Gabriel opens his eyes and looks down at me. “God, Victoria if you had known him before, you would know he was anything but. He was smart and talented. He just needed the one thing my parents refused to give him.”
I nod painfully, understanding that feeling all too well. Vying for someone’s attention, the person who is supposed to love you, and just never being enough. It’s a feeling you can never quite get past. Not being enough. Not deserving love. I cringe inwardly as I imagine Gabriel’s parents denying their own children a basic human need.
“I can see how that would have affected him,” I reply softly. “Affected all of you, Gabriel.”
He looks annoyed by my remark, obviously not wanting to admit that it has affected him. But I’m glad when he continues to talk, to tell me his story.
“Parker ran away from me that night, and it was the last time I ever saw him. I begged my parents repeatedly to get him help. I even saved up my pocket money to get him into a clinic, but I couldn’t find him again. I looked everywhere, asked so many people. He’d completely disappeared. I held out hope until three months later when my parents got the phone call. The cops found his body in an alley next to the trash of some nightclub. He had jumped from the roof. At first, I didn’t think it could be true. Parker would never kill himself. But then they brought us the note in his pocket, and it couldn’t be denied.”
“That is so sad, Gabriel. I can’t even imagine how that must have been for you and your family.”
“Good old mom, she made sure the story never went to press,” he says dryly. “God forbid a scandal like that could tarnish her image of the perfect wife and mother.”
I shake my head in revulsion. I don’t even know this woman and I loathe her.
“I hated them from that day on, especially her. I started acting out. Not to get their attention, but to embarrass her on purpose. She despised me for it. So when I turned sixteen, she sent me to a military boarding school. I probably should have hated it, but I didn’t. I spent the next two years of my life there and never went back home after that.”
I kiss his chest softly, letting my fingers dance over his skin while I digest everything he’s told me.
“You were so young, Gabriel. It must have been heartbreaking to go through something like that, and then to get sent away from your family. I had no idea.”
He nods but doesn’t speak. He just lies silently in my arms, allowing me to hold him. And it feels nice.
In a moment of extraordinary bravery, I want to tell him something else. “You know it’s not your fault, though right? What happened to your brother, you don’t blame yourself, do you?”
He looks down at me in surprise. “Why would you say that?” he asks softly.
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “A lot of people do I guess, in situations like that.”
Gabriel sighs as he strokes my cheek. “You’re very insightful, you know. I hope someday you’ll tell me what it is that you feel guilty about.”
I close my eyes and bury my face in his chest, knowing that can never happen. It may not be fair, but it’s the way things have to be.
“Have your parents always been this way?” I ask.
“No,” he replies, a wistful expression taking over his features. “They were actually normal once when I was young. They didn’t make their fortune until I was four. Parker remembered better than I could, but he always said how nice it was back then, before the money.”
“We lived in a little yellow run down house. Mom worked as a waitress while Dad ran his first business, a deli. I remember a few things from back then, being poor, not having nice clothes, but mostly I remember being happy. Mom and dad playing board games with us on the weekends. But when Dad’s store went belly up, things changed. He withdrew, working on his plans to get us out of that mess. He was always working on them, for years. And then when he landed some rich investors for his new business plan, it seemed like a dream come true.”
“The hotel chain really took off, and Mom quit her job. I think she had gone without money so long, it had become an obsession to her. She didn’t want anyone looking down on her ever again. She started working her way up the food chain of the rich and famous, spending more and more to get into better circles. She hired a nanny to take care of us. Dad was working all the time, so they started taking vacations without us. It all just kind of snowballed so fast. The money had changed them.”
“I guess it all kind of makes sense to me now,” I say.
“What does?” he asks.