Zac
But that night, as I was staring, I was thinking more of what Parker had done to me earlier and grinning to myself. I was going to get him back somehow, I knew I was. But I have to admit that I didn’t mind too much that he had done that. Theresa was nice. She had gotten used to me enough to talk to me like I was a normal person (you can agree or disagree with that). If I didn’t think Parker was after her himself, I probably would have gone ahead and made my own moves (even several states away). Then again, Parker did keep claiming that they were only friends...
I sighed a little to myself. Yes, thinking of Theresa was a nice distraction from what Isaac had told me and thoughts of the picnic we were apparently going to at Annie’s on Saturday. It seemed she had felt the need to invite us over after eating at our house so many times. My first thoughts had been that this was going to be it, she was finally going to tell Parker. But the more I thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed and I decided to take it at face value.
Taylor had seemed pretty pleased when our mother had announced that we were going. I think he was looking forward to showing us where Annie lived, not realizing that he was also going to be showing us where he lived. Where his room was. Where the rest of his things were. The house he had left ours for.
I turned on my side as the sounds of Taylor trying to get out of his sleeping bag interrupted the silence of the dark night. I assumed that he was getting up to go to the bathroom, so I was rather surprised when instead he walked over to where I was laying and put his face right in front of mine.
“Are you awake, Zac?” he whispered.
I considered not answering, wanting to stay in my reverie about Theresa for a little while longer. Was it really too much to ask for a little time away from the disaster that was now our family?
But I knew I couldn’t do that to him.
“Yeah,” I said. “Why? What’s wrong?”
He sighed and paused for a minute, thinking. “Can I talk to you?”
What was it with my brothers wanting to talk to me about serious things all of a sudden?
“Taylor, it’s one in the morning,” I said.
“I know, but I can’t sleep,” he said. “Please?”
“Fine,” I said, sitting up.
“Not here,” he said.
“Where, then?” I asked.
“The garage?” he suggested.
“You are a strange little monkey,” I said, swinging my legs over the side of the bed, accidentally kicking him in the process.
“I don’t want to wake Isaac,” he explained.
“Fine, fine,” I said. “Shall we?”
He led me out of our bedroom and we quietly crept downstairs and then into the garage. Once in there, he turned on the light and we each pulled up chairs, sitting across from each other.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“My father died,” he said with absolutely no preamble.
Whoa.
“Pardon?” I said.
“My father died,” he repeated.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Collin Windsor was my biological father,” he said slowly. “He died.”
I shook my head. He may as well have been speaking another language. The only thing I could get through was that someone was dead and that he kept referring to this person as his father. But our father was perfectly alive.
He sighed, frustrated.
“Taylor, Dad’s fine,” I said, thinking maybe he had had a bad dream and now was thinking that it was real.
He shook his head. “Zac, I really don’t want to have to explain procreation to you. I know Dad’s fine. That’s not the father I’m talking about. I’m talking about my father. My father. Collin Windsor.”
“Collin Windsor,” I repeated the name.
He reached down into his pocket and extracted what looked like a small photograph. He handed it to me and I stared at it for a good five minutes, blinking at it a few times. I was about to ask when this picture of him was taken, but he spoke before I could.
“Collin Windsor,” he said.
That was when it really sunk it what he was talking about. A man of about twenty-five years of age that looked exactly like Taylor and Parker. He could only be one person.
“Your father?” I said.
He nodded.
“And he’s dead,” I said.
Again, he nodded.
“Wow,” I said. Suddenly the image of Taylor at the graveyard flashed through my mind and I put two and two together, but I didn’t mention it. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Neither do I,” he said, getting up from his seat and beginning to pace. “That’s the problem. I don’t know what to say except there you go, that’s my father. That’s the man that sired me and Parker. Not that that’s something that’s easily missed.”
I watched him for a moment.
“What did he die from?” I asked.
“Cancer,” he replied.
“And did you meet him before this?”
He shook his head. “I went with Annie to the funeral,” he said. “His sister gave me that. His sister!”
“What did she say?” I asked.
“She said that that was him,” he said. “That she was sad that his kids weren’t going to remember him--he had three little kids with his wife. Then she started talking about me and Parker.”
“What did you say about that?” I asked, suddenly afraid. There wasn’t going to be another family brought into the picture, was there?
“I didn’t say anything,” he said.
I sighed with relief.
He sat back down and tears were glistening in his eyes. “Zac, I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” he said. “I just...I...this has gotten so much more complicated than it should have been. First Parker, then Annie, now him. It’s...it’s, God! I don’t even know what it is. It’s just so hard...”
As he was saying this, I flashed back to the conversation I had had with Isaac earlier about the knife he had found in the bathroom. About how he thought that Taylor was going to try to kill himself. I had brushed it off.
“Tay...Tay, it’s okay,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder as he bent over like he was going to throw up.
“It’s not, though,” he said. “What am I going to do? I’m ripping everyone apart, Zac. I came this close to doing it again when I saw Hannah Windsor standing there with her three kids. With my three half-siblings.”
I sighed. “You’re not ripping anyone apart, Taylor,” I said. “It’s just something we have to get through. We’ve gotten through harder things before.” I couldn’t honestly think of anything harder than this, but I wasn’t about to say so.
“Then I’m ripping myself apart,” he said quietly. “I can’t take this anymore, Zac. I can’t.”
The knife, my mind kept saying.
Suicide, Isaac’s voice said.
I shuddered. Apparently I was being told something. Or I was telling myself something I was starting to believe.
“Taylor, it’s okay,” I said.
“You know what the worst part is?” he said. “He was looking for us. My father has been looking for us since Annie gave us up. She never told him where we were. He never knew. He just kept looking and looking and he never found us.”
“I’m sure he always knew you were safe,” I said.
“What if he didn’t?” he said.
“Then he does now,” I said firmly.
He nodded, rubbing at his cheeks with the back of his hand.
“I want to come home, Zac,” he said.
At first I was so shocked and joyed at the statement that I didn’t take the time to think about the actual implications of it.
“But I guess it’s true what they say about how you can never go home again,” he said with a slight, cynical laugh.
“Me, too, Taylor,” I said. “And they also always say you’re always welcome home, too. And you are.”
He nodded.
I wanted to plead with him. Don’t kill yourself. Please don’t kill yourself. We all love you. But it’s funny. You always think that when you’re faced with a situation like that, you’d be able to say all that in a second. But when you’re actually there, you can’t even find the words.
“Sorry I woke you up for this,” he said.
“Don’t be sorry,” I said.
He only got up and walked out of the garage, leaving me with the panicked feeling that I was losing my brother in a much more permanent way. Theresa had left my mind completely.
What if I told you I'll shut up if you shut up?
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Six