Page 53 of The Cowboy's Miracle Baby

Sarah fed Taraa thick sandwich before she settled her down to explain herself. She was hungry and exhausted, her young face drawn with despair, but she held Lolly tight against her. Gus didn’t sit with Cami, but leaned against a wall, watching Tara. Will and Izzy had left, not wanting to overwhelm her with so many Hardestys ganging up on her. But Cooper was there with Shay and Ray was sitting with Sarah, who took the baby and rocked her against her shoulder, leaving Tara free to talk. She looked rough, as one would after sleeping in a barn for days, and she plucked at her straggly hair in apology as she began to talk.

“First, please don’t be mad at Ryan for helping me for the last few days. He didn’t have to, but I’m grateful to him.”

Ryan, who seemed suddenly older than he had a week ago, just smiled at her.

“I’m sorry for hiding in your barn. I had nowhere else to go. And I first just came to make sure you had her. Not that that’s an excuse, but—”

“Let’s put that all aside for now, Tara,” Sarah said. “There’re worse things than taking shelter in a barn when you have nowhere else to go. What we want to know is what you were thinking. What you want to do now.”

Tara stared down at her hands. She looked young. Younger than nineteen and so very alone.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me for what I did—with Lolly. I know what I did was wrong. But I just… couldn’t ruin her. I couldn’t handle having her end up like me. And before you say it, I know I could have turned her over to an adoption agency. But I didn’t trust any adoption agency to do right by her. And I… somehow, I knew you would—all of you—watch over her. I’m sorry. This wasn’t even your problem. It was mine.”

“Why don’t you start at the beginning, Tara. How did you end up alone, without anyone?” Cami said.

She swallowed hard. “I… made a mistake. A lot of mistakes, actually. I trusted someone I shouldn’t have. I was living with the Simons and seeing this older boy they didn’t like. Then I aged out. Eighteen. And when that happens, you’re just… on your own. Cut off from any support or money or help from anywhere. It’s like they just don’t care what happens to you after that. It was… understood that I would move out the day I turned too old for their foster care support. They said they would try to help me after, but they had a houseful of kids and not enough money, and my foster dad got a new job up north.”

“Go on,” Cami said when she faltered in the story.

“Anyway… I knew I wasn’tfamilyto them. No matter what they said. Joey, my boyfriend at the time, he told me he wanted us to get married and I thought, maybe finally, I’d…belongsomewhere, to someone. And he had a place. So, I moved in with him.

“I had just enough money saved up to buy a used car and I got a job working as a Lyft driver, but he didn’t like me doing it. He wanted me to quit and promised to take care of me. But then, he sold my car and kept that money for himself. Said he didn’t trust me with it. And when I found out I was pregnant he acted like that was all my fault, too. We fought all the time. He left me for good when I was six months pregnant. I don’t even know where he went. Somewhere out of town. After that, I just lost the apartment and was sleeping on friends’ couches until Lolly was born. I had her in a friend’s house.

“I knew she deserved better than me. A better life than I could give her.” Tara dropped her face in her hands. “I love her already so much, but I can’t keep her.”

Gus spoke from behind Cami. “I spoke to Nick at the bus station. He said he gave you a bus ticket to Boise. But that you didn’t get on that bus.”

She looked surprised that he knew about that.

She nodded. “It was kind of him to do that. I figured it was best for everyone if I left. Disappeared. But in the end, I couldn’t… couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get on that bus. I needed to make sure you all got her and were going to help her. Especially you, Ms. Hardesty,” she said to Cami. “My foster sister used to talk about you all the time. How you always took time for her. Cared about her. Not like other teachers. And she always said if she could ever have a different mom, it would be you.”

Cami’s cheeks got hot and she looked at Gus, who was watching her, too. “I know what you did was hard,” she said. “I can’t imagine how hard. And of course we’ve got her. We would never let anything bad happen to her. But the whole reason you did what you did wasn’t because you didn’t want her. It was because you loved your daughter.”

Tara nodded, trying not to cry and failing.

Cami looked around the room at her family who were all watching her, sitting in their comfortable home, surrounded by Christmas decorations and, most of all, love. Something Tara had possibly never known. “It seems what you need most is support. Help. A way to keep her yourself, but to not be alone.”

Tara blinked up at her as if this thought had not even occurred to her. “But—how?”

“What if you work here?” Sarah said. “We have a family business here on the ranch that we’re building right now. A working guest ranch. If you wanted to, you could work here for us.”

“We even have an actual apartment,” Shay said. “Right off the barn. You could stay there. You and Lolly.”

Sarah’s boyfriend, Ray Cooper, spoke up. “I’ve stayed in that apartment for a while and it’s nice. You’d do well there. These are good people, Tara. You can trust them.”

“You’d give me a job? And a place to stay?”

Cami glanced around the room, and everyone seemed in agreement. “Do you want to keep Lolly, Tara?”

“Oh, yes,” she said on a sob. “Yes, I do.”

“Then Lolly could do a lot worse than to be here with her mom and the rest of us looking out for her,” Cami told her. “And I’ve kind of fallen in love with her, too. So, you’d be doing me a favor if you stayed.”

“There is the small matter of the sheriff,” Cooper reminded them.

“The sheriff knows?” Tara asked, her eyes full of fear now. “No, of course he does.”

“But I think we can straighten that out,” he said. “Especially since I think we can claim you never technically abandoned her. Will’s fiancé, Izzy, has experience in family court advocating for people like you and Lolly. If anyone can straighten this out, she can.”

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