Secrets Written
Taylor barely slept that night. He spent hours searching for the letter, to no avail, until he finally collapsed onto his bed, still clothed. All night he was haunted by dreams of Charlotte and Shiloh – at times it seemed the woman slipping farther from his grasp was both of them at the same time.
In the morning, he stumbled to the kitchen feeling as though he hadn’t slept a wink and turned the coffee pot on. While he waited for it to brew, he wandered to the living room and flipped on the television. It was still early in the morning and every channel was filled with news. A promotional photo of Zac smiled at him from the left corner of the screen. He didn’t bother to turn the volume up to hear what the anchor was saying, and he knew if he changed the channel it would only be more of the same. In a way, he hated the fame for making it impossible to escape news of his brother’s disappearance. But he knew that if they weren’t “celebrities,” the police probably wouldn’t even care that Zac was gone.
In frustration, he threw the television remote across the room. It made a satisfying crunch against the wall. Taylor knew that little bit of violence didn’t change a thing; if anything, it made him feel even more useless. He could do nothing to fix this situation. He was completely useless.
“Couldn’t even hold onto a damn letter,” he mumbled. In his mind, he finished the sentence, and it might be the last one Zac ever writes.
He walked back into the kitchen, happy to see that at least the coffee pot was cooperating with him, and poured himself a cup. Just as he took the first sip, the telephone rang. He glanced at the caller ID before picking it up.
Tulsa Police Department
Seeing those three words again made Taylor shake so badly he nearly dropped his coffee cup. Setting it on the counter top, he picked up the phone and just managed to squeak out, “Hello?”
“Is this Taylor Hanson speaking? This is Detective Davies; we spoke yesterday.”
“Yes, this is Taylor,” he said, his voice still weak and pathetic. He dreaded the detective’s next question.
After some paper shuffling and throat clearing, the detective spoke again, “We just wanted to call and let you know that there’s been a bit of a lead in the case. There’s a possible sighting of Zac outside of St. Louis at a truck stop. We haven’t been able to fully follow up on that lead yet, but I thought it best to keep you informed.”
“I appreciate it,” Taylor said. “St. Louis, is that right?”
“A smaller city nearby, yes. Eureka, Missouri. Does that have any significance to you?”
“No,” Taylor answered. It was half a lie. He himself had stopped in Eureka – he remembered the name – on his way to Chicago months earlier. Could Zac have been headed to Chicago? Taylor didn’t want to give the police any indication of that for fear it would only cast more suspicion on him.
“Now, we’re going to be following up on that with their local police to see if we can confirm whether or not that was indeed your brother, but right now we can’t really say. In the meantime, it would be really good if you could bring in that letter.”
Taylor felt his stomach turn. “Well… the thing is, I can’t quite find it. I’m not even sure I brought it here from Chicago now.”
He could hear the officer’s disappointment in the silence that followed.
“I see,” Davies began.”Well, we don’t know that the letter could help us, but of course we won’t know anything at all until you find it. Just try your best. You know every little thing can prove valuable in these situations.”
Taylor sighed. “Yes, I know. I’ll keep looking for it.”
“I know these kind of situations are very tough,” the officer said, then stopped himself awkwardly, as though he thought better of what he had planned to say. “We appreciate anything you can do to help, and we’ll keep looking as hard as we can for your brother.”
“Thanks,” Taylor said, unsure of how else to respond. The detective’s words were almost kind, even if he still spoke in that official, standoffish way that most police officers seemed to. With one last assurance that he would continue to look for the letter, he ended the conversation and hung up.
Although it had been short, the conversation left Taylor feeling drained. He wanted nothing more than to crawl back into his bed, ignore the fact that he used to share it with Charlotte, and sleep the day away. Surely there must be something productive he could do, Taylor thought. Sleep might have been selfishly satisfying, but he also felt the need to do something, anything, to keep himself from feeling completely helpless.
As always, he turned to his music.
He had left many of his notebooks in storage in the guest room when he fled to Chicago, and he felt a nagging urge to dig those very notebooks out and pore through them for a song to busy his mind with. He didn’t feel quite up to visiting the studio on his parents’ property, but he could sit down at the piano in the living room and have a go at some of the lyrics lurking in his old notebooks. Taylor didn’t see the harm in that.
Full of a sudden resolve to be productive, Taylor walked briskly down the hallway to the guest room. Eventually he had planned to have a studio built into their house, but it hadn’t materialized before everything changed. Instead, he kept boxes of music and lyrics in the guest room, along with several of his guitars and keyboards. He always meant to organize it, but he hadn’t even managed that. When he moved out, he grabbed a handful of notebooks and one guitar, and didn’t give the room a second thought.
He pulled the door open and found that it looked exactly as he pictured it. Just like everything else in the house, it seemed suspended in motion, stuck at the moment he had walked out. The air in the room felt oppressive and he imagined it was the weight of all the memories he had stored in it. The crates full of notebooks and loose sheets of paper held years and years worth of his life, distilled into lyrics and melodies. He knew that there were several unfinished love songs to Charlotte lurking in the room, and he hoped not to run into any of those.
After standing there for several minutes, just taking in the scene, Taylor grabbed a crate at random. He had no idea at all what it contained, but if he spent much more time looking around at the chaos of the room, he wouldn’t get anything done. With the crate in his arms, he hurried to the living room where his favorite piano sat on display and hopefully still in tune.
A fine layer of dust covered the piano’s surface and Taylor hurriedly wiped down the keys and plucked a few of them to test the sound. He decided it was good enough for now. He wasn’t planning to record anything, after all. He just wanted to play.
He pulled a loose page out of the box and discovered that it was a piece of sheet music. The composition was one he quickly recognized – he had been working on several years before, but had never finished it. It was a slow piece that had gone through several versions of lyrics; it seemed the song could never quite decide if it was sad or romantic. Maybe both, Taylor decided as he played his way through the unfinished verses.
He still could not find the right words for the song, and so after playing through it, he set it on top of the piano to look at later. He leafed through the crate again, looking for something else to strike his fancy. A small blue notebook caught his eye. Taylor didn’t remember writing in it, but he knew he had been through so many notebooks that he would never remember them all. He had a tendency to misplace them and buy a new one, only for the original to turn up later. It had always frustrated Charlotte, as she was usually the one to find the original notebook.
Opening the small blue book, he instantly realized that the writing inside was not his own. It was Charlotte’s. Taylor felt a cold chill creep up his spine, almost as though he had unearthed a ghost by opening the notebook. He flipped through a few pages and realized it was a diary. Nearly every page had a date at the top and it looked as though Charlotte had started this diary only a few months before her death. Taylor wondered how it had ended up mixed in with his music; he must have assumed it was his and packed it up with the other notebooks when they were packing to move into the house.
He knew he should put it down, shut its cover and not pry into her life. It made him nauseous to realize that he was reading her words completely without her consent – a consent that he could not get. Yet, Taylor wondered if something in this journal could explain, finally, what had happened to make Charlotte do what she had done. Even though it felt wrong, he had to keep reading. He flipped to a random page just a few weeks before her death.
July 14, 2008
I still don’t know how to tell Taylor. Shiloh says I should just be honest, but I don’t know. I honestly thought everything would get better after the engagement, but it hasn’t. Everything still feels so empty, maybe even more than before. Why can’t I just be happy? How do you explain that kind of feeling to the man you’re supposed to love, anyway? I mean, I do love him…
I just don’t think Taylor will understand. He’s always so happy. At least, he seems that way. And I guess I do too. So maybe he would understand, but it’s still terrifying to think of telling him. What if he thinks I’m not happy with him? What if he thinks I want to leave? I couldn’t put him through that kind of worry. So I don’t care what Shiloh says. This is going to stay my secret, at least for now.
Taylor had to read the words several times to let them sink in. She was right; until her death, which he hadn’t wanted to accept as a suicide, Taylor had barely suspected that Charlotte was anything but happy. She hadn’t seemed all that excited about planning the wedding, but he had just assumed she was distracted from moving into the new house. She had wanted that, Taylor was certain. She loved their little house. It couldn’t have been him that she wasn’t happy with.
July 29, 2008
It feels like everyone is starting to realize something is wrong with me. Diana keeps calling, wanting to ask questions about the wedding plans and I don’t have any answers for her. It feels like my world is closing in around me. If I told anyone but Shiloh, they would think I just didn’t want to be married. I think I’ll just let Diana plan the whole thing and agree to whatever she wants. Maybe that way, she won’t notice that I really just can’t excited about any of it.
It isn’t Taylor, though. I swear it isn’t. I feel like I spend half my time trying to convince myself of that. I’ve never loved anyone like I love him, except for… well. I don’t want to think about that. About him. Taylor isn’t like that. I know he isn’t. I don’t think I’m afraid that he’s going to change once we’re married. I think I’m afraid that I will.
I’m afraid I’m completely unlovable and it’s only a matter of time before Taylor notices.
Taylor shook his head when he read those words. He couldn’t believe Charlotte thought of herself that way. He wanted to know why, but more than that he wanted to see her one last time so he could assure her that he would never, ever, think of her that way.
August 7, 2008
I can’t believe I finally agreed to see a psychiatrist like Shiloh has been telling me to do for years. She told me that if I didn’t, I’d end up being a runaway bride. Maybe she’s right. So I made an appointment today when Taylor was gone to the office to work on their new album. That way he won’t know, at least not until it happens. Maybe I can even keep it a secret then, but he’ll find out eventually.
I’m so scared, though. I haven’t told anyone but Shiloh about what happened. She’s the only one who has been with me since high school and knows about James. Taylor thinks we just came to Tulsa for college, but it was to get away from home. I’ve never been able to give him a good explanation why I don’t like going back to visit, even though the last I heard James was doing time in Texas. I didn’t hear what he finally got arrested for. Probably for beating some other girl.
It’s been almost a decade, though. When I left for college, I put that all behind me. At least, I thought I had. Now that the wedding is closing in, it’s all coming back. It’s only a matter of time before I snap and accuse Taylor, when he’s done nothing wrong. If that doesn’t happen, I’m bound to go off the deep end in some other way.
Taylor felt his stomach turn as he read her words – twice, to be sure he’d understood. He tossed the journal down, sickened by what he had read. Charlotte didn’t need to lay it out in detail for him to get the picture. He suddenly understood everything, how in the last few days it had seemed like she was pulling away. He tried to push it out of his mind, but there were moments, maybe even from the beginning, when she seemed almost afraid to let herself be near him.
Carefully, he picked the journal up and flipped ahead a few pages to the last entry, just a few days before her death.
September 4, 2008
The appointment is Monday. I can’t believe it came so quickly. I don’t want to go. Shiloh may have to drive me there and physically push me out of the car and into the building. I know I’m being childish, but I just don’t know how to do this. The thought of admitting what I let him do… I think it’s even worse than the thought of all that happening again with Taylor. If it happened again, I could tell myself I deserved it. That I was just the kind of girl that happened to. I still don’t even know if I’d be strong enough to leave if it did happen.
That’s what I don’t want to admit. Somewhere inside, I’m still the pathetic, sad little girl that let her first boyfriend shove her around. Who would want to own up to that? Who would want to tell anyone about that? I can’t even tell the man I’m going to marry. I sure as hell can’t tell some random stranger, even if they are supposed to be able to fix it.
I don’t think anyone can fix it. I don’t think anyone can fix me.
It read like a novel, Taylor thought. Charlotte couldn’t have picked more poignant, chilling words to end on if she had tried. Had she tried? Taylor couldn’t tell if Charlotte was planning it or not. If she had truly planned in advance to run her car off the bridge and into the river, nothing in her journal hinted at it. The depression was clear enough, though. Taylor had never been able to think of anything he had done to set her off, but maybe he hadn’t needed to. It sounded like she had reached the end of her rope all on her own. He had never truly had any clue about the depression she was hiding.
If he had known, could he have changed anything? Taylor didn’t know and he didn’t like to think that way, but he couldn’t help it. Everything in his life was another reminder of what he’d lost. Every day he wondered what he could have done differently. Even if he could have loved her more, he now realized, it might not have been enough to heal the wounds he hadn’t caused.