Assault and Batting

by Rothery, Tess

  “I don’t know, to be honest. I hadn’t stayed very close with Mom.”

  “Would you ask Belle? I know she’s just a kid, but maybe she knows something, something about why your mom would want all of us in the same place.”

  Taylor had no appetite for the sandwich the waitress brought them while they were talking. Gina seemed to be in complete ignorance of Belle’s parentage. But that didn’t mean Nancy had been. And fighting over Gina and Nancy gave Colleen another reason to have killed her mother.

  Though Taylor felt for Gina, the way one feels for someone who just doesn’t have it together, she did not inquire about where she was spending the night. Taylor ordered a meatloaf sandwich for her grandpa, paid her bill, and left.

  Hudson caught up with her pretty quickly. “Was that helpful?”

  “Could you hear any of it?”

  “No, and trust me, I tried.”

  “I don’t know if it was helpful or not. Nancy is still at the bed and breakfast, I think. I’d kind of like to go down there and talk to her again.”

  “I can drive you.”

  “I can’t leave till closing.”

  “That’s all right. I’d like to do a little more work up in your apartment, if you don’t mind.”

  “Whatever keeps the invaders out.”

  * * *

  Taylor floated through the rest of the workday, hardly aware of her surroundings. She hadn’t heard from Belle by closing, which she should have noticed long before six. She called, then texted, then called again, then called Sissy Dorney. “Is my sister there?”

  “Yes, and her phone is dead, so if you’ve been trying to reach her, it’s not her fault. You should have called Cooper.”

  “If she’s old enough to go to college in the fall, she’s old enough to remember to charge her phone.” Taylor was ready to take her aggression out on this woman who seemed to revel in keeping Belle away from her.

  “It’s not my fault, is it? No reason to yell at me. Belle, come talk to your sister.”

  There were voices of protest in the background and then a voice came on. “What?”

  “You’re not Belle.”

  “Yes, I am.” The snotty, recalcitrant voice did not belong to Belle.

  “I’m not playing around. Put Belle on the phone.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  “That doesn’t really matter, does it? I’m in charge and she has to talk to me when I say she has to talk to me.”

  “Actually, she told me that’s not true. You aren’t legally the boss of her at all. No one is.”

  “You sound like a seven year old. Put my sister on. I want to talk to someone intelligent.”

  “You’re a jerk.”

  “You’re a moron.”

  “I hate you.” The phone call ended.

  Taylor stared at it.

  Had she just gotten into a name calling fight with a high schooler?

  “That doesn’t sound like it went well,” Hudson’s deep, husky voice sounded from behind her.

  “I can’t remember a time when I was more embarrassed.”

  “Don’t be. Most of us want to talk like that to teenagers.”

  “I guess I’m not going to see Nancy tonight. Sorry.”

  He scratched his jaw. “Because Belle won’t come home?”

  “She won’t even come to the phone.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “It sounds like she’s at her friend Cooper’s house.”

  “Let’s go get her.”

  Taylor lifted an eyebrow, curious. It was impossible not to compare him with Clay. Clay hadn’t even been willing to come home for a weekend to hang out with her family. Hudson was willing to storm the enemy to drag her sister back home. “Can we bring Grandpa Ernie?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Taylor had to look up the Dorney address, but as soon as she had it, she loaded everyone in her car, and they drove the six blocks to the house Belle liked to be at better than her own.

  Chapter Twenty

  Hudson was ready to charge the door and rescue the kid, but Taylor put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “I have a better idea.”

  Taylor walked to the front door with Grandpa Ernie and rang the bell. “She can’t possibly say no to you, can she?” It was evening, the sun just starting to set, and he didn’t look pleased at being a pawn in her game, but he didn’t argue.

  Sissy Dorney’s roots had been touched up since Taylor saw her last, and her frizz was under control. Like the shoemaker’s children, Taylor suspected the hairstylist didn’t always get to do her own hair in a timely manner. “Not surprised to see you here.”

  “You’ve got some nerve. Where’s Belle?” Grandpa Ernie’s voice was strong, even though his body was slightly hunched.

  “Belle, your grandpa’s here.” Sissy hollered over her shoulder, then sauntered into the room.

  Dayton came to the door instead. “I told you she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  “You’re not Belle. Belle can speak for herself.” Grandpa Ernie dismissed Belle’s friend with the two gruff sentences.

  “You’re not children, and this isn’t a game.” Taylor crossed her arms and stepped across the threshold even though it knocked Dayton to the side.

  Dayton grabbed her sleeve. “Listen, I wish it weren’t like this, but Belle is pissed and won’t tell us why. She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  “Doesn’t matter what she wants.” Taylor shook her arm free and stared across the room. It was a large house, fancy in that new way where every surface is a faux something or other and clean and shiny for the moment. Her feet echoed on the laminate wood floors. “Belle! Come down here!” Taylor stood at the base of a fairly grand staircase and hollered up.

  Cooper came running. “Ms. Quinn, I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to get her to come downstairs. She’s really not in a good place.”

  “I’d agree. The place she’s supposed to be right now is home.”

  “It’s just something happened today that really upset her, and she needs time.”

  Taylor was too mad to go soft now, but that didn’t stop the worry from pinching at her heart. “What happened?”

  “It’s stupid, I don’t think you’ll get it.” Dayton’s voice came from behind Taylor.

  “Try me.”

  “It’s just the senior projects…. It’s hard to explain.” Dayton came around to the banister of the staircase.

  “Belle, I don’t have time for this!” Taylor hollered again, knowing that in a house with this kind of floor, her voice was bound to carry no.

  “Let me try to explain.” Cooper cleared his throat. “Seniors have these big projects to do before they graduate, and Belle had to do one this year as well, even though she’s not a senior. There was kind of a thing about it, your mom was really mad that Belle had to do it. She tried to fight it.”

  “Why?” Taylor cringed, thinking about all the times she wished her mom had fought the school for her.

  “Because it was a lot of work. The seniors have a class period for it, but Belle had to do it on her own time. So she did, and it’s amazing. It’s almost done.”

  “Get to the point or I’m going upstairs.”

  “It’s just this other student did the same project. And turned in their final already.”

  Taylor rolled her eyes.

  “She copied Belle’s work. It’s good, because this student is really talented. She saw Belle’s work in progress and decided to do the same thing.”

  “And so now Belle won’t go home? Ridiculous.”

  “That’s not all.” Cooper held out a hand, though Taylor hadn’t tried to storm the stairs yet. “They had to have preapproval for their projects, they had to turn in plans along the way, there were a million steps to take to do this thing, but since Belle isn’t in the class, she didn’t remember to get all of her phases of the project approved.”

  “Still no reason to be disrespectful to me.”
/>   Cooper took a deep breath, even his practiced politeness was beginning to suffer. “There are only like forty-five kids graduating, so the school requires that each project be completely unique.”

  Taylor was beginning to be equal parts annoyed with Cooper and the school. “So now Belle has to start over. It sucks but it can’t be helped, and she still needs to come home.”

  “No, it’s too late to start over. She’s failing the class and they won’t graduate her.”

  “Belle! Get down here.”

  A door slammed upstairs.

  “Listen, this sounds like life and death to you all because you’re basically children, but it’s not the end of the world. I’ll take care of it.”

  “But she can’t go into her early admittance college program if she doesn’t get her diploma.”

  “I said I’d take care of it.” Before Taylor could elbow him out of the way, a loud thump came from behind her.

  Taylor spun on her heel.

  Grandpa Ernie had collapsed, falling into a decorative side table covered in framed photos.

  Taylor rushed to help him up, but he was too heavy and unstable.

  “Someone call 911!” This time Taylor knew her voice had carried. She’d never screamed anything so loud before in all her life.

  More footsteps thundered above her, and in an instant, Belle was at her side.

  Sissy was slower, but when Taylor spotted her, she noted Sissy had her phone to her ear giving her address.

  When Sissy was finished, she looked at Belle with the stern look of an angry mother. “Get your things.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Belle floated next to Taylor, her hands gently touching Grandpa’s head, and then his shoulder and then her shoulder.

  In a moment Dayton came with Belle’s backpack.

  Then the sirens.

  Then Hudson, through the door, “What happened?”

  His voice was there, in the midst of Sissy giving her kids directions, and Belle murmuring soft, worried nothings, and all of the alarms going off in Taylor’s head at once.

  And then the paramedics, and Grandpa in an oxygen mask and on a cot, and then they were following him to the hospital in McMinnville.

  Taylor didn’t breathe again till she was sitting in the waiting room of the ER.

  Hudson was holding her hand.

  Cooper was holding Belle’s, though Taylor didn’t remember him coming with them.

  Sissy was at the desk demanding answers.

  And Maddie was there too.

  She was with someone else, but she caught Taylor’s eye and blushed. She shuffled over, apologetically. “I don’t want to get too close. I think Memphis has strep.” Memphis was one of Maddie’s kids, but Taylor couldn’t recall which.

  “It’s Grandpa.” Taylor could hear her own lifeless voice, but didn’t associate it with herself talking.

  “I thought maybe.” There was no place for Maddie to sit, so she didn’t. “Please call me tomorrow. We should talk.”

  Taylor nodded, but she couldn’t picture tomorrow.

  Maddie went back to her child across the room.

  At the hospital.

  In the other town.

  How had she gotten here?

  Why?

  Taylor’s head was spinning. It would make sense tomorrow.

  Eventually she went back with a doctor who explained that Grandpa’s oxygen was very low. The doctor said it wasn’t a heart attack, don’t fear. And that they were going to keep him overnight to monitor him and make sure his levels went back up, and that they could all go home and rest and not worry.

  “Not worry?” Taylor stared at the doctor like he was speaking Swedish.

  “There’s no reason to worry tonight. Go home, get some rest. It’s not even very late yet. Have you eaten?” the doctor gave her a once over, full of concern. “Why don’t you and your family head down to the café and have something to eat before you drive home.”

  The last thing Taylor wanted was to be all the way back home while Grandpa Ernie was here alone. She made her way to the waiting room, feeling like she was carrying everyone who was waiting for her on her back.

  “Low oxygen. Not heart attack.”

  Hudson stood and with a gentle hand on her back, led her to a chair.

  “Keeping him over night. Told us to go home.” Taylor didn’t sit.

  “We can’t just leave him here.” Belle crossed her arms and tightened her jaw.

  “I agree.”

  “You can very much just leave him here, Belly-boo.” Sissy patted her shoulder. “You have school tomorrow and a confrontation with your senior project advisor awaits you.”

  “I said I’d take care of it.” Taylor’s words were firm, but it was all a show. She was hollow at the moment and the senior project advisor would destroy her with a look.

  “I heard you say that, but if Belle is going to college next year, she’s got to learn how to handle these things on her own. So, she’s handling it tomorrow.”

  Belle shifted away from Sissy’s touch.

  “Taylor, may I have your permission to bring Belle home with me and Cooper so she can make it to school in the morning and handle her business?”

  Taylor nodded, then added a thank you as an afterthought.

  “You have a lot on your plate right now. Whatever you do, don’t forget to eat. Come on, kids, let’s get out of their hair.” Sissy held out a hand to her son.

  Belle stood, but only at Cooper’s urging.

  Taylor hugged her fast before Belle could realize she was doing it.

  Belle’s response left a lot to be desired, but at least she didn’t push her away.

  When they were through the doors to the ER waiting room, Hudson spoke. “I’ll feed you, unless you don’t want to eat.”

  “No, we should.” They wandered around the labyrinth that was the medium sized town hospital till they found the café, which had closed for the night. It was almost one too many for Taylor, and she had to bite her lip to keep from crying.

  They had a long slog back out to the car, and it seemed like it would be an even longer slog to find a restaurant and then a place to sleep.

  “Oh, let’s just go home.” Taylor gave up. “We’re less than an hour away. He’s safer at the hospital than he is in his own bedroom at home.”

  “Whatever you want.” Hudson was rolling with the punches well, and Taylor was glad that he had been around tonight, but at the moment, all she wanted was to go home, close her eyes, and wake up to find everything was better.

  It was her car, so Taylor drove.

  She ignored speed limits and made it home a lot faster than she ought to have.

  “Now can I feed you?” Hudson asked, as Taylor pulled into her driveway.

  “Your truck….” Taylor rested her head on the steering wheel. “It’s still up at Flour Sax.”

  “The shop is very close. That is not a problem. If we go in your house will I find any food I can serve you? A can of soup? A pb and j?”

  “Probably.” Taylor wanted to laugh, to let him know she appreciated his thoughtfulness, but she just couldn’t.

  They went inside. He found a can of tomato soup and fixed them each a bowl. He did not serve peanut butter and jelly on the side.

  About halfway through the bowl Taylor began to feel more herself. “In addition to helping Belle fix this problem at her school,” she said between careful spoonfuls, “I need to find a way to make up to her for the horrible things I said the other night.”

  “I assume you’ve apologized.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, from my expert opinion, and remember, I do fix things for a living, I think consistently caring for her over time so that she realizes you meant your apology, is your best bet.” Hudson gave himself seconds of the Campbell’s tomato.

  “So I should not fly her to Disneyland next weekend?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Colleen and Dave want to take her to their beach house for a family w
eekend.”

  “Ouch.” He looked at her with huge dark eyes full of sympathy.

  Taylor could have drowned in those eyes, and kind of wanted to. “Yup.”

  “But you’ll let her go, right?”

  “They invited me as well, but I need to stay with Grandpa Ernie.”

  “And he, as much as you love him, is another problem you have to fix.”

  “Exactly.”

  “No wonder your mom needed a weekend away.”

  “No wonder she was such a wreck, she fell into the river and died.” Taylor glanced at the clock. It was almost nine now, much earlier than it felt. “I need to call Roxy and tell her I won’t be in tomorrow.”

  “I’m on a job all day tomorrow out in Sheridan.”

  “It’s okay.” Taylor stood and began to walk to the kitchen door, her subtle way of telling him to go home now. “It was extremely gracious of you to stick with me all evening.”

  “I’m sorry we missed our chance to talk to Nancy Reece, but if another one comes up, let me know.”

  “Thanks. Funny how playing detective seems to fall off the priority list when a real crisis comes up.”

  He took his bowl to the sink and rinsed it, then gave her a big bear hug.

  Taylor had the feeling he wanted her to tip her face up so he could kiss her, but she wasn’t in the mood, so she didn’t.

  All she wanted was to drop into bed and escape the world, but she forced herself to do her skin care routine, and brush and floss, and comb her hair out before bed.

  It was almost eleven when there was a knock at the door.

  Her first thought was that Belle had snuck out of the Dorney house, but it wasn’t likely. Taylor was irritated with the knocker. Who visits at this hour? It wouldn’t take all five fingers of one hand to name the folks in this town who would come see her at a reasonable hour, much less eleven.

  She stomped down the stairs, hitting each wooden tread like it was the person on the other side of the door.

  She peeked through the little spy-hole.

  Nancy Reese?

  Taylor considered not opening it, but Nancy banged with the side of a fist, like you do when you’re agitated. If she needed help, like her car had broken down, Taylor supposed she’d come here for help as well as anywhere else.