Zac Hanson
I hadn’t realized up to that point that there were so many women in the world that had pale skin, auburn hair, and blue eyes like Taylor’s. There were literally ten of them sitting in the waiting room with us at that very moment. I had scrutinized them each carefully from my seat, but none of them seemed to do anything that would indicate that they were Taylor’s biological mother. One was too patient, the other was pregnant and Isaac hadn’t said anything about that, one was with her little daughter, who looked miserable as all hell, one was flipping through a magazine too slowly, two were twins, one wasn’t snoring loud enough, and the last three either flipped me off or did something else to show me their lack of appreciation for my staring before I could find any features in them that reminded me of Taylor.
In all honesty, I don’t really know what I was expecting. I guess, in a lot of ways, I was expecting my mother and it took a lot to not look for long, blonde hair instead of short, auburn hair. And when it came to her personality, well, the only things I could think of to look for were things that Taylor did. Isaac hadn’t said anything about her personality. Only that our father had had her shoved up against the wall and then when he finally let her go, she slinked away. Was that supposed to tell me she was a bad person or that my father just had a short temper?
I hoped against hope that it was the latter, even though I had never known my father to have a short temper. I just didn’t want to think that Taylor and Parker’s biological mother was an irresponsible, abusive drunk who was only interested in the fame and the money. I wanted her to be someone nice with Parker’s dry sense of humor but Taylor’s occasional sappiness. Someone that you could find in both of them. I had been searching for her for three hours in that waiting room. I hadn’t found her yet.
“Zac, are you okay?” Isaac asked me after a moment, peering at me over the top of the magazine he was reading, one eyebrow cocked suspiciously with a little bit of concern.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“None of this is bothering you?” he asked in disbelief, obviously remembering how adamant I always was about going to hospitals and how panicky I always became when I got there.
I thought for a moment, looking around the room at everyone and shrugged. I wasn’t about to tell him that the reason it wasn’t bothering me was because I had been too busy looking for her, whoever she was.
“Okay,” he said uncertainly.
“I need a drink,” I told him, getting up out of my seat. I wasn’t really thirsty, I just felt the need to get out of that room. “Want anything while I’m there?”
“No thanks,” he said absently.
Sighing, I walked away and eventually found my way to the cafeteria. It took me a moment to spot the lone vending machine that didn’t sell candy or snacks and I quickly walked over to it, watching on as a woman slipped in a few coins and carefully pushed a button, causing a can to come banging down with a loud thud that made us both flinch instinctively.
She smiled as she retrieved it and stepped aside. I wasn’t aware that she was standing nearby as I slipped my own money into the machine and listlessly chose a random button. It was generic pop. It wasn’t going to be any good anyway.
However, when I pushed the button, there was no loud banging and thud as a can of pop came crashing down to the little pocket for me to retrieve as it had for the woman. Confused, I pushed the button again and nothing happened. Then I made sure the light above my choice was on, making sure that there was still some of that kind left in the machine. It was. So, I pushed the button again....and again...and again to no avail.
It wasn’t long before I heard some soft chuckling that sounded not unlike a softer version of Parker’s laugh from beside me and I looked to the woman. She set her can of pop down on a nearby table and walked up to me.
“Need some help?” she asked, her blue eyes twinkling.
“Sure,” I said, gesturing toward the machine.
“Which kind did you want again?” she asked, walking up the to machine.
“Uh...that kind,” I said, pointing to the button I had been pushing.
She made a slight face of disgust as she saw what kind I had picked but erased it quickly, apparently not wanting to seem unpleasant, much the way Taylor would do to our younger brother and sisters when they made him taste one of their strange concoctions in their endless quest to make “the perfect snack.” She pressed the button a few times. I bit back the urge to tell her that I could’ve done that.
Then she began to back up, almost as if the machine was coming after her. I watched on, bewildered, as she ran up to the machine and gave it a hard kick that made me flinch. When I opened my eyes again, she was handing me a can of pop with a cocky smile. I thanked her, taking the can into my own hands.
“Sometimes you just have to give it one good, hard kick in the ass,” she told me. “Trust me, most of the time I’ve spent in this hospital I’ve spent in here. I’m a pro at this now.” She almost sounded proud.
“Oh,” I said, nodding.
“I’m Annie, by the way,” she said, sticking out her hand.
“Zac,” I told her, taking it, trying to make eye contact as they had trained us to do during interviews and things like that. It was the first time I noticed how blue her eyes were. How familiarly blue. Like the color of a cold ocean.
A surge of panic rushed through me, but I quickly squelched it. The last thing I needed was to be obvious and draw attention to myself. I decided to attempt to play it cool.
She nodded. “Do you mind joining me?” she asked. “I don’t bite, it’s just that my husband refused to come with me today and I’m lonely.”
“Okay,” I said hesitantly, sitting at the table she had set her can on before. “So...,” I began after a moment, “who are you here for?”
“I’m visiting...my son,” she said.
Mmm-hmm.
“Your son?” I asked. “What’s his name?”
“Jordan,” she said hesitantly.
For a moment, I was caught off guard. Jordan? Maybe this wasn’t the woman I was looking for... Then I remembered that Taylor’s first name was really Jordan, not Taylor. It was the first time it struck me that Taylor probably wasn’t his real name at all.
“Oh?” I said.
“What about you?” she asked.
“My brother,” I told her, making sure not to go into anymore detail than that.
She nodded, apparently getting my hesitancy to say anything more and deciding not to press it as I carefully eyed the people that were sitting around us, some of them teenage girls who hadn’t seemed to notice me yet. I had been lucky so far. I hoped that I stayed lucky throughout this.
For a moment, we sat in silence, sipping our beverages. I checked just to make sure. Yup, she had auburn hair. And pale skin. This must be the woman.
Then it suddenly struck me that our parents had told us that Taylor’s real mother’s name was Andrea. This woman had said her name was Annie.
“Annie...is that short for something?” I asked her.
“Yeah,” she said, smiling. “My whole name is Andrea, but nobody’s called me that in about five or ten years. Except my father.”
Mmm-hmm.
“Oh,” I said.
“And I assume Zac is short for Zachary?” she asked with a smile.
“Yeah,” I answered, smiling a little myself.
We fell into silence again. Damn. How was I going to tell her that I knew who she was? Or get her to admit it. That’d be a better way of doing it.
Lucky for me, she made the first move.
“Zac...,” she said almost as if she were reminiscing about something. “The baby.”
I raised my eyebrows at her and she looked away as if she hadn’t just said anything all. As if she hadn’t meant to say that aloud.
“Huh?”
“What?”
“What did you mean by that?”
“What?”
“‘The baby,’” I reminded her.
“Oh,” she said. “I just meant that you’re the baby...in the band. The youngest.”
Mmm-hmm.
“So you know,” I said back.
“Of course,” she replied. “And I also know that you know who I am, too.”
“You’re Andrea,” I told her. “Taylor’s biological mother.”
“They told you my name,” she said, a little sarcastically. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Another pause for silence.
“Can I ask you why you’re here?”
“Yeah, but I can’t guarantee that I know the answer to that,” she told me. “But, what I can tell you is that I’m not here to start any custody battles or anything like that.”
I felt a wave of relief wash over me. That had been my worst fear. That she was going to start some painful, highly public battle with my parents (and Gina) for the custody of children she didn’t even want. Enough crap had been brought to the family with just finding Parker. We didn’t need stuff like that.
“So then why are you here?” I tried again.
“I don’t know,” she told me. “To see my sons. I haven’t even seen Parker yet. Only Taylor. I somehow doubt I’ll be let anywhere near Parker with all the trouble that came with telling your parents who I was.”
I nodded. Isaac had told us about that.
“Don’t worry, I won’t be here long,” she said.
This surprised me, but I attempted to not show it too much.
“Why is that?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Your parents are good to you, right? They’re good people and they take care of you and all that stuff, right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding.
“That’s why,” she said. “I think I’ve already damaged that enough.”
“But you can’t just leave,” I said, somehow upset by the prospect that she was just going to leave like that. Hadn’t she already done that once? Twice, actually, I answered my own question.
“I have to,” she said, smiling at me a smile which almost seemed to contain sympathy. Like sympathy you have for a three year old who doesn’t understand that one of his brother is dead. “I’d just create more problems than I’m worth and I know that that’s the last thing your family needs right now.”
“But...you can’t just leave,” I repeated, not sure what else to say because I wasn’t even sure why I was saying what I was saying.
She shook her head. “I don’t want to.”
“Then don’t,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow at me suspiciously. “It seems like you’d be one of the ones who wants me to leave most of all,” she commented, taking a sip from her can.
That was true.
“Yeah, but, I mean, it would upset me more if you dumped Taylor for a third time than it would if you stayed and...,” I trailed off. And what? And take him further away from us than he had already been taken?
However, I saw that she wasn’t completely convinced and decided to attempt to go on.
“This isn’t something that you can just dip your toes into and decide you don’t like it, you know,” I said, suddenly becoming angry with her. “Or, rather, something you can dip your toes into a third time and run away when you decide you still don’t like it.” She opened her mouth to retort, but I didn’t pause long enough. “Yeah, you’re going to hurt a lot of people. I’m probably going to be one of them, I know. And on behalf of all those you’re going to hurt, I thank you for thinking of us. But consider how much more it’s going to hurt Taylor if you leave. And I can pretty honestly say that I’d rather be hurt myself than see Taylor go through that kind of thing. You’ve probably known him for five minutes. That’s like reading the first five pages of a really good book and then having to put it down and never being able to pick it up again. It’s hard. You’ve left that question open to him and now you have to answer it. You couldn’t answer it fifteen years ago, you couldn’t answer it twelve years ago, but you have to answer it now. Because you came back. That was your decision.”
If my own words shocked me, she was practically knocked on her ass by them. I found that I was breathing hard, almost from exertion. I had never said anything like that before with such conviction and it took a lot out of me. But not enough out of me to keep me from wondering where it all had come from. She was right. If anything, I should hate her guts right that second and be glad to see her go. I wasn’t exactly comfortable with the fact that she had showed up at all, but since she was here...
“Think about it,” I told her, pushing myself out of my chair and striding out of the cafeteria, feeling like that pivotal but small character in a movie and smiling a little bit to myself at the thought.
Is Zac making any sense?
Index
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty-One