Page 4 of Before the Storm

Tara rolled her eyes.

But just then, she heard her name through her earpiece. “Tara! Can we get your help over here? Concession stand two!”

Tara sped off to help out with a billing issue. Josie sidled up to her en route and said, “I saw you talking to Mom and Dad?” Her eyes stirred with questions. Last night, Tara had asked Josiehow best to tell her parents she’d dropped out of college. Josie had said, “If you need to be honest with them, just come out with it. Either they’ll deal with it or they won’t.”

“They still don’t know,” Tara explained. “I feel too stressed with everything here to deal with it.”

“Maybe you can just lie,” Josie said. “You can say you graduated early and have become an event planner now? A professional one?”

Tara raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know about that.”

“You’re good at it,” Josie declared. “Look around you!”

“This is a fluke,” Tara insisted.

“Or it’s your calling?” Josie teased. “Just think about it.”

Tara reached the concession stand to find the guy behind the counter in a spat with a customer who insisted he hadn’t given him the correct change. Tara’s head swirled. Mathematics had never been her strong suit, and when she tried to put together the numbers, she suddenly felt woozy. Or maybe she was woozy because she’d forgotten to eat lunch?

Why hadn’t she eaten lunch? She needed to take better care of herself. Especially now.

“Twelve minus three is nine,” the customer said to Tara, sneering. “Aren’t you in college, Tara Steiner?”

Tara put her hands on the counter and tried to stabilize herself. She closed her eyes.

“Hey, there’s no reason to be so cruel.” This came from a different man behind the counter. His accent was non-American, but Tara couldn’t place it. It sounded sort of like music.

Tara tried to open her eyes to look at the owner of that voice. But as her eyes split open, she was seized with a horrible pain in her lower stomach. She shrieked and grabbed her gut. Fear rolled over her.

My secrets are catching up to me.

“What’s going on?” The man behind the concession stand shrieked, “Tara? Can you hear me?”

But Tara was suddenly on the ground. Black was all she knew. The last thing she heard was her own horrible moan, then her voice begging for help. “Please, protect the baby.”

Chapter Two

December 2001

Josie sat in the back of the ambulance with Tara and tried her best to talk her down. “Just breathe, honey. It’s going to be all right!” But Josie herself was so frantic, so out of her mind with worry, that she was sure her own anxiety was infecting Tara and making everything worse. Josie’s heart was breaking. Just a week ago, she’d brought Tara home from college. All Tara had said was, “I have to drop out.” Josie thought Tara had flunked or something. She’d thought it was something simple like waywardness, a difficult professor, or even a bad breakup.

But Johan, the Swedish immigrant, had whispered to Josie before the ambulance arrived and Tara had fully regained consciousness, “She said something about a baby?” Johan was always very polite and soft-spoken. He didn’t let anyone else hear. Josie was grateful for that.

Gossip on Nantucket was like a forest fire. It needed to be contained.

Now, Tara mumbled up at Josie, saying something Josie couldn’t understand. Her eyes were big and frightened. Josie felt like an inadequate older sister. Wasn’t she supposed to protect Tara?

“Is the baby dead?” Tara rasped a little bit louder.

Josie’s heart felt squeezed. “We’re almost to the hospital. Don’t worry yourself. I’m sure the baby’s fine. You’re going to be all right.”

It felt terribly surreal to be talking about a baby. Haven’t Tara and I drunk wine together since she got home? Josie scanned her memories and wasn’t sure.

Tara lay back on the stretcher. One of the EMTs asked Tara a variety of questions, like how far along the pregnancy was and how she was feeling. Tara said she was pretty sure she was three months pregnant. She said she was beginning to feel better, that the world wasn’t spinning quite as much.

“But I need to go back to the festival and announce the winners of the Christmas Queen pageant,” she said.

The EMT laughed. “I think they can handle that themselves. We need to make sure you’re okay. That’s our priority.”

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