Zac
I think that’s something we were all silently contemplating as we sat anxiously in the waiting room for the doctors to bring Taylor back to us. It was too late for any real examination, they said, but this was necessary just in case. Perhaps there were sexually trasmitted diseases that were passed on to Taylor when...it happened. They’d have to find out. And they said it pretty casually, too. It was probably everyday for them that someone came in to get tested for HIV or something like that. But it wasn’t everyday for us.
It wasn’t everyday we found out something so horrifying had happened to one of our family members.
“What’s taking so long?” Annie mumbled quietly from next to Isaac. At Taylor’s request, we had called her and told her some of what happened, saving the rest for when she arrived at the hospital a record breaking twenty minutes later (the hospital was thirty minutes from our house in good traffic and she lived much farther away), followed closely by Lawrence ten minutes later. Her reaction had been similar to ours: why hadn’t he told anyone? Why had he kept it to himself all this time?
Of course, I could imagine that it wasn’t that easy. None of us had exactly opened ourselves to hear what it was, having given up after he wouldn’t tell us when it first happened. Plus, we were all to wrapped up with the hurt we felt at the whole Annie situation to think of it much.
That had been my revelation in the car on the way to the hospital. I had been trying to think of reasons Taylor wouldn’t tell us something like this. I knew, from the way he talked while he relayed his story to us, that he had been scared. But Taylor had told us secrets before, even through fear. He just wasn’t the type of person who would or could simply keep something to himself. Certainly not something like this. And so it had come to mind that we hadn’t exactly welcomed him to make a confession to us. The entire Annie situation and our reaction to it had overridden our concern for our brother. Even before anybody but Taylor and my parents had known anything about it. According to Isaac, our father had been so angry that he had thrown Annie up against a wall. The concentration had shifted. It turned from “God, what happened? Are you all right?” to “You’re never to speak to that woman again!” seemingly. So it wasn’t really a wonder when I thought about it like that. But it didn’t help to ease any guilt I felt over it.
Annie leaned forward and put her face in her hands. While the rest of us had gotten past the freaking out stage and were now onto the solemn contemplative stage, she hadn’t yet even gotten to see Taylor and so was a step or two behind us. She hadn’t been able to ask him the questions we had barely allowed ourselves to ask him. She hadn’t been able to tell him how sorry she was that she hadn’t done anything before, pushed him to tell her. I didn’t doubt there was a burning feeling in the pit of her stomach because of it. My burning feeling had turned into a dull ache a while ago.
But as I watched her shake and Lawrence rub her back lightly, soothingly, I was reminded of the first time I had seen her. We were in the waiting room of the hospital in Rochester. I had seen her then without knowing who she was. I remembered our interaction in the cafeteria, the way she kicked the machine for me to get my can of pop out and the way we sat down together and talked. That had really been the only time I had ever talked to her. I had sat there and encouraged her to start a relationship with both her sons. I didn’t know what my encouragment was going to turn into later on. The wrecking ball the whole situation was going to turn into when she returned after her disappearance. That when she finally followed my advice, I would be sleeping in my brother’s old bed and Parker would still be as clueless as ever. And that we would all be so distracted by the situation that what had happened in Rochester would hardly cross our thoughts.
Parker sighed from next to me. I turned my attention to him. He was blankly watching Annie and Lawrence, his eyes, identical to my brothers except for the slight greenish tint, were vacant and his hands were folded in his lap. His mouth wasn’t quirked the way it always was, ready for a smile, a laugh, or a dry comment if the situation called for either. He was truly frowning, I think, for the first time in all the time I had known him. Seeing him with Taylor on the bench in the park and the seriousness when he had announced that we should take Taylor home scared me more than the fact that Taylor was crying like the world was going to end in an hour and he didn’t have time to say good-bye to the ones that he cared the most about. His eyes had been anger-filled as he listened to Taylor’s story the second time, though it was obvious he was trying to hide it. He looked like he wanted to get up and punch his fist through the wall and pretend it was Gina’s boyfriend’s head.
His expression was quite different now. As I said, all of us except Annie and Lawrence had passed the freaking out stage. Still, the vacancy in his eyes was different from the vacancy in the eyes of my parents or Isaac’s eyes. It almost looked like he was trying to figure out something. Or even as if he knew something as he stared at Annie. That thought made me shudder.
This situation was getting bad. Even Taylor didn’t deny it anymore. It was getting out of control. There was his mother sitting a few seats away from him and he thought she was just some strange family friend of his brother’s. Or maybe he didn’t. The way he was staring at her...
I shook that from my thoughts. No need to concentrate on that now. That was probably going to be the excuse as we put it off even more. Our thoughts were with Taylor. Taylor needed us right now. We could afford to ignore that whole situation for a little while longer.
Or could we?
I sighed and shifted in my seat. Parker leaned over and took one of the magazines from the table, opening it to a random page and staring at the words while we waited.
I tried...did I succeed or did I fail?
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Three