Annie Lawrence
The air of something gone wrong was unmistakable as I approached the door. I paused mid-determined-stride just outside the room that I had just departed from a few minutes before. I stood there for a moment, thinking about my options as I felt that wave of warning run through me again. But, after a second of thought, I discovered that
I had no options.
I peeked in before I set foot in the room the way you would rest your hand on the door to see if it was hot if your house was on fire. Shocked was the first word that came to mind when I saw the looks on the faces of Diana, Walker, and Taylor. The stunned silence hung in the air like a thick quilt only like when you have a really bad fever and a quilt isn't something you want.
"What?" Diana exhaled rather than said.
"My name isn't Taylor," Taylor said, conviction lacking in his voice.
A shiver ran up my spine and a panicked feeling tied knots in my stomach. I almost threw up. I knew I was eventually going to be found out by Walker and Diana, but I had hoped that that would be on a phone from a house at least a few miles away where they didn't know I was.
"I don't understand," Walker added.
I took a deep breath. Today was a s good a time as any. I just wished I had a suit of armor or something to go in ther with. I knew the situation was pretty volatile.
"I think I can explain," I said, walking into the room.
They all turned to look at me simultaneously. Confusion replaced the shock on Diana and Walker's faces while Taylor's expression melted into what could be more closely described as panic. It was obvious he knew as well as I did what they might do. I tried to convey to him through my eyes that I knew what I was doing. It was more just to comfort him rather than the truth.
"Hello?"
"Hi," I said back, not sure of what else to say.
"What's your part in this?" Walker asked me.
"I'm Annie," I said carefully, keeping my eyes to the floor.
"We know," Diana said, although she suddenly looked a bit suspicious of me.
"Annie Lawrence. Annie short for Andrea...and Lawrence as in married to Reese Lawrence," I told them.
I expected fists flying, angry, extremely loud words, shoving, the slamming of doors, and the sounds of a doctor's feet coming toward the room to see if everything was okay.
I was partly right.
Walker had me backed up against a wall, hands gripping my shoulders so tightly that I knew I'd have marks there later, Diana was yelling at him and he was yelling things at me that were at first quite unintelligible. No doctors came to my rescue.
It took a moment for me to understand any of the things that Walker was literally screaming at me.
"What the hell are you doing here?" was the first thing I could distinguish.
"I came to see my son," I said. He slammed me into the wall again.
"You are to stay away from him until he is eighteen and can make his own goddamned decisions!" he yelled at me loud enough to wake up the people in the morgue.
I instinctively flinched, expecting his fist to come flying at me any moment, but he couldn't seem to let go of my shoulders.
"Do you understand me!" he yelled.
I closed my eyes.
"Yes," I answered, choosing not to say anything more. Less was good in situations like this.
I opened my eyes and began to wonder if people in Hell were putting on their ice skates, the look he was giving me was so cold.
"You're hurting me," I told him, trying to keep my voice firm to so as to hide the fact that he was scaring me. I had never seen him like this before and I doubted that Diana or Taylor had either for when I looked past him, their expressions were ones of absolute fright and panic.
"Good," he said back. "Because God knows you've hurt us."
I looked away, knowing he was partially right.
"But I would've hurt him more if I had kept him with me," I said quietly. I was afraid that if I spoke too loudly, he'd beat the shirt out of me. Back when we were teenagers, that idea would not have been so daunting. And though the years had taken a lot out of both of us, I suspected that they had taken much more out of me.
"No," he said. "You hurt him when you left, you're hurting him more than you would be had you kept him in the first place by coming back," he informed me. His spit was warm on my face. I couldn't reach up to wipe it off. "Why?"
I kept my gaze steady.
I wanted to explain to him that I was concerned and scared for him when I heard his groans over the phone and then Parker's panicked words. But I knew it was probably nothing compared to the fright he had felt when Gina had called him to tell him what had happened. He was the real parent there, I was not.
I swallowed instead, staying silent.
"Why did you come back?" his voice was softer now, a lot less angry and more hurt. More confused. As if he were Taylor instead of Taylor's father.
"I...don't....know," I said slowly. What else could I say? I knew it wouldn't bode well with him if I told him that it was because I loved my sons.
"What are you here for?" he asked.
The question probably wasn't meant to go past why I was there in the hospital visiting Taylor, but for me, it went deeper than that. I remembered back to the times when those knives in the silverware drawer looked awfully tempting, especially while I was pregnant. The only thing that ever stopped me from that end was the fact that I didn't want to deprive them of life just because mine sucked. That had been the idea behind giving them up as well.
"I want to know them," I said, tearing up and feeling like a fool for doing so. I hate crying in front of people. Except Reese. He's the only one. That's probably one of the reasons I married him. I needed to cry a lot during that period of my life and I didn't want to be alone while I did it.
"No, you don't," he said. "You left. You told us you wanted no contact. Therefore, you must not be that desperate to know them. Or at least not as desperate as you're making it seem."
Knowing what he was implying, I felt my eyes narrow and my teeth clench.
"Walker," I began, my teeth still clenched, "you aren't me. You can't get inside me. You don't know who I really am or what I'm really like. Therefore you have absolutely no right to tell me how I feel or what I'm thinking."
Seeing the fires of Hell rise in his eyes, I flinched, closing my eyes and expecting to feel the stinging blow of his fist contacting with my cheek at any second. I probably would've been hit except for luck must have been on my side for a moment there instead of on the side of their oldest son for that was the exact moment that he chose to walk into the room.
Hmm...Is Walker overreacting here?
Index
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Five