Page 57 of The Pretender

For once he didn’t speak. He didn’t launch into a joke or throw out a sarcastic remark. Didn’t pretend he knew more than he did or try to lie his way through a list of questions. He stood there with his arms hanging loosely at his sides with his face wiped clear of all emotion. No judgment but no pity either.

The quiet waiting worked. She tiptoed into the silence with a simple fact. “She was only twelve.”

Harris nodded, as if willing her to say more. She looked away instead.

With her head down she watched her hands. Saw how red they were from how she twisted them together. She dropped them to her sides and grabbed on to the table. Her palms ached from the harsh grip, but she didn’t let go. This moment called for some pain.

“Even back then, before everything happened, she was really sheltered.” That was an understatement. Their parents’ form of correcting her behavior was not to let Tabitha be a child at all. “My parents thought money corrupted. They had this tremendous life, but it didn’t stop my mom from drinking too much. Didn’t stop me either, and I was sixteen at the time.”

“Sounds like the usual teen stuff.” They were the first words he’d said since he dropped the bombshell that started them down this road.

“Maybe, but when you’re surrounded by all these people with all that money and all that entitlement, you can start to think life owes you something. You figure you can relax and wait to collect the trust fund. I knew so many people like that.” She had been that person. Sure, she went to college, but it was all for show at the beginning. She depended on her parents to give her the means so that herreallife could begin.

When Harris didn’t say anything, she filled in more details. “After my freshman year of college, the year I almost flunked out because I viewed classes as optional, my parents made it clear the majority of their money would go to charity. That I shouldn’t expect a handout. They thought the family tradition of passing wealth down to the next generation was a terrible idea. That it produced limited people.”

Harris made a noise that sounded like an agreement. “They might not be wrong about that.”

“I get that now, but my nineteen-year-old, private-school, vacations-all-over-the-world self was pissed.” She hated the person she was back then. Such a stereotype. Not as bad as some, but not responsible either. “That’s when it happened. The movie I saw and the joking about staging a kidnapping.”

Harris came the whole way into the room. He didn’t stop walking until he was on the couch perpendicular to her with his knee touching hers.

“It really was just talk, but Tabitha heard. She was always around because my parents didn’t really let her go anywhere else.”

“But you could go out and go to college and have parties?” he asked in a soft, coaxing voice.

“Right. See, they made their mistakes with me and were not about to do it with her.” Uncle Stephen had called her the bad seed. Gabby hated to think she was ever that bad. “My father said that pretty often. Uncle Stephen picked up on it and believed I was the problem child in the family, though I really wasn’t. Selfish and entitled, sure. But not someone who caused her parents a lot of grief.”

Harris nodded. “Until the kidnapping.”

“She was trying to help. Her instincts were off.” Gabby was jerked back into that moment, the one where Tabitha admitted what she’d done. On the floor, crying. Begging Gabby not to hate her. “She drew this map of the house and gave up the alarm codes.”

“Oh, Tabitha.” Harris closed his eyes.

“She was twelve and sheltered. She didn’t know. At that age you have stupid crushes on older boys and one of them took advantage of that.” That piece of shit Gordon. To this day Gabby tracked his movements. She hated that he’d married and moved on. He got away with manipulating Tabitha and planning it all. “This guy, the one in charge, flirted with her and told her she was pretty, which she was, but she didn’t really know that because she’d had so little contact outside of the family.”

Harris put his hand on top of hers. She could feel the anger zipping around inside of him. Tension pulled at the corners of his eyes and snapped his shoulders to sharp attention. He didn’t even know Tabitha and he hated hearing that she’d been used. That was who he was. He might think he was only interested in sex—no strings—but the guy reached out. In this case, both physically and emotionally.

“I was tied to a chair and blindfolded. At times they put headphones on me and other times they took them off. I had no idea how much time passed or when it would all end. The pleading didn’t work. Neither did threatening them.” Her voice choked off.

His warm hand closed over hers. The now familiar feel of his thumb rubbing over her hand, caressing her, broke through. She grabbed on to that lifeline.

“I was gone and at some point Tabitha realized it wasn’t a game and I wasn’t playing.”

Harris leaned in closer. “Did she tell your parents?”

“No. She panicked. Shut down. Apparently hid in a closet for days, or that’s the family rumor.” Gabby purposely blocked those details to get through her private hell. She had to be selfish and not take on Tabitha’s guilt and pain, too. “I was gone but by the time I got back she’d changed. She was so quiet.”

Harris made a humming noise as he traced a lazy pattern over her palm. “You figured it out and you protected her.”

Who knew that simple touch could be so reassuring? It was as if his fingers telegraphed his belief in her. The hold took some of the long-festering hurt away.

“Growing up I did the big sister thing and ignored her sometimes and told her to go away other times.”

“But, Gabby. Come on.”

She knew what else he wanted to say. That there was no excuse. But after being told how she’d messed up in the family for so long it was one more fact that gave the accusations credence. In her head she’d failed Tabitha. She hadn’t pushed her parents back or rescued Tabitha from the suffocation. For a long time she looked at the kidnapping as her penance for not living up to everyone’s expectations of who she should be.

“The accusations about me staging the whole thing took hold. The kidnappers hadn’t really thought it through and they fought instead of making the ransom call. They panicked and yelled at each other. When a bunch of them went on a beer run, one let me go. Kept me blindfolded and dropped me on the side of the road, but I was free.”

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