Page 8 of Inevitable Secrets

They made their way to a bathroom, and both said a collective “wow” when they turned the light on.

“It is so white in here,” Marty said squinting. “I think I just lost a retina.”

“It’s blinding!” Taylor agreed, shielding her eyes and blinking, trying to get her eyes to adjust.

In the sterile white bathroom, Marty staggered over to the counter, blinking her eyes, and started to unload her bag. Taylor stood and just watched. “We should probably get all the bobby pins out of your hair first,” Marty remarked, “so you can actually shower.”

Taylor bit her lip and recalled how long it had taken to get all the pins in. Would it take just as long to get them all out? They had already been away from Derrick for at least fifteen minutes and she was eager to get back to him. “I think before we do that we should go back and check—”

“Taylor. It is six-thirty in the morning. You haven't eaten or washed, and have only slept about an hour and a half against a bed. You need to get cleaned up and eat something before you go back in there.”

“Marty,” Taylor said, agitation starting to eat at her, “I will—”

“Taylor, my brother is downstairs in a medically induced coma. I am doing what he would want you to do. Andhewould want you to shower, eat, and sleep. I’m conceding on the sleep thing because I don't want to fight all day with you. Now sit down. Let me take the damned pins out of your hair, get you out of the hemorrhage dress, and get you cleaned up so you can eat and we can go back to see Derrick.”

She had a point.

“Well, when you put it that way,” Taylor said, rolling her eyes and sitting on the closed toilet lid.

Marty heaved out a breath. “Thank you, I didn’t want to have to move on to my plan B.”

“And what was that?”

“To slap the shit out of you.”

Taylor let out a sigh and bent her head to allow Marty access to her hair. Marty stepped behind Taylor and went to work plucking out the pins holding her hair in place and dropping them into the sink. The rhythmic ping-ping-ping sound of the hairpins hitting the stone sink had Taylor hypnotized and her eyelids felt very heavy.

“I’m glad he found you,” Marty murmured after several minutes of silent work.

Taylor jumped a little at the sound of Marty’s soft voice, which was good because it stopped her from falling forward in sleep, and goodness knew what was on those floors.

“Found me?” Taylor croaked, and then she cleared her throat. “I think more like we were thrown together by our Moms, but I’m glad too,” she said spinning the diamond around on her left hand. She needed to move or she was at risk to fall asleep again.

“No, I mean found you in the coffee shop.”

Taylor froze for a second, then turned her head quickly, but it pulled her hair because at that moment Marty was pulling a bobby pin out. “Ow!” she yelped. “What do you mean, Marty?” Taylor asked as she tried to catch her sister-in-law’s downward gaze. When she wouldn’t meet her eyes and tried to go back to pulling pins out, Taylor grabbed her arm. “Marty, what do you mean?”

Marty flicked her eyes to Taylor’s. “I know, Taylor,” she said. “I know you were in that coffee shop in the middle of nowhere. And I know that Derrick found you there.”

Taylor flapped her mouth opened and closed searching for the right words, “H-how did you—”

“Derrick told me,” Marty said, dropping her gaze to Taylor’s hair. “He told me after he found you.”

That did not sound right. Derrick had said he hadn’t revealed where she was to anyone. “I don’t understand,” Taylor said, shaking her head.

“Well, he probably had no idea that he told me,” Marty said quickly. “I found him drunk in his apartment after he had found you and I thought he had gone back to his party ways. I mean, he had been so straitlaced after Dad told him he was sick and I thought maybe he just went back to it, you know?”

All Taylor could do was stare. She couldn’t even acknowledge what Marty was saying.

“I hadn’t heard from him in days. He wouldn’t answer my calls or texts or anything,” Marty recalled. “And I found him, bottle of whiskey in his hand and just, just a mess. Like worse than I had ever seen him. He didn’t even know I was there for a minute or two. I had to literally shake him a little before he would look at me, before he would talk to me.”

Taylor watched Marty as she recalled the story, “Wh-what did he say?”

Marty had been staring at her hair but now she looked at Taylor, her eyes full of pain. “He said, ‘I found her, Marty.’ When I asked who and he said ‘Tay’, I asked where you were and all he would say is somewhere that made you happy. He wouldn’t tell me anything. So I got another bottle for him.”

Taylor gaped at her sister-in-law and all Marty did was shrug. “I know how to make him talk, and he was already there anyway,” she defended. “So I handed him the other bottle and he eventually said you were at a small coffee shop all tucked away. He just kept saying how happy you looked, how happy you were,” Marty said, shaking her head and looking away again. “I even said we could go and get you but he got so mad. He said you were happy and that was what he wanted.”

“Derrick said no one knew where I was,” Taylor repeated, still in disbelief that Marty had known all this time.

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