10. Taylor
CHAPTER 10
TAYLOR
T he dog nosed at Taylor’s hand. She looked down at it, frowning. She hadn’t seen Kane give it breakfast, and she realized now that she had no idea what, if anything, it needed.
“Do you want to go outside?” she guessed.
The dog perked up at the word.
So she had guessed right. “Okay,” Taylor said. “Come on.”
The dog was remarkably well-behaved. It followed her out into the yard and then trotted off to take care of its business. Taylor watched it go, feeling thankful for Jason McCormick’s fenced-in backyard. At least she didn’t have to take the dog for a walk — she would have felt funny about doing that without speaking to Kane about it first.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket. He had said that he didn’t want anyone to know he was back, but she had to talk to someone . She hesitated before making the call — was she betraying him by doing this?
But then again, how could she possibly betray him when she didn’t owe him anything?
“What’s up?” Maddie’s voice was brisk when she answered. “I’m out for a walk. Did you want to join? I could swing by your place and pick you up.”
“No, I… I don’t think I can go out.” It occurred to Taylor that she didn’t know whether or not the dog could be left alone at the house. Kane hadn’t said. “I’m sort of dog sitting.”
“Dog sitting?”
“Well, kind of dog sitting. I don’t know whether I’m in charge of this dog or not. But I feel like I shouldn’t leave it alone.”
“Taylor, what the hell is going on?”
Taylor took a deep breath. “You have to promise you won’t tell anybody.”
“You know I won’t.”
“Not even Bradley.”
“Okay… You’re starting to scare me, though.”
“It’s Kane.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. For a moment, she thought Maddie might be trying to place the name, but then Maddie said, “Kane McCormick?”
“Yeah, him. He’s back in town.”
“You mean, because his father just died?”
“I guess he was contacted about the will. Which I kind of knew would happen.”
Maddie snorted. “It figures that that would be the thing to bring him back after all this time,” she said. “The promise of money.”
“I don’t know. I can’t tell if that’s why he came back or not.”
“Sure seems like it. He never came back while Jason was alive, and the moment he’s dead, Kane’s back in town? Of course it’s about money. He wants to see if his father left him anything. Do you know if he did or not?”
“You know I can’t really talk about that,” Taylor said. “It’s a legal document. I’m not going to gossip about what was included in it before Kane even knows himself.”
“You’re being a lot nicer than I’m sure he’s being,” Maddie said. “How did he respond when he found out that you had been left a share of the house?”
“Oh, he didn’t like that much,” Taylor said. “But there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He’s going to be staying in town for the duration, though, so that’s going to be pretty complicated.”
“I can’t believe all this,” Maddie said. “Did you find out anything about where he went when he disappeared?”
“He says he’s been in Detroit,” Taylor reported.
“Detroit?” She could almost hear her friend frowning. “I wonder what would take him there.”
“I have no idea. He hasn’t said much about it.”
“Try to find out more,” Maddie urged. “I’d love to find out what’s been going on with him all this time.”
Taylor couldn’t help smiling. She knew Maddie was a gossip — she always had been. Sometimes it was an irritating quality, but it felt good to gossip right now. It felt good to know that there was someone else who was reacting to Kane’s return in the same way she herself was — wanting to know what was going on and what had kept him away for so long. “I’ll see what I can find out,” she promised.
“What’s he like?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… is he the same as he used to be? Is he the same person we knew when we were kids? Thinking only of himself, always looking for a good time and not really caring who he hurts?”
“Oh,” Taylor said. She felt a twinge of discomfort. She knew she had used similar words to describe Kane before, but hearing them out of someone else’s mouth made her question the wisdom of that. She remembered the way he had looked the last time she had seen him in high school — as if he had really believed that she was still going to help him after the Chesterfield fire. How many times had she grappled with that, wondering whether or not she had made the right decision when she had turned away from him that day? In her heart of hearts, she still didn’t know the answer.
And she didn’t know whether it was true that Kane didn’t care who he hurt. He had come back because of his father’s death. That might have been just to see whether he had inherited anything, it was true. But it might have been something more than that. Maybe he actually did care about Jason. Maybe he had found it too difficult to return before now. She couldn’t presume to know what was going on inside his head.
“He hasn’t changed much,” she told Maddie, because she knew her friend was waiting on an answer.
“Much? So he has changed some?”
“Well, he’s taller.”
“Really? I wouldn’t have thought he could get any taller.”
“I know. He was already a tree when we were kids. But trust me, he’s taller now. I thought he was going to hit his head on the doorframe when he was leaving the house this morning.”
“Wait, so is he staying there at Jason’s with you?”
“Yeah,” Taylor said.
“That’s crazy. You’re letting him stay in your house?”
“It’s his house too. I can’t exactly tell him that he’s not allowed to stay here.”
“No, I know. I guess I’m surprised he would even want to,” Maddie said. “I mean, he must be able to tell you don’t want him there, right?”
“I don’t know,” Taylor admitted. “I don’t know how much I mind having him here, to be completely honest with you.”
“Are you serious? I mean, I know he must be interesting, after everything that’s happened — everything we don’t know about him. I want to find out all about his life as much as anybody does.”
“You want that a lot more than most people do,” Taylor said with a laugh. “That’s why I called you, Maddie. I always know that I can count on you when I want to indulge my need for gossip.”
“Okay, okay,” Maddie agreed. “So I want to know everything about what’s been going on with him. But my point stands, I think. Even though he’s an object of curiosity, it doesn’t change what we know about the kind of person he is. I don’t know if I’d even feel safe sharing a house with him.”
“That’s not fair,” Taylor objected. “We know the worst thing he ever did — at least, we’re assuming it’s the worst thing he ever did. Burning down the Chesterfield farm and then running away instead of sticking around to deal with it. But before that happened, he was our friend for a long time. Does everything we liked about him just go away because of one action?”
“I never liked him that much,” Maddie said. “You and I hung out with him because he was friends with Bradley, but I never felt great about it. He wasn’t, like, one of our friends .”
Taylor frowned. She hadn’t realized that Maddie felt this way about Kane. In fact, she was fairly sure that Maddie hadn’t felt this way when they were younger, and that this was some sort of revisionist history. Maddie was rewriting the old story and putting herself on what she felt was the right side of it, because she found it too difficult to admit to the fact that she had been part of Kane’s circle of close friends before the disaster at the Chesterfield farm. She was trying to put more distance between herself and that event.
Taylor didn’t entirely blame her — she understood the desire. She also knew that it wasn’t something that could be done. There was no denying the fact that they had been friends with Kane, that they had partied with him out at the Chesterfield farm on numerous occasions, and that no matter how much they might want to pretend that Kane had been his own special kind of delinquent, what had happened that night could have happened on any night. They had just been lucky that they weren’t there.
But we wouldn’t have run away from it , Taylor thought. That was the one difference between Kane and herself. She would never have turned her back on her responsibilities the way he had. She would have stuck around.
“I don’t feel unsafe having him here,” she told Maddie. “Not at all. It’s a little awkward, but that’s all. I can deal with it.”
“Are you sure? Because I can come stay with you for a while, if that would make you more comfortable.”
Taylor laughed. “You mean, you would be happy to hang around and try to dig up dirt on Kane yourself?”
Maddie was unashamed. “Well, then you wouldn’t have to do it.”
“Generous of you. No, we’re okay, I think. I’m not going to subject him to the third degree, even if I do want some of those answers myself. I think it would only make things more uncomfortable. The best thing I can do is try to keep things as civil as possible and hope he leaves quickly.”
“Do you think he will?”
“Probably. I mean, it’s Kane. Leaving is what he does best. And he’s already made it beyond clear that he doesn’t want to be in Miller Creek. He’ll hit the road as soon as he feels like he’s accomplished what he came here to do, and we’ll probably never see him again. We might as well get as much information about where he’s been and what he’s been doing as we can out of him while he’s here, to be honest.”
“And you don’t want me to help with that.”
“It’ll be better if he’s relaxed. I don’t want him to feel like everyone is knocking down doors trying to find out what’s going on with him.” Taylor sighed. “Anyway, he made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone he was here.”
“You told me, though.”
“Right, so can you please not tell anyone? And I don’t want him to know that I told you, either.”
“I’m not even going to get to see him while he’s here, am I?’
“You said yourself that he wasn’t your friend,” Taylor reminded her. “Do you need to see him?”
“I guess not. But make sure you tell me everything you find out.”
“I’ll do my best,” Taylor promised, wondering if she really would. She had called Maddie looking for someone to gossip with, but now that she’d had the opportunity, she found herself less interested in gossip. She felt genuine concern for, and interest in, Kane’s well-being, and her conversation with Maddie had revealed that her friend didn’t feel those things.
Probably no one in Miller Creek did. Kane wasn’t popular here, and Taylor knew it.
It would be the best thing — for both of them — if he got out of town quickly.
So why was she finding it so difficult to want him to go?