12. Taylor
CHAPTER 12
TAYLOR
C hhggg-gg-ghhh.
The car’s ignition ground, but nothing happened. The car didn’t start. Taylor tried again and again, but the results didn’t change.
Feeling a surge of anxiety, she tossed the useless keys into the passenger seat and buried her face in her hands. She loved small-town life. There was nothing quite like it. But when something like this happened, it never failed to stress her out horribly. There was no alternate route to work. She couldn’t catch a bus or even call a ride share service. Those things didn’t exist in Miller Creek.
Nor could she call in sick from her job. Or rather, she could, but she hated to do that, because there was so little recourse for the people she worked with when that happened. Someone would have to come in on a day off and work with her patient. Even more distressingly, it would mean a disruption in routine for the patient herself, a little girl named Chloe who Taylor had been working with for only a few weeks now. Chloe was still learning to trust Taylor. It would be a huge setback for her if Taylor didn’t come to work today, if she was forced to work with a stranger.
She looked up and saw Kane standing on the porch. Great. All I need right now is to have to deal with him! Things had been better between Kane and herself lately, but that didn’t mean they had been easy . She didn’t want to try to cope with his antagonism when she was already feeling so stressed and upset.
Now he was coming down off the porch, jogging toward her. She closed her eyes, steeled herself for what she was sure was going to be an unpleasant encounter, and got out of the car.
“What’s up?” he asked her. “I could hear this thing chewing its own engine from all the way inside. How old is this truck?”
“Not that old,” she said defensively. It had always bothered her when people made rude comments about her truck, and there had always been no shortage of people willing to do exactly that. No one seemed to think it was a reasonable car for a young woman to drive around in. Maddie and their friends always asked her why she didn’t exchange it for something cuter and trendier, and when people older than she was saw it, they usually made teasing comments about how the truck was too much for her to handle.
Usually that wasn’t true. But today she feared it might be.
She went to the hood and opened it up, staring at the engine components for a few minutes. Kane came up alongside her and looked into the car’s innards as well.
“Do you know anything about auto repair?” he asked after a moment.
“A little,” she said. The truth was that she knew how to rotate her tires, which still put her ahead of most of her friends, but something like this was almost definitely beyond her. The oil didn’t need changing. She’d done that just a few weeks ago. So then what could it be?
Taylor didn’t know, but she knew that it was beyond her capacity to fix. With a sigh, she stepped back and gave the hood of the truck a good slam to close it.
“You can call a tow service, right?” Kane said. “There’s a mechanic in town who could take a look at this. At least, there was the last time I was here. Or if you wanted, I could look at it for you,” he added. “I could probably fix it. I don’t have any of the right components, but I could make a list of what we need if you want. I can run diagnostics on it and make you a shopping list, and then you can go into town and get the parts.”
“Thanks,” Taylor said weakly. “But that doesn’t really help me right now. I have to get to work. I’m supposed to be working with a girl who’s on the far side of Miller Creek.” She closed her eyes. “I guess I’m going to have to walk, but that will take at least an hour, and I’m helping her recuperate from trauma… She needs routine, not to have things thrown into chaos like this. I’m letting her down.”
“Okay, well, you could take my car,” Kane said.
“I don’t know how to drive your car,” Taylor said. “It’s a manual transmission. It’s a generous offer, but I’d stall it by the side of the road. I can’t.”
“Okay.” Kane took a deep breath. “I’ll drive you, then.”
She blinked. “You’d do that?”
“It’s what has to be done, right?”
“I mean… for me it is, but it isn’t your responsibility,” she said. “And I know how you hate going into town. You’d have to drive right down Main Street to get there. And you would have to do it again later this afternoon to pick me up.”
“You’re letting me stay in your house,” Kane said. “It’s the least I can do.”
“It’s not my house, any more than it’s yours. Possibly less than it’s yours. You don’t owe me this, Kane. And I know how much you don’t want to go into town. Even when you’ve been in for your meetings with Thomas Greely, you always disguise yourself.”
“I don’t disguise myself .”
“You really think I haven’t noticed those giant aviator sunglasses you wear, even when it’s not sunny? I know why you’re doing that,” she said. “You don’t want anyone to realize it’s you. And I get it. But I also know that every time you go into town, your risk of being recognized gets a little bit higher. I know you’re afraid that one of these times someone is going to see you and realize who you are, and for all we know, that’s true. And once one person knows, everyone will know, because Miller Creek cannot keep its mouth shut about anything. It’s amazing that we’ve been able to keep this secret so far, given that Thomas Greely and I both know you’re here, given that your father’s death is public knowledge and people are probably wondering if this might be the thing that brings you back.”
“Do you want the ride or not?” Kane asked her.
“Yes, please.” She just couldn’t believe he was willing to give it.
Kane nodded. “Get what you need, and I’ll be out in just a moment.”
Was he going to get the big sunglasses that would safeguard him against being identified by anybody in town? A part of her hoped so, because she knew she would feel deeply guilty if he lost his anonymity in town due to the fact that he had done her a favor.
Taylor wasn’t sure how she felt about the fact that he had been keeping his presence here a secret. Her younger self would have known exactly what to say — to be honest, she would have been confident in her assessment of the situation as little as a few weeks ago. She would have said that now that Kane was back, he had a responsibility to face up to the things he had done and not keep running.
But seeing him, spending time with him, had given her a different perspective on the whole thing. He hadn’t escaped unscathed the way she’d thought he had. The Chesterfield fire had been on his mind since it had happened — it had shaped who he was as a person. He might have run away physically, but he hadn’t ever been able to forget about it.
She grabbed her supplies from the car and turned toward Kane’s car in time to see him walking back toward it. He hadn’t gotten the sunglasses, it turned out. Instead he had just filled a travel mug with coffee, and he had Toby on his leash.
“He’s coming too?” Taylor asked.
“If I’m getting out of the house, he might as well. Toby loves car rides,” Kane explained. “He’s a little fiend about them, actually. Sometimes, in Detroit, I put him in the car and drive out of the city, just circle around on the county roads for hours while he sticks his head out the window. He loves that.”
Sure enough, as they pulled away from the house, Kane opened the back-seat window enough to allow Toby to stick his head out.
There was nothing he could have done to draw more attention to them than driving through town with a beautiful but unknown dog. Taylor could see people on the sidewalks turning toward the unfamiliar car, squinting at the windows, trying to figure out who was inside.
“Everyone’s noticing Toby today,” she said.
Kane hummed noncommittally.
“I don’t quite understand why you’d do this,” Taylor said. “Drive me through town like this, I mean.”
“You needed to get to work,” he said simply. “I could see how upset you were getting about it. Like I told you before, I’m not a monster. I’m not going to just turn around and go back in the house while you’re standing there freaking out with no way of solving the problem on your own. Not when it’s so easy for me to help.”
“I don’t think it is easy for you,” she said quietly. “I think this might be one of the hardest things you’ve done since you’ve been back. Maybe that’s why you brought Toby. For moral support.”
Kane set his jaw, again saying nothing, but she noticed that his knuckles were white on the steering wheel. So she was right. He was struggling with this exactly as much as she had thought he was.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “It means a lot to me that you’re willing to do this. You’re right. I was starting to panic about it, and I don’t know what I would have done if not for you. You came to the rescue in a big way today.”
He nodded.
“And I don’t think you’re a monster,” Taylor added. “I never thought that, Kane. We were friends. I remember that. We may not know each other well anymore, but I know who you were back then.”
“A guy who set a farm on fire.”
“No,” she said. “You were more than the worst thing that ever happened to you.” She hesitated. “It did happen to you, Kane. It’s not like you went out there to burn the farm down. It’s not like you attacked the Chesterfields on purpose, for no reason. It was a tragedy. You acted irresponsibly, yes, but it was an accident, and it was tragic for you just like it was for them. I get that.”
His eyes were on the road, so he wasn’t looking at her, but she saw him swallow very hard before he spoke.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “Thank you, Taylor. I don’t think anyone has ever said that to me before.”
He pulled the car to a stop, and Taylor saw that they had arrived. She wanted to linger for a moment, to say more to him, but she was already late and there wasn’t any time.
“Can you pick me up at four?” she asked.
He nodded. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be here.”