She wasn’t a mother. She’d just grown a baby once.
* * *
“SO? HOW’D IT GO?” Sixteen-year-old Tatum Malone climbed out of the driver’s seat of their sister-in-law’s Mustang, addressing Talia.
You’d never know by looking at her that the beautiful, vivacious blonde teenager had been a resident at a shelter for victims of domestic violence the previous year.
Talia, who was standing in the driveway of Sedona Malone’s beach house, smiled as she greeted her baby sister, avoiding the hug with which Tatum usually greeted her family members. She never had been a touchy-feely person, always having to keep a barrier up. But now, after the choices she’d made, it was as if she couldn’t let her family get too close to her. Or maybe it was that she was afraid that once they saw the woman she’d become, they’d withdraw. And if she was all-in with them, their rejection would be too much to bear.
That was Talia. Always holding something back just in case.
“It went fine,” she said, pulling out her key as she headed up the back steps to the deck and the French doors that allowed her to sit at the kitchen table and watch the sun set over the beach just yards away. “The kids were great,” she continued as she let them into the borrowed beach house, dropping her keys on the counter and heading to get sodas for both of them. “You
