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“And what did he say?”
“That my mother was a drug addict.”
Derrick looked at his wife for a second. “I feel like there is more information that you are not giving me.”
“My mom lied to me, Derrick,” Taylor said. “She never told me this and I feel like everything I did know about her was a lie.” Taylor bit her lip, but still tears fell and she fought to not sob.
“Tay,” Derrick said embracing her, feeling her shake against him. He couldn’t fix this. The one thing he could not make better for Taylor was the past, especially this kind of past. He let her cry and when she seemed to slow down, he leaned back to look at her. “What can I do, Tay?” he asked, almost begging. Nothing was worse, he decided, than watching the person you love be so devastated.
“I would just feel so much better if I could talk to someone about what happened, about any of this shit, and finally get some answers,” Taylor said as she hung her head. “But they are all gone.”
Derrick nodded his head, feeling helpless. Suddenly it came to him, and he started to shake his head. “Not everyone, Tay,” he said, smiling at her befuddled look because he may have come up with the best solution.
Twenty
Taylor leftDerrick immediately after he announced his perfect idea and made her way to the kitchen.
She needed to talk to Nan.
When Nan came into the kitchen and saw Taylor, she looked a little startled but it quickly morphed into delight. “Hello, my darling!” she exclaimed. “Are you needin’ a little nighttime snack?”
Taylor shook her head, “Not tonight, Nan,” she said. In fact Taylor felt like she might be sick. “I wanted to ask you something.”
“Of course, dear.”
“I need you to tell me about my mom.”
“Oh my dear, that is a subject I could never tire of,” Nan said joyfully. “Your mother was—”
“My mom and Cedric,” Taylor clarified.
The jolliness fell from Nan’s face and she began to slowly shake her head as she sat herself on a stool beside the large kitchen island. “That, my dear, is a tale without a happy ending,” she said, her expression pained.
Taylor heaved out a sigh and pulled a stool up next to Nan’s. “Nan, things are happening around me,” she said with exasperation, “and I am trying to make sense of it all. There are secrets. Damn it, everywhere I turn there are secrets, and I need to know about them. And Nan,” she implored, “you are my only family left from the time those secrets originated.”
Nan sat stone-faced for a time, probably hoping Taylor would renege on her request. When that didn’t happen, she sighed resoundingly and spoke. “I dinna want to be the one telling you this tale,” she said to Taylor, leaning forward and patting her leg.
“I know, Nan,” Taylor said sympathetically, leaning herself forward and touching the older woman’s forehead with her own, “but please.”
Nan looked into Taylor’s eyes and then closed her own and took a small breath. “Cedric was such a happy young man, such a free spirit,” Nan reminisced, smiling a little. “He was so kind and artistic. He had this amazing talent of drawing. Did you know that?” she asked Taylor.
“I have been recently introduced to that information,” Taylor said dryly.
“He really struggled,” Nan went on, “because he knew his father wanted him in the business world. But that boy,” she said shaking her head, “that was just never going to be for him.
“However,” Nan said, leaning back emphasizing her next point, “he never would have wanted to upset his father, so he went along with it. He never wanted to upset anyone and that was his problem. He would just go along with what everyone else wanted. And as every story like his goes, he got in with a crowd he couldn’t say no to.” Taylor watched in awe as Nan reminisced about this stranger who bore no resemblance to the Cedric that she knew.
“What made him go to rehab?”
“It was Cedric’s third car accident in a year, but this one sent two people to the hospital. That was the final straw for your grandparents, and so off he went to rehab.”
“Was he angry when he went?”
“Oh no,” Nan said, smiling a sad smile, “Cedric was never angry.”
“You’re kidding? Every time I ever saw him, he was mad,” Taylor said bewildered.
“That was, well, it was a different time,” Nan answered, looking at Taylor with pity. “He wasn’t always that way. In fact, in my heart, the man you knew was not Cedric at all.”