Chapter 65 Taylor
Taylor
Taylor opens her apartment door and collapses on the uncomfortable, too-small couch, whose frame is sticking into her like a bony protrusion. She should move to her bedroom, but she’s too exhausted, her head fuzzy from everything she’s learned today.
Your mom was strung out. The deeper she got into drugs, the more erratic her life became. Vivian was romantically involved with Peter. Vivian’s ancestors come from the Knox. Vivian fell at the Knox. Vivian is alive. Vivian is missing. Vivian. Vivian. Vivian.
Vivian floods her mind, overtaking her mom, like a dam that’s burst.
There’s a terrible thought that begins swimming inside Taylor: If the Knox realized Vivian was a distant relative, and possibly owed an inheritance, then what lengths would they go to secure their fortune?
Suddenly, Taylor hears footsteps outside her door. Holding her breath, she waits. Is it Sam? No; she’d noticed his street-level lights were off—he’s not home. It must be one of the upstairs neighbors, traipsing around the too-thin floors.
There are no more footsteps, and she lets out her breath. Maybe she imagined it. But in the next instant, she startles: The scream from earlier keeps slicing through her subconscious like a sharp knife.
She shakes her head, gets up to grab a glass of water. As she takes a sip, she spots an envelope at the foot of her door. Someone was in the hall earlier.
Taylor Adams, due to private internal affairs, we do not require your presence at the moment.* Please report back to work on Monday morning. Thank you kindly for your attention to this matter.
*Any violations of this request shall result in immediate dismissal and may be subject to legal repercussions.
This must be the paid “staycation” Liam was referencing. Taylor angrily crushes the note in her hand. How can she figure anything out if she’s not allowed back at the Knox?
A thought suddenly seizes her: Was she brought on by the Knox because she’s a link to Vivian? No—she rejects the idea. Anna is the one who referred her. She wouldn’t—and couldn’t—have known that Taylor took care of Vivian. Boston just happens to be a small, incestuous city.
But still. There are so many coincidences, so many questions and no answers at all.
She wonders how—or if—Peter and the other members fit into Vivian’s disappearance. Anna mentioned that a well-dressed man had come around Vivian’s antiques store—that could have been any of the Knox members. Have they been paying Vivian’s rent? Or is Taylor drawing loose connections?
She suddenly misses her dad fiercely. She’d give anything to rewind time, to be back home in her childhood bedroom, when the most worrisome thought was how she was going to escape the boredom of her town.
Before she knew the truth about her mom.
A truth that she’s currently squashing into a tight ball, trying to keep apart from the rest of her.
She cannot even begin to fathom it, not really.
All she knows is this: As much as she longs for her dad, there is no way in hell she can speak with him right now—not after how he betrayed her trust all these years.
Trust.
She remembers what Liam said to her: Peter is the one who brought me here, from across the pond…. It’s all about trust here…. The Knox scales down to essential personnel only.
Taylor is not essential, nor trusted.
But who is trusted? Is Jerry? What if he fabricated the story behind Vivian’s fall? And why does he want to leave the Knox now? What is going on that the others, like Eduardo, can’t see? Is someone else living in the servants’ quarters with them, like the phantom woman in the window?
Taylor opens her laptop on her counter, thinking.
She feels like she’s missing something. She’s looked up Vivian online plenty of times, but never her fellow employees, so she decides to do just that.
But she realizes, almost embarrassingly, she doesn’t know their last names.
Something tugs at her memory. Liam calling Jerry “O’Doyle,” Eduardo correcting him to “Doyle.”
She types “Jerry Doyle” into her browser. She filters her search to Boston, to Beacon Hill, but she finds barely anything, not even across social media platforms. But what about Tara, his sister? The aspiring nurse?
Bingo: Tara Doyle is on Facebook. And, although she only has two public photos listed, one of a stethoscope and another of Acorn Street—Boston’s famous cobblestone street—when Taylor looks through the comments on the former, she gets a lead.
I have the same stethoscope, but in pink! Molly Frank writes.
And then, a couple of comments down, Molly remarks: U should join the Boston Student Nurse group, if u don’t already belong.
Taylor promptly requests to join that private group, checking the boxes to indicate that Yes, I’m currently a nursing student, Yes, I will abide by the rules, and Yes, I agree to not violate any patient’s confidentiality.
An administrator happens to be online, because Taylor’s request is instantly approved.
She searches through the group’s members to find Tara Doyle, who apparently joined one month ago. Taylor prepares to take a deep dive into Tara Doyle’s group posts and activity, but she doesn’t have to go very far.