Taylor
How could he think something like that?
Just the idea of it.
Kill myself?
How could he mistake what had happened in Rochester for me trying to kill myself? How could the doctors? What did they know? Why hadn’t they even asked me about it? Why hadn’t they sent someone down to talk to me? Besides the police officer. Why hadn’t they even asked me if they thought I had tried to kill myself? If they thought it was all a suicide attempt. Didn’t I have a right to tell my side of it?
Then again, I had been given a chance with the police officer and had turned it down. Without me talking, what was everyone supposed to think?
The truth just seemed so impossible sometimes. Sometimes I thought it was just the first of the many dreams I had been having. I had only dreamt that all that had happened and had started to dream it so many times and so vividly each time that I just thought that it had actually happened. I was just dreaming things. Imagining things.
But some part of mind wouldn’t let me forget that it had all been a reality.
And if the truth seemed that impossible, then telling anyone was twice as hard as that. Ten times as hard. What could I say? What would they think? What would they think of me when I told them what I had done? What I had let happen? They would probably tell me I had only brought it on myself. They would probably tell me I had done something to encourage Lyle. To make him think I had wanted it when I really didn’t. And if I really didn’t want it so much, why hadn’t I done something about it?
I couldn’t explain any of that to them, any of the real reasons, because I wasn’t sure of them. Maybe I had done something to make Lyle think I wanted him to...do that. Maybe I had said something to him. And, looking back, there were things I could have done to get him to stop. Who’s to say that he wouldn’t have if I had done one of those things?
But he had a knife. He had used the knife.
I thought about that knife a lot. More than anything else, it stuck out in my mind. It was really one of the only clear things I remembered about the entire incident. The fact that it was there. Because that was really the only thing that made those other thoughts not fit.
Even still...
So I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t tell anyone because I knew they wouldn’t ever be able to look at me the same way. They’d be disgusted. They’d think I did a disgusting thing.
Because I had.
Isaac hadn’t understood that when he was asking me about it. When he was making his accusations. He had found a knife in the bathroom and thought that I was going to kill myself. That that was happened before.
I wished so badly that it was. So maybe I could have succeeded and I wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that I had done such an awful thing. That maybe Parker had been five minutes later than he had been and I would have already been gone.
I knew that was unfair, though. I would have died without ever knowing who that woman on the other end of the phone was. I would have died without knowing Annie. I would have died without really knowing Parker since most of the things we had learned about each other had come from his stay with us.
I would have died without ever lying to him like I was. I would have died without betraying my family like I had.
Oh God.
“Taylor?” a voice spoke up from behind me.
I didn’t turn, not wanting to acknowledge whoever it was. I just wanted to be left alone. I wanted to continue to be ignored the way everyone else in the park was ignoring me.
“Taylor?” the voice said again, tapping me on the shoulder.
“Go away,” I said.
“I could,” he demured. “Or I could just stand here and annoy you until you talk to me.”
I turned around to see Parker staring down at me quizzically, the amused grin I heard in his voice not actually present on his face. He raised an eyebrow at me. I turned away from him quickly, looking around and hoping there were no fans present to see both us there together, get confused, and asking more questions I didn’t want to answer.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Not really,” I answered.
“I suppose I don’t have to ask the obvious ‘do you want to talk about it?’ since you’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t,” he said, walking around and sitting on the bench next to me.
“Please go away,” I said.
He stayed where he was.
“I heard about what happened,” he said. “The whole knife thing.”
“Yeah. So?” I said.
“So I started thinking to myself what in the world would anyone want to bring a steak knife into the bathroom for?” he said. “Probably not to kill themself because a knife such as a steak knife is not a convenient tool for such a thing.”
I raised my eyebrows at him, surprised.
He shrugged. “I had a friend who had problems and was into self-mutilation for a while. I know these things,” he told me.
“He actually told you?”
“He showed me,” he replied. “It was pretty awful stuff.”
“I guess so,” I said.
He cleared his throat and lifted my arm and pointed to the long scar that was on it.
“This,” he said. “Does not look like anything he ever had on his arm. This,” he began to run his finger along it impersonally and I shuddered slightly as he did so, unable to help it, “does not look like a self-inflicted wound to me, to be very honest with you.”
I pulled my arm away.
“Is it?”
“Is it true that everyone thinks I tried to kill myself?”
He nodded. “Sort of,” he said. “The doctors told us that was what they thought might have happened, but they weren’t sure. I’m not sure if anyone really believes that, but we don’t have much else to go on.”
“How come no one ever said anything to me?” I asked.
“You seemed pretty adamant about not talking about it,” he pointed out. “You still do.”
“How could any of you think I could do a thing like that?” I asked next. “How could Isaac think that I would do something like that?”
“To Isaac, all evidence seems to point to that,” he said. “The fact that they thought you were trying to kill yourself at the hospital. The knife in the bathroom. I can’t really blame him for jumping to conclusions.”
“Would you have?” I asked.
“I was pretty mad when they said that they thought it was a suicide attempt, to be very honest with you,” he replied. “The doctors, that is. I’m not so sure about the knife in the bathroom. I mean, obviously you never did anything with it because there doesn’t seem to be any new marks or anything. And a steak knife is supposed to be rather...painful in comparison with a switchblade or something like that. But I don’t know what else it would be in there for.”
I looked at him, but quickly looked away.
“So what was the knife for?” he asked. “Obviously it wasn’t for that, by the way you’re acting about it.”
“No, it wasn’t for that,” I said.
“What was it for?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But we won’t know that until you tell me.”
“I can’t,” I said, aware that tears were starting to fill my eyes.
“Tell me, Taylor,” he said. “This can’t go on, okay? You can’t keep waking up in the middle of the night, screaming from a nightmare and keep from us what’s in those nightmares. You can’t do stuff like that anymore. You have to tell someone and I’m asking you to tell me.”
“You...You wouldn’t understand,” I said.
“Do you think Isaac or Zac would understand? Because they’re in Isaac’s truck a little ways down the path and I know they’d be just as curious to hear this,” he said.
“They wouldn’t understand, either,” I said.
“Who would understand?” he asked.
“No one.”
“Do you understand?”
I shook my head. “Not really, no.”
“Then I guess we’re all in the same boat here,” he said. “Tell me, Taylor.”
I shook my head.
He sat back and tapped his chin. “Hmm. A steak knife in the bathroom...What would one want a steak knife in the bathroom for? Certainly not to shave since one has no facial hair which would require shaving. To pick one’s teeth? No, toothpicks and fingers are much more convenient for one’s use. To fend off anyone who dare enter the bathroom while one is in there, showering for a very long time while the rest of the house’s occupants are suffering from a full bladder downstairs? A possibility. Certainly a possibility,” he said.
I smiled a little bit at what he was saying, obviously one of the things he was trying to get me to do.
“Perhaps one could teach the rest of us his methods of defending an occupied bathroom so we all might benefit from a quiet mind while we are in there, relieving ourselves since there is no lock on the door,” he said. “Does one have a how-to book, by any chance?”
“Shut up, Parker,” I said, still smiling.
“No?” he said. “Shame. Oh well. But what does one require a steak knife in the bathroom for, if not shaving, picking teeth, or self-defense? Why doesn’t one enlighten us?”
I shook my head, my smile fading. “I can’t tell you,” I said. “You’d hate me.”
“Hate you?” he said in genuine surprise.
I nodded.
“Honestly, Taylor, I don’t think I would,” he told me.
“That’s easy to say from your end of it,” I said. “When you don’t know.”
“When I’m trying to find out,” he said.
“You would hate me, you know,” I said. “You’d be so disgusted with me you’d go all the way back to New York and tell Lyle all about it and then he’d--”
“Lyle?” he interrupted just as I was catching myself. “What does Lyle have anything to do with this?”
I got up to walk away, but he pulled me back onto the bench.
“What does Lyle have to do with this, Taylor?” he said, his voice now gone completely serious and forceful.
“Nothing, I just...,” I trailed off.
“What does Lyle have to do with what happened in New York and the knife in the bathroom here?” he asked, stil gripping my arm so I couldn’t get away. “Tell me, Taylor.”
“Nothing,” I said. “He doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Then why did you bring him up?” he asked.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said. “I was just...I don’t know.”
“Taylor, what the hell is going on?”
He was getting scared. I was too. Because in about two seconds I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hold it in any longer.
I kept my mouth clamped shut.
“What did Lyle do to you?” he asked me.
I hesitated.
“Taylor?”
Why was he being so insistent?
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“It does matter,” he said. “It matters to Gina.”
At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about. Why would it matter to Gina? Then I realized. Lyle was Gina’s boyfriend. She had no idea. She was still with him.
“Did you know that Lyle has a knife?” I asked.
At his answer that he didn’t, I went on to tell the entire story. Every detail. Every thought. Every theory. Everything. It surprised me how easily it poured out that first time as I was telling him things he probably didn’t want or need to know, but I knew I needed to say. It was like opening Pandora’s box. Everything came rushing out. I told him very literally everything.
By the end of it, I was crying and he quickly put his arm around me. I couldn’t look him in the eye. I didn’t want to see if the emotions I expected to be there were actually there or not.
“Oh my God, Taylor,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
I just sobbed pitifully.
“Parker! Taylor?” a voice called to us from about ten feet away.
We both looked up simultaneously to see Isaac and Zac coming toward us. When they saw I was crying, they jogged the last few feet.
“What’s wrong?” he said. “What happened?”
“I think we should get Taylor home,” Parker said before I discovered I couldn’t speak.
Isaac nodded and we all got up and walked toward where they had parked the car, Parker not taking his arm from around me the entire time.
Okay, so now that one of the cats has escaped from the bags, whaddya think?
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-Two