Blame
Taylor stood at his window for a while and stared at Shiloh’s front door. He had no clue how he could possibly break this news to her, but he knew that he had to. If he didn’t soon, she would hear it somewhere else. What if she only found out from someone at her work, or worse yet, from the news? Taylor couldn’t let that happen.
When her front door opened and she walked outside, Taylor scrambled to put on a pair of shoes and dashed outside without even paying attention to whether or not the door closed behind him.
“Taylor, what the hell are you doing?” Shiloh asked, tilting her head to the side and staring at him. “Are you drunk?”
He glanced down and realized that he was still in his pajamas. He hadn’t even managed to put on a coat and the front door to his house was indeed standing wide open. To Shiloh, he must have looked insane, and he had to admit, he kind of felt it, too.
“I… they…” He stuttered out.
“What is it?” Shiloh asked, glaring at him. “I’m going to be late for work if you don’t spit out whatever it is that’s apparently so important.”
“They found Zac’s car.”
Shiloh blinked. “They what? Who did?”
“The police,” Tay said, slowly finding his voice again. “The detective just called me. Somewhere outside of St. Louis… Shy, they think… they think he killed himself. His car was by the side of the river.”
“No,” Shiloh said.
Taylor stared at her. “What… what do you mean no?”
“I mean no, I refuse to accept the idea that Zac killed himself,” Shiloh replied, glaring at Taylor. “Because if that’s true, then the two people closest to me, the two people I love most, committed suicide. I really can’t deal with that.”
“It’s not like it’s an epidemic,” Taylor replied. “You can’t catch suicide.”
Shiloh only glared more. “That’s not what I fucking meant. It’s just… god, it’s just fucked up. Do you even get it? How I blame myself every day for Charlotte’s death? And now Zac, too?”
“And you think I haven’t blamed myself for Charlotte killing herself? Everyone blamed me for it, Shy! The police all but accused me of killing her, even though I wasn’t even in the car.”
“Poor, pitiful Taylor,” Shiloh spat. “You didn’t even know what she had been through!”
“Because she didn’t tell me!” Taylor screeched. “How could I know? She could have talked to me about it. Hell, you could have talked to me about it. But no, you kept it a secret. You’re good at that, aren’t you?”
Taylor didn’t even know what he was saying anymore. His anger had taken over and he was lashing out. Shiloh just had that effect on him sometimes, especially when she brought up the subject of Charlotte’s death, as though it were some sort of competition to see which of them was more to blame and which of them was suffering more. He hated it and he hated Shiloh for leading the conversation that way again.
“And I suppose you think you know how much Zac was suffering, too? Do you even have any idea, Taylor, what it was like while you were gone?”
He blinked. Of course he knew that Zac was suffering. At least, he knew it now. How could he have known when he was gone, though? And how dare Shiloh imply that he had kept himself oblivious on purpose.
“No,” Taylor replied. “I guess I don’t. How the fuck could I, when you and Zac both kept this a secret from me? So no, I didn’t know what was happening in his life, but that is not my fault.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Taylor. Just keep fucking telling yourself that.”
He didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but he knew that he didn’t like it. As if he didn’t blame himself enough for everything that had happened to Charlotte and to Zac, now it seemed that everyone else was blaming him all over again. It didn’t matter that he thought they were right to accuse him. It only made him wish even more that he was the one who was dead. Then no one would have to deal with how much he kept fucking everything up.
“You know what?” Shiloh asked. “I’m done with this conversation. I have work to do, something you wouldn’t really understand. My bills don’t get paid if I sit on my ass and do nothing but pity myself and collect royalty checks, you know.”
Taylor just gaped at her. “You know, I really thought I was doing you a favor by coming over here and giving you the news. I thought you’d want to hear it from me first.”
“Sure, of course. It’s always nice to hear the bad news from the person who might as well be responsible for it.”
With that, Shiloh pushed past Taylor and climbed into her car. He could only stand there and stare at her as she peeled out of the driveway, obviously trying to put as much distance between them as she possibly could, as quickly as she possibly could.
Taylor suddenly realized that he was freezing. It was only the end of October, and it usually wasn’t very cold in Tulsa that early in the year, but Taylor supposed that standing outside in his thin t-shirt and pajama pants probably wasn’t a good idea in late autumn. Once Shiloh’s car had disappeared around a curve and he could no longer watch her, he shuffled back into his house and slammed the door behind him.
That conversation hadn’t gone how he had expected at all. He had expected Shiloh to be devastated, sure, but he had assumed that would come in the form of sadness, not anger. And especially not anger at him. What had he done, anyway, besides run away?
And get Shiloh pregnant before leaving, he reminded himself.
Had that truly pushed Zac into such an awful depression that he felt the need to kill himself? It didn’t make sense to Taylor. He still didn’t truly understand what had pushed Charlotte to that breaking point, either, although reading her journals made it a little easier to understand.
It wasn’t that Taylor didn’t know what it felt like to see no way out and no way that your life could possibly improve. That was the reality he lived with everyday. But he lived that reality because so many of the people he loved had left him. He hadn’t left Zac for good, and he hadn’t left Charlotte at all.
So why had they both left him?
Even though he hating agreeing with Shiloh, he truly felt that he had only himself to blame. He hadn’t been good enough for Charlotte and he had ruined Zac’s relationship with Shiloh and then ran away. He was a coward, plain and simple. Even if he had stayed, he probably wouldn’t have been strong enough to fix anything.
Shiloh seemed to understand what Zac had gone through far better than Taylor did. But how could she? According to her, they hadn’t even spoken for months, not since he realized he wasn’t the father of her baby. So how could she possibly understand what he was going through so well that she felt justified in rubbing it in Taylor’s face? Taylor didn’t think it made sense at all.
Then he remembered the letter.
It had disappeared the day that he first allowed Shiloh into his house. He had been certain that he had unpacked it, yet he hadn’t been able to find it anywhere. She had taken a long time using his bathroom, he remembered. What if she had taken a detour and grabbed the letter? It seemed ridiculous to even consider, but then he remembered the way she had refused to let him clean her bedroom and had quickly swept up a bunch of papers into a desk drawer when she caught him looking.
She had to have Zac’s letter, Taylor decided. And he knew how to break into her house and find it.