Page 17 of The Pretender

Maybe to provide comfort or to stop his memories from that day from squeaking through, he reached down and lifted her legs. Balanced them on his lap and propped her calves up on his knees. She didn’t squirm or shift. She settled in, leaning her body against his.

He rested his hand on her legs. Not really holding them there, more like hoping she’d find the gesture soothing. That wouldn’t ease his guilt but it might ease her suffering. “Tell me.”

“I don’t even know you.” But she sounded resigned not angry.

“I’m thinking that might make it easier.” He gave in to the urge to really touch her then. His fingers slipped through her hair and skimmed her cool cheek.

It took another full minute before she spoke. In the silence, he used his foot to send the swing into a gentle back and forth. Ignored the cold slicing through him.

“She was my baby sister. This beautiful, amazing, sweet person with an air of innocence. My parents coddled her, in general, then went into hyperspeed after what happened with me. The behavior stuck Tabitha in this odd state of arrested social development.”

That was the part people whispered about, but no one seemed to know the extent of her issues. Now he had an idea. “Was she afraid of people?”

“That’s just it, no. But they had to be here, on her turf. She got nervous in crowds and hated gossip. Her way of dealing was to hide from it. She craved this insular life on the island, attached to her laptop doing true crime research.”

He’d never heard that fact before. “Wait, what kind of—”

“Losing her...” Gabby’s face crumpled but she quickly got it under control before any tears fell. “At first I felt this screaming pain. It echoed in my head all the time, dragged me down, swamped me in migraines and made it impossible to get out of bed.” She shook her head. “Now I don’t feel anything. Literally, there is nothing left inside. It’s this blank space. Dark and thick and suffocating in its stillness.”

He’d never battled depression but he’d fought off nothingness. Years ago, watching his mother go and listening to his father’s rampage. His loss didn’t compare to Gabby’s. He actually had no idea how she managed at all. He could barely handle what he’d seen that day on the island and he’d been emotionally detached. But she lived it, every second of it, alone.

He had Wren and the other guys. Those few friends scattered here and there. She had this trail behind her and in front of her, and neither seemed to lead anywhere.

“You need time.” It was an empty platitude, but Harris thought it held a ring of truth. Time didn’t heal but distance did make some things tolerable. Maybe that was as good as it got for some people.

“To what?”

It was a damn good question. One he didn’t really know how to answer, but he tried anyway. “Deal with it? Grieve? Figure out how to move forward even though your brain screams for you to stop? I’m not even sure, but it seems to me not that many months have passed. What little time you’ve had has been bound up with accusations and fighting your uncle and the press.”

She balanced her head against the back of the swing. “Why can I talk with you about this when I can’t talk to my friends... the few I have left?”

“We’re not trying to impress each other or look the best we can.” Which was weird. He was wildly attracted to her, felt this odd sense of protectiveness whenever he saw her. At least one of those usually led him to turn on the charm. It was second nature to him. But with her, he wanted to throw off the costume and just be. “I’m guessing you don’t care what I think of you.”

“It’s part of the numbness. I no longer see the stares or hear the whispers. I walk through life and everything around me blends into white noise.” She skimmed the back of her hand down his arm.

“Sounds like a solid mental health self-defense strategy.”

Her hand dropped to the bench between them. “I assume most people think I’m a killer.”

Almost everyone he knew fell into that category. People who’d never met her and relied only on news reports. People who didn’t hear her scream that night months ago. “I don’t.”

She stared at him, unblinking. “You don’t believe the hype?”

He toyed with underplaying his response. But this close he could smell the scent of flowers in her hair and on her skin. Hear the small tremor in her voice as she talked about who she was now and the beloved sister she’d lost.

The truth. She deserved the truth, at least about this. “I don’t think someone who is this paralyzed with pain could be a killer.”

This time when she lowered her head she rested it on his shoulder. “My uncle thinks I’m struggling with guilt.”

“Your uncle’s kind of an ass.”

“Oh, he’s definitely that. Always was.”

“You didn’t get along with him before?” This part intrigued Harris. He’d been raised in a modest house with very little in the way of possessions. His parents fought and when the police came for his mother the world exploded.

Even though he pretended to run in their circles and had amassed a fortune of his own, Harris really had no idea how rich people were supposed to act. His friends had accumulated wealth but none of them acted like it, outside of living in alarm-controlled houses.

“He thought Tabitha and I were spoiled. He and his wife couldn’t have kids, so he spent a lot of time telling my parents how to raise us.” She sighed. “He was the elder brother, so my dad listened. Listened then ignored.”

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