Parker Lowell
This chapter goes out to Aitziber, who told me she wanted to see more Parker/Taylor bonding. ;-D
He had been that way ever since I had come into the room. He hadn’t even noticed I was there yet. I had tried several times to catch his attention, but then thought better of it when I went back to the look he had glued onto his face. There was even a moment when I had questioned whether or not I was in the right room. Was it possible we had an evil triplet?
I sighed and waited a bit longer, taking in the soft sound of the television that he had turned on, but obviously was not watching and the sight of the get well cards Jessica, Avery, and Mackenzie had made for him. I smiled a little to myself when I remembered the night when we (the older kids in the house) had sat down with them to help them make the cards, even though they didn’t really need our help. We were just bored and looking for something to do and I was getting sick of the awkward silences that came about every two seconds when we just sat in my room together.
That had been the second night they had spent with us.
“Taylor?” I said finally, gathering up my courage. I waved my hand in front of his face, causing him to jump and almost causing me to drop the plate of cookies I had balanced in my hand.
“Parker!” he exclaimed when he saw who it was. I smiled, seeing the anger disappear from his face behind a mask of gladness at seeing me. I knew the anger was still there somewhere, though. You can’t just erase anger like that.
“Hi,” I said. “Did I scare you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “So, where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you since I woke up a couple nights ago.”
“Busy,” I said. “I’ve had to go to work. They’re really upset with me there for just disappearing like that for a couple of days, even though I got Gina to write me a note saying something about a family emergency. It didn’t help much. I even got a letter of warning from my boss saying that if I ever pulled something like that again, my ass was out the door faster than I could say, ‘Do you have your Bonus card?’”
“He really said that?” he said skeptically.
“Not in so many words,” I replied. “By the way, Isaac and I talked Zac into coming. He’s in the waiting room right now.” I chose not to mention how little it had taken to get him to come, despite his fear of hospitals, which Isaac had taken the time to explain to me while Zac was taking a shower that morning. He had sat there, patiently, waiting while we had tried to explain to him why hospitals weren’t such bad places and how Taylor wasn’t going to die. At the end of our whole lecture, he had just shrugged and said okay. Even I was surprised, considering the vehement display the morning before when his parents had tried to talk him into coming along. Isaac told me that he was often much worse than that.
“Oh, good,” he said, nodding. It was obvious that most of his mind was somewhere else.
“Uh, I brought these for you,” I said, clearing my throat and gesturing toward the cookies. “Theresa...remember her?”
He nodded. “Yeah, the redhead from the concert.”
“Right. Well, her mother bought these as condolences for the death of my great aunt and she wanted you to have some,” I said.
“The death of your great aunt?” he said, confused.
I shrugged. “It was the story Gina and I came up with to explain our sudden disappearance,” I said.
“Wow, they’re really slow at stuff like this then, aren’t they? I mean, it’s been, what, three weeks?”
I smiled. “Something like that.”
He nodded. “So she knows, then?”
“Yeah. We sort of had to tell her,” I said. “Zac and I were playing Nintendo when she came over yesterday, with these. She saw Zac and we explained everything.”
“What does she think?” he asked, a smirk forming on his lips.
“All she could say was ‘wow,’” I told him.
Again, he nodded. I wondered what it was with all the nodding.
“Want one?” I asked, unwrapping them. Truthfully, I was starving. I had skipped breakfast that morning because the conversation Isaac and I had had and then with the whole thing involving convincing Zac to come had left no time.
“Yeah. It might be a nice change from the sh--uh, crap, they pass off as food here,” he said, reaching for one from the plate I held out to him.
“Take two, one might be wormy,” I said.
He laughed, complying and taking two as I sat down in a chair next to the bed and took one for myself, setting the plate on the small nightstand next to his bed, being careful not to knock over the get well cards.
As we ate, I stared at the TV, where an old rerun of Little House on the Prairie was playing too softly to be heard clearly. It wasn’t until Pa Ingalls punched out a guy for making fun of Mary and Adam because of their blindness (yes, I’ve seen the show before. So sue me) that I felt Taylor staring at me. Cautiously, I turned my head to stare back.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “I was just wondering,” he looked away and down to his hands, “about something.”
“Oh,” I said. “How I was blessed with the better looks of the two of us?” I asked jokingly, trying to get him to lighten up. I tossed my hair over my shoulder and fluttered my eyelashes.
He rolled his eyes at me. “We’re identical twins,” he said. “We look exactly the same.”
I scrunched my nose up in mock distaste. “Please, I am so much better looking.”
“You just keep on believing that,” he said.
“But seriously, what were you wondering about?” I asked.
He grew somber again and laced his fingers, directing his attention back to them. He took a deep breath and let it out as I waited for his answer.
“What would you do if you ever met our mother?” he asked me.
I raised an eyebrow.
“What brought this about?” I asked.
“Just answer the question,” he replied, looking at me seriously.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never really thought about it. It depends on what circumstances I met her under, probably. Like, if I met her in a courtroom where she was trying to regain custody of me in some ugly custody battle with Gina, I’d probably glare at her from across the room. But if I met her in a park one day while she was walking her dog and she just out and told me she was my mother, I’d probably cry after the initial disbelief wore off.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’ve never really thought about it to me,” he commented.
“I’ve thought out a few different scenarios in my head, but it’s not something I think about on a regular basis. Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve just had a little too much time to think while I’ve been in here and my thoughts kind of drifted to her. What kinds of questions would you ask her?”
I shrugged. “Probably the traditional why’d you do it and some questions about herself. Is she married? Does she have other kids? What does she do for a living? Where does she live? Stuff like that. What kind of things would you ask her?” I asked, deciding to turn it around on him to see how he would react. This was so abrupt that I couldn’t help but think that something was behind it.
“The same,” he said.
I nodded, accepting this even though I knew he wasn’t entirely telling the truth. He seemed too distracted to be telling the truth.
“But I guess it doesn’t really matter,” I said, looking at my fingernails.
“Why is that?” he asked.
“From the way Gina talks about her, I figure she’s probably dead anyway,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows from surprise, but didn’t say anything.
“Well, tell Theresa I said thanks for the cookies,” he said, gesturing toward the plate. “But I might have to hide them. The nurse will probably have a fit if she sees it.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much if she does,” I said. “There’s about a thousand more of them at home.”
“Yeah, but you don’t really know my family. Cookies don’t tend to last very long around the house,” he said.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted. “Well, I better get going. Everyone’s anxious to see you.”
“Who’s everyone?” he asked cautiously.
“Everyone,” I said. “Gina, your parents, your siblings. Why? Who else would everyone be?”
“Lyle,” he said quietly. I took the quietness as hurt.
“He’s had to work,” I said. “He doesn’t want to take any time off because he says his boss will get really mad at him if he does. I wouldn’t feel too bad. I don’t think Lyle would come to see his own mother in the hospital.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, see you later.”
“Yup,” I said, heading out the door.
Tell me what you see... (sorry, I'm listening to the Beatles as I write this. :D)
Index
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Sixty