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Taylor nodded and stared into Derrick’s eyes. She had been terrified by what she had done, how Cedric had responded to what she had said. She wasn’t uncomfortable talking about it now, letting her skeletons out. And the realization that she had found the trust to share it with Derrick made her avert her eyes.
The silence stretched, and finally Derrick cleared his throat. “So what happened when he came back, after your mom …” he didn’t finish the sentence, letting the obvious hang in the air.
“My grandfather told me he was coming back. I think he was hoping he could transform him, get him to focus on the company.” Taylor shook her head. “But he was beyond help. Since the table incident, I had seen him two other times before he came to Preston Manor: my father’s funeral and my mother’s funeral,” she said counting the interactions off on her fingers. “When he came back he wouldn’t look at anyone, he didn’t speak to anyone, and if he did speak it was only in a whisper, like he either didn’t really want you to hear him. It was bizarre.”
“Did he ever go to the company?”
“A few times, I think. He left a few times with my grandfather, but they never came back together. I could tell he made my grandfather uneasy too, and that freaked me out. Poppy was like a boulder to me, I had never seen him shaken and unable to take on anything or anyone, and he walked on eggshells around Cedric. And about a month after he came back, Poppy got sick.” She swallowed. “Once he was confined to the bed, he was really unable to make decisions, and it all defaulted to Cedric,” she said, shaking her head. “He became a tyrant. He fired staff daily—a maid, a lawn guy, a chauffer. They all started hiding from him and passing the word of where he was because if he saw you, pretty much you were fired. And he got rid of all the phones—”
“The phones?” Derrick asked is disbelief.
Taylor nodded. “He had every phone removed from the house and had the wiring to it cut.”
Derrick’s mouth hung open. “Why?”
Taylor shrugged. “There was no talking to him. I had never tried since that time when I was a kid. I was petrified of him. Sometimes I would find him just glaring at me from windows while I was outside, or I would walk in a room, and it was like he was waiting for me in there.”
“So you never talked to him?”
“Only once. The phone thing was crazy, and I wanted to be able to call Poppy’s doctor if he was sick. The TVs and computers were, whatever … he threw those away and I didn’t care—”
“He got rid of all the electronics?”
“Yeah, first was the phones and then anything you could turn on, pretty much.”
“He obviously had a mental disturbance, Taylor. I mean, why was he getting rid of all that shit? It sounds like he was paranoid,” Derrick said.
Taylor shrugged. “He was an addict, Derrick. He was jumpy and panicked and paranoid. He was constantly snorting something or popping pills—”
“In your home?” Derrick said, incredulous.
“In the fucking kitchen,” Taylor said. “He didn’t care.”
“Taylor, I had no idea that he was that way. Why didn’t you leave? Why didn’t you—”
“What, Derrick? Where was I going to go? He controlled it all. He had all my sources of money. He had all my modes of transport. And he knew I wouldn’t leave my grandfather in the state he was in. Call the police? And, what, cause chaos and controversy? He would have bought his way out or lost everything, which, looking back, he almost did anyway. So, what the fuck.”
“What about Todd and Charlie? Didn’t they come to check—”
“They did, but their role was business,” Taylor said. “They would come and talk to my grandfather, try to talk to Cedric, but that was it. I think they thought my demeanor was just because I was a teenager who had lost pretty much everyone.”
“What about your friends?”
Taylor snorted in disgust. “Derrick, I didn’t have friends.”
“You always had friends in school—”
Taylor held up a hand. “Just stop. After junior high I went to an all-girls school of rich bitches who I couldn’t stand. I went to school and was kind to people, but they were all overindulged assholes.”
“What about the people at the Prep? We knew those people for years.” The Prep was the short name of the school Taylor, Derrick, and Marty had gone to most of their life. After her father died, Taylor’s mom had felt she would be better off at an all-girls school to focus on her studies, and it worked because the other girls had made Taylor so sick all she wanted to do was focus on something, anything other than them.
Taylor sighed in irritation and looked up to the ceiling. “Derrick, nobody at the Prep would talk to me after we stopped being friends.”
There was silence, and Taylor looked down to a horrified Derrick. “I … Why would … Why?”
“Because you were cool and popular, and if you didn’t like me I must be awful,” she answered. “I was quiet and reserved, Derrick. You were the boss of that school. If you didn’t like me, the trend would follow, and it did.”
Derrick looked like he was going to be sick. “Taylor—”