Page 63 of Inevitable Secrets

About thirty minutes into the movie, Marty, who had been working day and night on a final collection for her last semester of design school, drifted off to sleep. Fifteen minutes later, Derrick, who had just been making fun of his sister who “couldn’t hang” was right behind her, snoring.

Taylor was honestly not paying attention to the movie. Her mind was instead in every direction besides wherever theSpaceballscast was headed. She closed her eyes and tried to settle her mind. She had, at one point, practiced meditation every day, and had found it really relaxing. It had been especially helpful when she was trying to control thoughts about a crazed uncle potentially coming after her or fears associated with being abducted and forced to take over a billion-dollar industry.

But as crazy as those two things were, life had become much more complex than even that. So Taylor sat and focused on her breath. Slowly she returned to a rhythm that soothed her. But as with all meditation, her mind wandered, and it kept getting wrapped in work stuff, investigation stuff, and then, finally, her father’s letter. She came out of the meditation, shut off the movie, covered up the sleeping Fletchers, and went in search of her phone to read the letter again.

It was the rule that phones were in other rooms during the movie. Another Marty rule, but it was a good one—it switched the focus. If anyone needed them badly enough, they could call the house, Marty always claimed.

Taylor went to their bedroom and found her phone, which of course had several text messages and a missed call from Todd. Taylor ignored all of the notifications and went to her email. Opening the app she started to scroll past all the new messages to the previously opened one, when one of the new emails caught her eye. It was a new one from Dr. Mellon, this one titledMore on CP. It was time stamped just thirty minutes earlier.

Mrs. Preston-Fletcher,

I apologize for this late email.

After we met earlier, I started to look at my files on Cedric as I promised I would. It was how I came across the letter from your father. And now I have found the last email that Cedric sent me. He told me you might be coming to me for answers. I had not noticed it at the time, but he attached something entitled “For Taylor.”It would seem he would have wanted you to have this. I have not opened this file, as I assume it was for your eyes only. I admit I was blindsided by your visit, otherwise I would have looked at these things before we met, perhaps have made your visit more worthwhile.

-Xander Mellon

The file attached wasa large one, so Taylor grabbed her iPad, allowing her a bigger screen to see what Cedric had bequeathed her. Taylor opened the document and found a scanned-in book cover. Her heart raced. Could this be one of the journals that Dr. Mellon had spoken of?

Sliding to the next page, Taylor confirmed that this was probably the first book he had started at rehab, since the inside page was labeledHealing Winds Recovery Center.

What a stupid name, Taylor mused in irritation. When had winds ever been healing? She thought about the destruction it caused with hurricanes and tornadoes and figured the name was something picked by throwing darts at a board.

She also noticed the date scribbled in the cornerAugust ’85. Doing a little bit of math, Taylor figured that would be about the time when Cedric was headed into rehab.

Taylor slid her finger across the screen again and was brought to another page with really nice penmanship. At the top of the lined page wasCedric Preston, and a paragraph followed below it. Taylor reflected on how different his penmanship was from her father’s. It seemed they were different in a lot of ways.

Taylor refocused on the words written and started to read.

They saythis will help and that it’s part of the healing process, and so here I am writing in this ridiculous cheap ass book. I am required to write at least 200 words per day. They will count and it may be read if they think it will help my treatment. They said it didn’t matter what I wrote in here, so I’m going to fill up these pages by complaining about doing this.

But I can’t just complain because I also need to focus on the question posed for the week: Why do I think I am here?

Okay, well that won’t take 200 words. I am here because my father asked me to come. And I will do anything for my father. He and my mother are great people and they didn’t cause me to do drugs. I was never abused or under stress to get to this point. And I don’t believe that I got to this point, the point where I needed to get high every day, because I am some spoiled rich kid either. My parents worked really hard to keep me grounded. They made my brother and me work for things, and earn our way. Yes, we had the best of everything, but outside of food and clothing we had to earn things.

I tried drugs and got hooked. I am what they warn you about. I was at a party and fell into the peer pressure thing because social settings aren’t really my thing and I tried some coke, on top of the booze and the pot and then found a feeling of invincibility I could never recreate with anything else. Without it I am not a fun person.

So my Dad asked me to come here to clean up, because he doesn't want me to be a statistic.

There is my first 200 words, probably more. And I still hate writing in this fucking book.

Taylor swipedwhen she got to the end of the passage and on the next page was a beautiful sketched picture of Taylor’s grandfather and grandmother. Taylor zoomed in, examining it. She couldn’t believe how good the drawing was. It could have been a photograph it was so perfect. In the bottom corner of the page was Cedric’s neat signature.

“He was so talented,” Taylor whispered, and she felt a little embarrassed of being in awe of his work. It was like thinking a serial killer was handsome—it just felt so wrong. This was certainly something she never knew about him, but how would she really have ever known anything when she could never talk to him.

She swiped to the next page, skipping the paragraph and focusing on the drawings in it. After each journal entry there was a drawing, and Taylor swiped quickly through, briefly looking at each one. There was a leaf on a branch, one of a younger Dr. Mellon, her father, also younger than she remembered, and a young woman.

Taylor paused. There was something about the woman.

She had been swiping so quickly that the screens kept flipping in front of her without her swiping.

She was a very familiar looking woman.

Taylor swiped back through the pictures seeing bird, butterfly, and needle drawings before she reached it. Taylor pulled the tablet close to her face and zoomed in, trying to look closely and see that the person wasn’t who she thought it was.

But the closer it was, the more obvious it became to her that it was, in fact, a drawing of her mother.

Taylor sat and stared at the screen before her, unable to look away. Of all the crazy things that had been thrown at her in her life, and lately that number was astronomical, this may be the one that had her head spinning the most.

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