1
TAYLOR
Normally, the open road and the wind on my face would be enough to put me in a good mood. A night owl by habit, I craved moments like this. The stars overhead. My headlight highlighting the curves of the road.
Just a few short hours ago, I’d climbed into my beloved king-size bed with the luxurious linen I’d splurged on from that expensive shop on Lexington Ave, thinking it was just the end of another, ordinary day. Tired but satisfied. Ready to do it all again tomorrow. Instead, as tomorrow dawned, I found myself riding through the night to answer a call for help.
Even when dawn eventually came, chasing away the dark and bathing the sky in delicate shades of pink, yellow and orange, it did nothing to improve my mood. I was too annoyed. Annoyed with idiot drivers on the road who failed to give way and cut corners too close to the line. With my mother for her middle-of-the-night phone call, but most of my annoyance was directed towards my great-uncle Ray, whose carelessness had necessitated the call. Ninety-four or not, the man should have taken more care with his foot placement. If he had, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.
The highway narrowed the closer I got to the coast. The corners tightened. The pine trees that gave my hometown its name lined up like soldiers on the hills both sides of the road, their tall, sturdy silhouettes achingly familiar.
Pine Harbor.
Apart from the odd weekend visit home, made solely with the purpose of appeasing my mother, I’d barely spent any time there in years. This trip was different. It would be my first extended stay since I’d left fourteen years before, a skittish newlywed clutching a suitcase, heading out into the unknown, certain only that what was out there had to be better than what I was leaving behind.
‘Please, Taylor,’ my mother had begged the night before over the phone, which had immediately put me on high alert. My mother hated begging.Never beg for anything you can take care of yourself,she’d always told us growing up. ‘There’s no one else I can trust to look after him while I’m gone,’ she’d continued. ‘You know I wouldn’t ask unless I was desperate.’
I’d shrugged out of the sheets and rolled to one side, perching on the edge of the bed as the circulation had returned to my extremities. My bedroom windows were open but the air refused to move, and the summer heat was stifling. ‘Gone where?’
She’d sighed, the sound loud through the phone. It was a sigh well-honed by practice. ‘I knew you’d forget. I’m going on the cruise, remember?’
I’d squeezed my eyes shut. Right. The cruise. Notacruise,thecruise. The one my mother had been looking forward to since she booked it a year ago. Almost three weeks around the Caribbean with four of her friends, the plan concocted over drinks after the funeral of Ellen’s husband, Frank. They’d decided life was short. That they must seize the day. Apparently, this meant cocktails around a pool and casino nights on board a floating palace.
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ I’d lied.
‘I just can’t in good conscience leave him home by himself,’ she’d fretted. ‘It was a dubious enough idea before, but now? What if he falls again and lies undiscovered for days? Dying alone, of starvation and neglect?’
‘Or,’ I’d offered a different perspective, ‘what if he’s fine?’
‘I can’t take the risk.’
‘Can’t you pay someone to do it? A nurse or someone?’
‘He doesn’t like strangers.’
‘He doesn’t like anyone.’
‘Taylor.’
‘Especially me.’
‘Taylor.’
‘Mom.’
‘You know I wouldn’t ask if there was another option. Maybe if I wasn’t leaving tomorrow I could figure something else out, but I have a matter of hours to sort something. You’re my only hope.’
I’d pinched the skin between my eyebrows and accepted my fate. She didn’t ask for much, my mother. I could hardly turn her down in her hour of need. ‘Fine. I guess I’m done sleeping anyway. I’ll have a coffee and get on the road.’
‘How long will it take you to get here?’
‘Seven hours.’
‘It’s too much. Why can’t you move home now that you and…’ She didn’t need to finish.
‘New York is home now. My business is here.’
‘So? You could just move your business here. There’s a few vacant shops in town that would be perfect.’
