Chapter 8
Stone Cottage
Gulf Shores, Alabama
March 2012
The next morning, Joules sent Taylor a text letting her know the story was still contained, but it was taking a little curve. Taylor had missed two key campaign events, and people were beginning to wonder where she was. Joules told the press a story about Senator Carrington's wife being overly stressed and needing time to relax. Every reporter in Little Rock was asking if Taylor was again expecting and on bed rest. Even though there was not an ounce of truth to the story, Joules, who was great at tearing the hell out of the truth, kept her answers so vague that the reporters believed what they wanted. They collectively decided Taylor was expecting a baby. While all of them wanted to be the ones to break the story of a new heir, no one wanted to do anything that might cause the couple to lose another child. So, for once, they got a pass. Joules wanted to give her a heads-up so she would not freak out if she saw something about it. While it did give Taylor pause, it also gave her some much-needed time on her own to figure this fiasco out.
To that end, Taylor spent the day under the big umbrella in Edna Stone's beach chairs. Sipping on a large thermos of water as shewatched the waves roll ashore, she did some hardcore soul-searching, forcing her to get honest with herself about her life.
Instead of focusing on her marriage, she tried to focus on her life, the good and the bad. Joules had been right. She had been miserable for a very long time. She needed to figure out why and formulate a plan that would allow her to become the woman she wanted to be. The rest of her life was up to her, and no one knew better than Taylor how precious life really was.
It was time to start living, stop just existing, and make the most of the rest of her life. She just needed to figure out what made her tick and what she wanted without worrying about expectations or giving into fear. That was easier said than done when you have been taken care of your whole life. Where did she even start?
She was determined to become an independent woman, but it was proving more challenging than anticipated. Old habits die hard. She admitted to herself that one of the reasons she had ended up with Bennett in the first place was because it had been the easy thing to do. After the accident, she continued her life as before, with Bennett taking the place of her parents. That was a pretty ugly pill for a grown woman to swallow. She owned up to the fact that, in many ways, she had never emotionally grown up or had to fend for herself.
Before she could do that, she needed to go back to the beginning to fully understand when and where her life and marriage began to unravel. She had to force herself to return to the day that changed her life forever. The day an eighteen-wheeler had crossed the centerline, and in an instant, her parents and Tatum were killed. One minute, she had a family and a home. The next, she had lost it all. In one fell swoop, she lost everyone she had loved in this world. Her grandparents had all died when she was a child, and her parents had both been only children.
Bennett flew to Scotland and broke the news to her. Taylor did not believe that she could have made it through those first few awful days if it had not been for him. He helped her pack and ensured she got home in one piece. Once home, he had helped her make all the funeral arrangements. For weeks afterward, he helped her deal with several financial and business decisions that she had been in no condition to make.
She had become very depressed and started sleeping a lot. She spent days in bed, sleeping, watching television, waiting to die, wanting to die. She had been adrift with no direction and no will to find one. She might still have been in that bed to this day if Bennett hadn't forced her out of it. He'd arranged for her to have an interview with the local elementary school principal, and then he made her go to it.
Looking back, Taylor knew she could not have made a good first impression. Overall, she had been a mess. She certainly would not have hired her to teach anyone anything. But Bennett had worked his magic. She got the job. Thanks to him, she found herself in a second-grade classroom, teaching twenty-two eager, hungry minds. That had been exactly what she needed to get up every day. Bennett and those kids had saved her.
From there, Taylor and Bennett meandered from close friends into dating and then into a marriage of convenience more than passion. It had just seemed natural that they should end up together. Certainly, everyone expected them to. It made for great copy. Searcy's golden couple finding each other after a horrible tragedy. While they had never shared a great passion, it was easy and as comfortable as an old pair of jeans you can't bring yourself to throw out.
They knew early on that something in their marriage was not quite right. But they never talked about it. Instead, they began building a life together, hoping that whatever was missing wouldfix itself over time. And for a while, it seemed to work. Bennett's law practice flourished, and then he won his bid for the state senate. They had decided Taylor would teach until they had a baby. Only the baby never came.
Though a long shot, Bennett embarked on his first United States Senate race when he sensed the state was ready for change. He won by a landslide. He got an apartment in Georgetown. Taylor decorated it, and at first, she spent quite a bit of time in DC, having resigned from her teaching position to be able to join him.
In eighteen months since her last miscarriage, their marriage had deteriorated into a political merger of two polite people who cared about each other, living and passing each other like cars on the street. Taylor had moved back to Arkansas and had not joined Bennett in DC. The only time they had spent together had been on the campaign trail.
When they were alone, they both worked hard to keep the conversation light and focused on neutral topics. They had not had an honest, serious discussion about their marriage or the lack of intimacy in it.
Taylor’s little trip down memory lane forced her to face the fact that, as much as she wanted to hate Bennett for humiliating her, she couldn't. Too many times over the last eleven years, he had been there for her. Truthfully, over the days of deep soul searching, she realized it was one thing to love someone, but it was something else to be in love. She was not sure she had ever been in love with anyone. She did know that she loved Bennett enough not to stand in his way if he was in love with Poppy. By the look of things, he was. She knew she would step away from her marriage even though doing so was going to cost her greatly.
For Taylor, this was where it started to get sticky. By stepping back from her marriage, she realized she was the big loser in all this, even though she had done nothing wrong. Her image, job, andlife were tied up in her marriage. She would have never admitted to anyone, not even Joules, but she had to be honest with herself. She was more sad about walking away from being a senator's wife than she was losing her husband. Sadly, it seemed she was more in love with being Mrs. Bennett Carrington, the senator's wife, than with Bennett himself.
Wow! That was an awful big truth pill to swallow. She was going to miss it, the job, the campaigning, the hosting, the whole shebang. She was good at it. She enjoyed it. She had been born to do it. What did that say about her? No wonder Bennett had an affair!
And as bad as that was, the next part was even worse. She realized she was resentful that she was the only one whose life was about to change. Bennett would get the love of his life and the son he always wanted. Poppy was going to get to take her place, and they were going to get to live happily ever after in Taylor's house, no less. It had been in Bennett's family for forty years. She was going to be left all alone, with no home, no status, no position, no significant other, no children, and little to no hope of ever having any. That was the worst part.
It was just not fair. Bennett had cheated on her. Poppy had a secret love child hidden for years, yet they would get the life she had spent the last ten years building. It all made her so mad.
As anger roared through her, she realized, for the first time in almost a week, she was not crying.
In fact, her tears had cried themselves out. They had left in their wake an angry, shallow woman. Whoever said a woman scorned, and all that, was right. At that moment, she would have liked to throat-punch Bennett. For a woman totally against violence, that was the second time in a week she had fantasized about it. This whole thing was jacking with her head. Deciding to go for anotherrun to clear her head, Taylor packed up and headed back to the cottage.
She threw on her running clothes and took off at a clip. She ran as fast as she could, trying to outrun the demons that had been dogging her all week. She ran for almost six miles. Soaked to the skin in sweat and with her muscles screaming for a break, she walked the last two miles back to the cottage. The run, while exhausting, had done the trick. She had worked off her anger and felt more in control of her emotions than she had in weeks. Best of all, she had no issue with breathing or any hint of a panic attack. Heading into the shower, she realized it had taken the better part of the two days to work through the issues and a blowout run to reach a place where she felt she was ready to talk to Bennett. She hoped she could do so calmly. Her week in hiding was coming to a close, and she needed to start making inroads with a plan for the future.
She decided she would not let others guide her through life anymore. She was also not going to live in fear or by other people's expectations. She was going to be bold and daring and try, with everything in her, to discover her passionate side, though she secretly worried that she might not have one. She might be as cold and unfeeling as her memories had told her she was. However, she promised herself that if she were ever given the opportunity to experience the kind of passion she had seen on Poppy's face, she would take it.
Thinking of Poppy, Taylor promised herself that from that day forward, she would do something each day that scared her and was unexpected. She was so afraid of disappointing people that she never had the courage to stand up and demand the life she wanted. She became a spectator in her own life. But, from now on, she vowed that would never happen again. She was taking control of her life beginning right then.
One on the heels of that thought, she admitted to herself that she missed teaching. There was no greater high in the world than having a hand in helping a child learn. She missed seeing the light bulb go off when a child finally comprehended a new concept or grasped a new skill. She hadn't realized how much she had missed it until she stopped and reflected on her teaching days.
Perhaps it was time she considered going back to work. Thanks to her trust fund, she was set financially. Bennett, to his credit, had grown her investments substantially, and if she had never worked another day in her life, it would be okay. But she missed the sense of accomplishment she got from working.
