a sound she hadn't heard before

twenty-seven.

The next morning, Taylor drops Ayla off at school, then knows that she has to make an unpleasant phone call. She has to speak with Tree about the steps that she is going to want to take to protect her family from Adam. Most importantly, to protect Ayla from her own father. And on top of that, she wants to do all of this without Ayla knowing.

Taylor hates it, she really does. The idea of homeschooling Ayla, something that she has always been so violently against, seems to be more and more appealing with every passing day. She knew that bringing a child into her world wouldn't be easy, but she had no idea just how hard it was going to be. The little girl just loves school, and knowing that she may have to be pulled out just breaks Taylor's heart. Taylor knows, though, that everything that's about to happen is going to get her name put back into the spotlight, even more than it already is from her current project. Ayla's school is great, but she can't ask of them any more than she already is. She can't, in good concience, ask them to treat Ayla specially. To keep her inside when the rest of her class is out on the playground. To not allow any parent volunteers into the classroom. To find a way to shelter her from any of the rumors that will inevitably start swirling around about both her and her mother. Not only would it be unfair to the school, but it would be unfair to Ayla. The things that she wouldn't be able to participate in: outdoor gym class and recess, field trips, mystery readers... those are all of the things that make school fun.

Tree has been on the side of homeschooling for years. She convinced Taylor to home school Ayla for preschool, but couldn't change Taylor's mind on it once Ayla was ready for kindergarten. Taylor didn't think that anything would ever change her mind on the issue, but this has changed everything.

With a sigh and shaking hands, Taylor picks up her phone. She puts the call on speaker as she is going to talk to Tree while driving into the city for the next show. Ayla missed school yesterday to come to the show, and Taylor feels awful that she didn't even end up getting to see it. She can only imagine what the little girl will tell the teacher, when she doesn't know the whole context of the situation. It's not going to sound good when she says that she went to "my friend Joe's apartment" and watched Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood all day.

"Taylor?" Tree picks up the phone almost instantly. "Is everything okay?" Taylor doesn't call Tree much these days. She hasn't really spoken with her publicist since the last time there was an emergency... when the photos were leaked on the internet.

"I'm not really sure... I don't think so," Taylor admits. She begins to tell Tree the story of what happened at yesterday's workshop.

Tree doesn't know, in detail, the events that occurred at Ayla's first birthday party. She knows that Ayla's father showed up, drunk and violent. She doesn't know much more than that. Taylor realizes that now, if the news is going to be breaking, then Tree is going to need to know exactly what she is going to see out there. Taylor tells her everything, and Tree doesn't quite know how to react to all of it. At first, all that she can do is sigh.

"Taylor, that's quite the situation that you've ended up in."

"I know..."

"Are you sure that you don't want to just wait it out and see what happens?"

"Yeah. I'm sure," Taylor replies. She's telling the truth. Overnight, she thought a lot about it. She didn't sleep that much. She just thought and thought, trying to figure out what to do about it all. She thought about all of the possible implications of all of the possible routes, and the more that she thought, the more that she realized that she really did want to be free of this burden, once and for all. She wanted to stop worrying about it, crying about it in the dark of the night.

"Alright... Taylor, that's going to put your name back out in the news. Majorly. It's going to be a court case and-"

"No, I know," Taylor cuts her off. "I'm trying to figure out what to do about it... about Ayla."