Lost & Found Love Read online

  Tabby smiled at him. “Twenty-three. I—I guess we should slow down a little, huh?”

  Joe grinned sheepishly. “That didn’t work so well in my case.”

  She touched his face, stroked the tips of her artist’s fingers along his lean cheek. “We need practice.”

  Joe’s eyes widened in surprise. The idea of being free to touch him made Tabby’s lips part. Joseph laughed softly. “Stop that, Tabby. My halo is slipping. Before it slides too far, I should walk you home.”

  Tabby sighed. “I know. Neither one of us can exactly flaunt our relationship.”

  He cupped her face in his hands. “That you even say we have a relationship means more than I can tell you. I guess we do need to be careful, but that doesn’t mean ashamed.”

  He walked her to the door, pulled her close, and hugged her. “Are you ready to date a minister yet?” he murmured.

  She touched his cheek. “I think the real question is whether you’re ready to date the girl everyone’s gossiping about.”

  He touched his lips to her forehead. “Definitely.”

  Tabby slept deeply and dreamlessly, so when she awoke the next morning, she felt more rested than she had in a while. Trying to keep in mind her problems from the beginning of the week, she dressed conservatively in black slacks, low-heeled pumps, and a long-sleeved white cotton blouse with a high collar. Normally she would have simply put her hair back in a braid, but she took time to twist it up and pin it. Finally satisfied she was as plain and conservative as she could make herself, Tabby headed to school. The faculty was still standoffish, though, some even cold. At least, she thought with relief, Mr. Underwood had unbent enough to nod and smile at her politely.

  The real deep freeze was coming from Miss Harris, the new kindergarten teacher. Tabby toyed with the idea of taking a look at the town’s Facebook page, but decided she was probably better off remaining in blissful ignorance.

  She would have the little ones today—kindergarten, first, and second graders. The day proceeded more smoothly, and Tabby relaxed. When the kindergarten students filed in, she immediately started them on creating color wheels, so they could see how colors blended to form new colors. The second graders were next, and with them, she was again working on pre-testing line drawing skills. After lunch, her first graders came.

  Tabby noticed one particular student right away—a quiet girl with beautiful blue eyes and long, dark curls. Her skin was like porcelain, and while Tabby took note of her exquisite beauty, it was her dress and her manners that were all too familiar. Even on this warm afternoon, Melodie Matthews wore a long-sleeved Tinker Bell shirt and a skirt that covered her almost to her ankles. What leg showed was covered in pale pink socks that disappeared into Cinderella sneakers.

  A gut-wrenching familiarity made Tabby nearly sick. How often had she gone to school dressed this way, even though the weather was still far too warm to be in a long-sleeved shirt? Tabby took a deep breath. She didn’t need to put her own emotions, her own background off on this child. It could be that Melodie’s parents were extremely conservative.

  The little girl sat by herself, the paper on the table in front of her, and the charcoal pencil untouched. As Tabby moved around the tables, she tried to figure out if the little girl was separating herself or being ostracized—maybe a bit of both—and her heart went out to her.

  Tabby sat next to her, folding her long frame into one of the small chairs. “Do you need help getting started, Melodie?”

  The little girl shook her head without meeting Tabby’s eyes.

  “I’ll show you what to do, and you can try, okay?”

  Melodie lifted her gaze to Tabby’s. Without saying a word, she touched Tabby’s hand to stop her from picking up the charcoal. For a moment, their eyes met, and there was such sadness in those big blues depths that Tabby nearly gasped. She couldn’t tear her gaze away. It was truly like looking into a reflection of her childhood.

  “My mommy says not to draw,” Melodie whispered. “She says you’re a bad woman, but you don’t look bad.”

  Tabby blinked rapidly and shook her head. She glanced around the room, but none of the other children seemed to have heard Melodie’s earnest whisper. Looking more intently at her than she had before, Tabby saw nothing, no obvious signs of what she suspected was happening to the little girl.

  Tabby smiled, wondering how to communicate her suspicions to the child without alarming her. If Melodie’s home was at all like Tabby’s had been, the girl was probably well-coached in what to say and do.

  “I’m not a bad woman, Melodie. In fact, I bet I’m a lot like you. If you’d like, I’ll keep your drawings for my class in a file no one else needs to see.” She handed the girl the charcoal and watched in amazement as the little girl began to fill the page with the most exquisite drawings of angels. They were childish and untutored, but showed incredible raw talent.

  “Those are beautiful, Melodie.” Excitement stirred within her at finding a kindred soul, a talent to be nurtured and developed.

  Melodie smiled at her. “Angels are supposed to protect us. Do you think they really can?”

  Tabby inhaled deeply, trying to tread carefully. “I think angels do the best they can with what they know. They’re probably busy, though, as many people as there are for them to watch over, so sometimes we might have to help them.”

  Melodie stared at her intently. “Like you’re here to help me.” She slid the paper over to Tabby. “Here. I’m done with this.”

  Tabby looked at the clock. It was nearly time to go. She instructed the children on how to put away their supplies. Melodie’s drawing she would keep in its own file, locked in the bottom drawer of her desk. After the kids left with their regular classroom teacher, Tabby sat staring at her desk.

  She swallowed the excess saliva pooling in her mouth as memories and fears flooded through her. No one had helped her. Mama had tried, but Tommy just beat her too. Every once in a while someone at school got suspicious, but that never went anywhere. Tabby was too afraid to say anything, and Tommy was too smart to hit where it would show.

  The law in Virginia required Tabby, as a teacher, to report suspected abuse, but what had she truly seen? What had Melodie actually told her? Nothing.

  Their entire conversation could be interpreted as an imaginative little girl who liked to draw angels and decided that Miss MacVie was there to help her as a teacher. Nothing else. She saw no visible signs of abuse. Simply because she saw herself in the child wasn’t enough. It would be easy enough to accuse her of transferring her experiences to a child and a situation that were completely different.

  Tabby slipped the drawing into her bag, turned off the lights, and drove home. She wanted to talk to Joe, but when she got there, his Mustang was gone. Tabby did something she rarely did. After opening the cabinet, she took out a small bottle of bourbon, splashed some in a glass, and drank it down neat in one swallow. After coughing and wiping the tears from her eyes, she dragged heavy, unwilling limbs up to the third floor of her house. She had to get the images out of her head. The memories from her own past were simply too dark.

  She switched from lethargy to frenzy when she reached her studio. Her movements were feverish as she moved the painting of Joseph to a safe spot before she slapped a fresh canvas on the easel. She glanced down at her clothing. She couldn’t afford to get paint on her slacks and blouse. They were some of her best clothes. Tabby stripped them off until she stood only in her underwear in the middle of her studio. She folded her clothes neatly and set them outside the studio door. This shouldn’t take long.

  She pulled a long-sleeved smock from the hook where it rested and carefully buttoned it from its high neck down to mid-thigh where it ended. She picked up a pencil and sketched broad general sweeps on the canvas, allowing the pain to flow as she felt sure it flowed for Melodie, as it had flowed for her. Then she painted, losing herself and all track of time while she wrestled with her memories and worried abou
t how to help her student.

  * * * *

  Memories of Tabby’s exquisite body haunted Joe as he made his rounds, visiting people in the hospital as well as traveling around to older members who were shut-ins. At his last visit, he encountered Jeanie Underwood who also conveniently showed up with a large casserole. It would have been rude to refuse to stay, so he dutifully choked down baked spaghetti and a couple of glasses of too sweet, sweet tea while the two women made not so subtle inquiries into his love life.

  For a moment, an errant flash of temper he forcefully suppressed, made him want to look at them and say, Why ladies, my love life is pretty freaking good. Just last night I prematurely ejaculated while feeling up the delightfully sinful Miss MacVie. Had I not disgraced myself like a hormone-crazed adolescent, I might have been able to talk Miss MacVie out of her clothing, so I could actually see what I was climaxing all over.

  Instead, Joe smiled charmingly, admitted he’d met someone whom he was interested in but they were simply friends, then politely excused himself by saying he needed to work on his sermon for Sunday. When he pulled the Mustang in and covered it up, he saw Katie sat on his porch railing now, watching him intently with her faintly glowing golden eyes. A glance at Tabby’s house showed him the light was on in the studio. She might get angry with him, but he decided after the day he’d had, he was going to intrude anyway.

  He sprinted up to his room and changed into a pair of comfortably worn khakis and a lightweight cotton shirt. He slipped his feet into flip-flops and grabbed two cans of Coke before he dashed across the driveway and onto her porch. Katie, he noticed, had disappeared.

  As he walked through the darkened kitchen, his sensitive nose picked up a smell all too familiar from his childhood. Whisky? Joe frowned as he noticed the bottle and the glass on the counter. His nose wrinkled when he picked it up, and now his expression grew taut as he looked down the hallway to the dimly lit stairway.

  He remembered all too well finding Tabby collapsed from exhaustion amid the wreckage of her paintings, but he didn’t hear any sounds. He hadn’t smelled liquor on her then. No way he would have missed that. Some of his mother’s best friends had been named Jack and Jim. The fact the bottle was still in the kitchen and still three-quarters full was a good sign, surely.

  Nevertheless, he took the stairs two at a time until he once again halted in consternation outside her studio door. To one side was her partially finished painting of him, and to the other side were the clothes he’d seen her depart in that morning, neatly folded and stacked on top of her black leather flats. Taking a deep breath, almost afraid of what he might find this time, Joe slowly turned the knob and opened the door.

  The first thing that struck him was the single-minded concentration with which she painted. She was much more intense than she had been while he sat for her. Something raw and elemental colored her movements now, as if she was in a battle with the canvas. Her brush was her sword, and the paints were the wounds of that battle. The next thing he noticed was the expanse of shapely white legs showing beneath a paint-covered smock that ended just below mid-thigh. While many women wore skirts that short every day, Joe had never seen Tabby expose anywhere close to this amount of skin. As his gaze traveled upward from trim ankles to shapely calves and further, he noticed something else, a thin crisscrossing of whiter skin. His breath caught as he realized what he was seeing, a fine network of old scars.

  Now his eyes lifted, and he noticed for the first time what she painted. A cowering child, cringing away from a detached hand holding a wicked looking switch coated in blood. Ghostly figures crowded the edge of the painting, some gazing on in frozen horror while others looked away, refusing to see. Even as he watched, Tabby sobbed and dropped her palette and brushes.

  “Tabby, darling…” he whispered softly, hoping not to startle or frighten her.

  She whirled, her loose hair flowing around her head and her golden eyes overflowing with silent tears. She held her arms out to him.

  “Joseph!” she choked, and her whole body began to shake. He caught her as her legs buckled beneath her and swung her into his arms. She was nearly as tall as him yet willow slender, and he had no trouble cradling her until he could sit with her in the window seat. She had her face turned into his neck and clutched him in desperation. He realized one of his hands rested on the bare skin of her thigh, and he quickly smoothed the material of her smock over her legs, covering as much as he could.

  “What is it?” he asked. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Tabby shook her head. “I can’t. Not yet. Just hold me.”

  He rocked her, his eyes riveted on the images in the painting. Was it her? Was this a painting of something that had happened to her? “Who’s the child in your painting, Tabby?”

  Silence. Tabby took a couple of deep, shuddering breaths. “A memory, but triggered by one of my new students. Oh, Joseph. She reminds me so much of myself.”

  Joe’s eyes swiveled to the painting again. “You think she’s being abused?” he asked slowly, the horror bleeding through in his tone. “Tabby… Did you tell anyone?”

  She pulled away, jumped up, and paced the studio, her movements now agitated. “Tell them what, Joseph? Tell them that my student dresses like I did at that age so that none of the bruises I had would show? The closest thing she said that even remotely sounded like she was telling me about the abuse was that she knew I was there to help her.”

  Joe’s eyes wandered to the painting again. “You saw no bruises?”

  Tabby looked at the painting too. “No. It was like watching myself, Joseph. Abusive adults are so clever, and Melodie is already well-coached.” She turned to face him. “I told you the man I thought was my father invited the minister and the deacons over on a regular basis to try to cast the demons out of me. Well, in between those sessions, Tommy tried to beat them out. It started when I began school and didn’t stop until I hit puberty. Six years, Joseph.”

  He swallowed thickly. “No one helped? No one discovered it?”

  Tabby shrugged. “There were a couple of investigations, but my mother and I were too terrified of him to cooperate with anyone else. I wore long skirts and long-sleeved shirts to school. No one wanted to talk to me anyway. I was a social outcast not only because of the way I dressed, but also because I had nothing in common with my classmates.

  “Once or twice, a teacher or administrator would call social services, but they never found anything.” As she spoke, she unbuttoned the smock she wore. Joe stared in fascination, but not in a sexual way. There was absolutely nothing sexual about this situation. He already had a gut feeling of what he would see. Tabby turned her back to him, slowly pulled her hair off her back, and let the smock fall to the ground.

  Joe gasped. “Tabby!” he whispered hoarsely. Long scars crossed her back from her shoulders to her buttocks, disappearing beneath the lace of her panties, only to reappear on her thighs.

  Her shoulders slumped, and her head dropped forward. “Six years, Joseph. This is what he did to me while no one could prove anything. My mother and I were too scared of him to speak up, to volunteer any information. We enabled him. How do I help this little child when I couldn’t even help myself?”

  Joe retrieved the smock and put it back on her before he turned her into his arms and held her. Tears burned the back of his eyes. He wasn’t sure if they were in sympathy to the pain she had endured or in fury at the man who had inflicted it. Both emotions warred inside him. He took her out of the studio, turned off the lights, and made her go with him downstairs where he settled her on the couch in the living room and brought her a can of Coke.

  He sat next to Tabby and stroked her hair and shoulders as she poured out what had happened to her. Joe swallowed against the painful lump in his throat, praying God would take away the desire he felt to find Tommy MacVie and kill him. When at last Tabby lay curled against him, emotionally exhausted, Joe kissed her forehead.

  “Think about Melod
ie for a few days, Tabby,” he said quietly. “I won’t advise you to pray about it. I’ll do that for us both.” Fingers that already held the cloth of his shirt in a death grip tightened even more. “Maybe the answer will come to both of us.”

  “She draws angels, Joseph,” Tabby whispered, “the most beautiful angels, and someone beats her.”

  “Shh,” he soothed. “We’ll figure out how to help her.”

  Tabby looked into his face in the dim light. “Would you stay with me tonight? I-I don’t want to be alone.”

  Joseph touched her cheek. Propriety said he should go home, desire told him to take what he knew was there for the asking, but what was truly right won.

  “I’ll stay with you, Tabby.”

  He would hold her. He would sleep with her, but he would do nothing more than kiss her, no matter how much that might cost him.

  He found her nightgown, tucked her into her bed, then stretched out next to her on top of the covers, still fully clothed. For the first time since he had made the decision to become a minister, Joseph questioned the strictures that circumscribed his life. Tabby curled against him with a trust he wasn’t sure he deserved. Her body was beautiful, and he wanted her, but not when she was so emotionally vulnerable. He wanted her when they could come together joyfully.

  Joseph watched her sleep and gently stroked her dark hair, letting his fingers trail down to scars that extended onto her upper arms. Joseph looked at her narrow, beautiful face with its fine features and winging brows, and was touched once again by a sense of familiarity. She looked so serious when she slept, when those gorgeous golden eyes weren’t sparkling with excitement and interest in what she found around her.

  She sighed in her sleep, and her hand slipped down to lie across his hips. Joseph swallowed and closed his eyes with pleasure and pain as his body responded to her innocent caress. Lord, if this was a test, he was awfully close to flunking. He gritted his teeth while he silently prayed for strength.