Escape from Eden (22 page)

“There’s a difference.” I traced the quilted pattern on the blanket with my index finger. “Do I still feel responsible for the deaths of those eleven people during the Bright Night? Yeah, I do.”

“You were the Reverend’s pawn.”

“I know that. And he would have gotten someone else to help Agatha with the baking if it wasn’t me. I still have a vague sense of responsibility for what I was a part of, but I understand that I didn’t kill them.” I glanced back at him. “Can I ask what happened to your brother?”

He shook his head with a doubtful cast. “It’s a twisted bedtime story, Mia. Not something that will usher you into a peaceful night’s sleep.”

“I’m far away from having a peaceful night’s sleep. It’ll be dawn in a couple hours.” I lay back down, curling sideways on the pillow. “You don’t have to tell me, it’s okay. I thought maybe, I don’t know, it would help.”

“I’ve had lots of help,” he said, then muttered, “psychiatrists are as crazy as everyone else.” Gabriel let out a long exhale and dropped back onto his pillow. He folded his arms over his chest, tucking his hands under his arms, as if shielding his heart.

He’d lost a sibling, like Juanita. Maybe they spoke about it, maybe it was what had brought them close together so quickly.

“My brother was almost ten years older,” Gabriel said. “I worshipped him. Worshipped. When he was fourteen he went to parties and clubs–”

“Wasn’t he a little young to get into nightclubs?”

“First, I think my grandmother called them nightclubs back in the eighties.”

“How old is your grandmother?”

“And second,” he said, ignoring me, “we were rich and lived in Manhattan.”

“Is that some kind of explanation?”

He shrugged. “Pretty much.”

“Fine.” I waved a tired hand at him. “Go on.”

“My mom worked all the time. She was a lawyer for a five-name law firm in Midtown. Corporate law. The most soul-crushing. My dad is—was—a writer.”

“Was,” I whispered.

“Yeah. He tried to bring his computer into Edenton but they confiscated it.” When he shifted in the bed, the mattress beneath us wobbled. “Before, though, he’d be holed up in his office all the time trying to write a follow-up to his
New York Times
best-selling novel, which, by the way, was a sappy, self-serving piece of crap I could barely get through.”

“What was it about?”

“Oh, undying love, terminal cancer, and time travel. You know, the usual.”

“Of course.”

Gabriel continued, “I had a nanny I was with all the time. She was supposed to watch Griffin, too—”

“Your brother’s name was Griffin?”

“My mom found the letter G endearing.”

“Why?”

“Gaia, Ganesha, Guanyin, Gandhi, God. It was a different religion, different beliefs for her practically every few months.” I couldn’t see his face clearly, but the dim light in the room reflected in the sheen of his eyes as he stared off into the distance. “We had a room in our house dedicated to her spiritual evolution. It was filled with statues and altars, incense and bells, beads and books. When she wasn’t working, she locked herself up in there. We hardly saw her. I guess her job may have been soulless, but she was determined to keep hers intact, no matter what the sacrifice.”

“What was her sacrifice?”

“Her sons. She set us aside to go on a spiritual journey that didn’t include her family.”

“What about your dad?”

“He worshipped at the altar of the Amazon Sales Rank.”

“The Amazon is for sale?”

He let out a sigh that sounded a bit like a laugh. “Never mind.” He shifted his arm behind his head. “Griffin would ignore Miss Beverly. He didn’t give a crap about where he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to be doing. It was awesome.”

“How is that awesome?”

“When you’re a kid and your older brother is a badass, off running around Manhattan, acting like he owns the island, it’s awesome.” He went quiet then, staring off into the darkness, head tilted away from me. “Until it’s not.”

I remained silent, waiting.

“Griffin began to change,” Gabriel continued in a rasping voice. “He didn’t go out with his friends as often, didn’t talk to many people. He’d ditch his phone on the kitchen counter and leave it ’til the battery died.

“It started to get worse,” he said. “For hours he would stay in his room. Hours. Sometimes days. It got to a point where he didn’t even go to school. Griffin wasn’t dumb. He may have skipped school, but he was smart enough never to get in trouble for it.” A faint smile graced his lips. “He could talk his way out of anything.” He dragged out the last word and stopped talking, staring, maybe sifting through memories.

I studied his profile again, the grace of his straight nose, his full lower bottom lip with that cherry indentation that kept drawing my eye. I wondered about Griffin. Did he look like Gabriel? Dark hair and gradient blue-green eyes?

“How old were you when your brother was born?” he asked suddenly.

“I was—” I started, refocusing. “I was nine.”

“And how did you feel when he was born?”

“How did I feel?” I asked.

“Yeah. You were old enough to remember when he was born. What did you feel when he and your mom came home from the hospital?”

“He didn’t come home from the hospital.”

“Was he born in Edenton?”

“No. He was born right before we came to Edenton. My mom wanted to give birth at our house, not in a ‘cold, unfeeling’ hospital.”

“That can’t be sanitary,” he said flatly.

I smiled. “She had a midwife. If my Dad had been there, he would have been furious.”

“Your dad? You have a father?”

“Yes, I have a father. He just … ” I trailed off, grief cinching my throat. “He didn’t come with us to Edenton.”

Gabriel didn’t say anything, only waited for me to continue.

“It’s not that he didn’t want to come with us,” I said, repositioning myself onto my back so I wasn’t facing him. I focused on the crooked wobble of the ceiling fan and wondered how much I should tell Gabriel. There was so much I didn’t want to remember, so many emotions I didn’t want to bubble up. Especially now, after what we’d been through earlier. “He left us before Max was born.”

“Oh,” he muttered. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

I wasn’t sure what I was saying was okay, Gabriel bringing it up or Papa leaving us. I hadn’t talked about what had happened between my parents to anyone, really. The girls in my cottage never asked. As far as the Flock was concerned, your life before Edenton was insignificant.

“But when Max was born,” I said, shifting the conversation back to his question, “I was excited. I was an only child and always wanted a brother or sister. I wanted to hold him all the time. And as he got older, and we could have little conversations, he became more precious to me—”

I stopped, a small choking sound escaping my throat. Max was still in Edenton. Would I ever see him again? I placed my hand on my stomach, at the pain beginning to bloom there, and inhaled.

“You okay?” Gabriel asked.

“Yes,” I said in a hoarse whisper. “Why did you ask about how I felt when my brother was born?”

“Sibling rivalry,” he said. “Seems like it happens when kids are closer in age, you know what I mean? A two-year-old not understanding why he isn’t the center of attention anymore. Sure—that makes sense. Why would you be jealous of your baby brother if you’re a lot older?”

“I wasn’t jealous of him.”

“But my brother was of me. He hated me. I worshipped him like a dumb little kid and he absolutely hated me.”

“Hate is a very strong word.”

“Extreme dislike doesn’t exactly cover it,” he muttered. “Like I said, Griffin changed and my parents barely noticed. I overheard Miss Beverly telling my mom that she was worried about Griffin. My mom said something idiotic, like his spirit will light the way to a happier path. Or whatever.” He sat up, punched the pillow, and repositioned it against the headboard. He leaned back against the pillow. “And my dad couldn’t have cared less. He was so caught up in his own world it was like we didn’t even exist to him. Until it came to taking a family photo for some book-marketing crap. I remember in one picture we all wore matching khakis and white shirts on the beach. And my dad rented a golden retriever for the photo.”

“How do you rent a golden retriever?”

“The Amazing Animals casting agency,” he said, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips. “It’s not important. Anyway, one afternoon when I was eight, my mom was at work and my dad was who-knows-where. Griffin came into my room and asked Miss Beverly if I could play a game with him. Miss Beverly glanced at me, then at him, and I thought
me
? Why me?” He seemed as taken aback now as he must have been when he was eight. “Miss Beverly said it was okay. I remember what he said when he saw the shocked look on my face. ‘Come on, Gabe. Come play a game with me.’ So I followed Griffin down the stairs to our family room.” Gabriel let out a long breath but stayed silent for a while; the only sound was the early morning birds chirping outside the window.

“I thought people in New York lived in apartments,” I said, trying to sway the subject temporarily away from his brother because the tone of his voice sounded like he didn’t want to continue. But my curiosity was piqued. Where was his story going? “Did you live in a house? Was it big?”

“Pretty big place, I guess. Upper East Side brownstone. The family room was in the basement. I was the only one who really hung out down there, so my toys were everywhere, Legos and stuff. When I got down there, I saw a box on the coffee table. Griffin told me to open it.” He hesitated. “Inside was a gun.”

“A gun?” I asked.

“Yeah. It wasn’t unusual, really. I played with toy guns, giant water pistols that looked like machine guns. But this didn’t look like a toy. It was black, and looked heavy and real. Griffin asked me if I wanted to play a game called Deer Hunter. He said the rules were simple, it was like Marco Polo.” He turned to me. “You know that game?”

I thought back to when I was little, playing with the kids in the neighborhood pool. If I remembered correctly, it was tag, but in a swimming pool. I was “it” a few times, yelling “Marco” with my eyes closed, swimming to the closest “Polo” I heard from someone in response, trying to tag that person. Then my memory clouded with visions of Mama swimming, naked with Lambert. My stomach roiled.

“Yeah,” I said softly. “I know the game.”

“Anyway, he said we’d play it just like that, except he was the deer and I was the hunter. He put a blindfold over my eyes. And at first I was freaked out and asked what kind of gun it was. He told me it was a paintball gun. I’d never seen one before, so I was pretty excited. I thought about how pissed Mom would be if we got paint on her rugs.

“Griffin placed the gun in my hand. It was so heavy. I asked him what I was supposed to do next. He told me to say ‘deer’ when I was ready, and he would answer ‘hunter.’ And I had to find him and shoot. But then he said, ‘Remember, Gabe. Even the deer doesn’t want to die alone. That’s why he has the hunter.’ I nodded at him, not sure what he was talking about until … ”

Anxiety prickled its way over my limbs. As much as I didn’t want to hear what happened, I couldn’t stop listening to his story.

“I held the gun out.” He mimicked the movement with his hands. “And I said, ‘deer.’ I actually was excited to pull the trigger. I heard him reply, ‘hunter.’ ” Gabriel drew out the word. “I remember how he said it. He spoke very slowly and sounded far away. I turned to where I heard him and squeezed the trigger. And suddenly my face was on fire. The gun kicked back and clocked me in the nose, and I was in so much pain I started crying. I didn’t even take off the blindfold.” He touched his head between his brows. “There was a scream, and it sounded like I heard it through water—it was muffled. And then someone whipped the blindfold off my face and it hurt like hell. I remember bringing my hands up to my nose and they came back covered in blood.

“I looked down to see Miss Beverly crouched over Griffin. When she moved away, I saw him. He wasn’t far away from me at all. He had been right in front of me when I pulled the trigger.”

The air rushed from my lungs in horror. “It was a real gun?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “A real gun.” Bringing his hand up to his forehead, he pressed his index fingers to his temples. “I stood there for what felt like hours, looking at his face—it was completely unrecognizable. All I could think was that it looked like raw bloody meat.”

“Oh, God.” I swallowed a gag at the thought. “Why did he do it? Did he leave a note?”

“He … he didn’t leave a real suicide note or anything. The cops had no clues why he did it. But I guess he hated me just that much.”

“No,” I said and wondered if a person like that could hate his own brother.

“I told you, he’d always hated the fact I was born.”

“But that doesn’t mean he hated you.”

“What the hell is the difference, Mia?” he retorted. He brought his fingers to his eyes and rubbed them. “I’m sorry.”

“Gabriel, don’t be sorry. I’m the one who asked you to tell me this story. And I think what he did to you was like child abuse.”

“I know that now. But when you’re an eight-year-old kid, all you can think is that you killed your goddamn brother.”

I slid my hand across the bed sheet and placed it on his wrist. My fingers prickled at the touch. “I’m so sorry you went through that.”

He tensed beside me, then relaxed when I didn’t pull my hand away. “Thanks,” he said. “After all that, you know, we went through a lot. Investigations, a trial. I ended up in therapy for years. My parents—God, my parents. Some days, they would clutch onto me like I was all they had left. Other days—” he broke off and shrugged.

I tightened my grip on his wrist.

“Finally,” he said, “when I was thirteen, I stopped going to therapy, stopped dealing with my parents’ insanity.”

“Why?” I asked.

He hesitated, and said tightly, “Because I had a good reason to.” He didn’t elaborate on that reason. “All I wanted was to hang out with friends, party, wanted to forget everything that happened. I did whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Drugs, tattoos, girls—” he stopped.