Page 51 of Deliver Me

“He certainly tried.”

Amy nodded, tapping her finger against her chin. “Mrs. Townsend, how would you describe your relationship with Gabriel during this time?”

Brittany hesitated, biting her lip. “He was protective of all of us, and I gravitated to him when I arrived. I guess I would say he was my boyfriend, or the closest that any of us could come to that kind of relationship in a place like that.”

“And was your relationship with him sexual?” Brittany winced at the question and Amy hurried to add, “I’m sorry, I have to ask.”

Brittany looked down at her hands. “Yes, it was. He would sneak out of his room whenever he could to come and find me. I loved him,” she said, shrugging slightly and glancing up at him before quickly looking down at her hands.

Mia looked at Gabriel, at the single tear that was sliding down his cheek, and then away. She knew the story already but seeing them relive it together made her an intruder in their private grief.

“Can you tell us why you left Richard’s school, Mrs. Townsend?”

“I tried to kill myself so my parents finally believed me when I said I would rather die than stay there.”

“Why would you do that, Mrs. Townsend? Did something happen at Richard’s to drive you to such an extreme method of escape?”

“I was pregnant,” Brittany said quietly, looking down so that they could barely hear her. “Richard forced me to get an abortion. I don’t know where he found the doctors, but I never even left the school. They came to me, and I don’t think either of them ever even looked at me.”

Amy stopped pacing, addressing Brittany directly but with great tenderness. “Was the child Gabriel’s?”

“I believe so,” Brittany said, nodding her head as she glanced up at Amy. “He had just found out and he was … He was so excited to be a father, even though we were too young and living in that awful place.”

Amy shook her head, resting her hand on the banister beside Brittany as she spoke. “Richard was a very religious man. Did he tell you why he would do something that would have been so against his faith?”

“He didn’t think Gabriel was the father,” Brittany explained. “He thought Michael might have been the father because he made us … well, you know? To make Michael like having sex with girls.”

“He forced you to be physically intimate with Mr. Lansing in an attempt to cure him of homosexuality and you believe Richard was afraid that the baby would be proof of that abuse?”

Mia looked at Gabriel in surprise. He hadn’t told her that he might not have been the father of Brittany’s baby and she realized now how much distance Michael and Brittany had put between themselves, the way that they hadn’t spoken that morning even though they had known each other so long ago.

“Yes,” Brittany confirmed, “I believe Richard was afraid that DNA could prove the child was Michael’s and that it could support our stories if we ever came forward with allegations of abuse. Although, I suppose that even if the child had been Gabriel’s, it would have looked bad for the school. If any of the other parents found out that I got pregnant while I was staying with him, it would have damaged his reputation.”

“What did Gabriel do when he found out what Richard had done?”

“He was angry, worse than I had ever seen. I was angry, too, and hurt that Gabriel had let it happen. I know it wasn’t his fault but back then … We argued, and I was so mad that he hadn’t protected me that I told him that I would never forgive him.”

“And then what happened?”

“He confronted Richard and when Richard denied it, Gabriel attacked him. There was a lot of shouting, things breaking … and then Gabriel was gone. He never came back and the next time any of us even knew where he was, it was when he saw him on the news after, well, you know.”

Amy nodded. “After his father’s death.”

“Yes, after that.” Brittany turned to face Judge Turner, her eyes clear and earnest. “I tried to kill myself to get away from that place and if my parents had tried to send me back there … I would be the one sitting in a prison cell today. I would’ve done anything to not have to go back.”

Chapter Twenty-One

The court heard three more witnesses after they had taken their break for lunch, the ones that had lived with Gabriel after he had run from Richard and found his way to Seth. They all went by as barely more than blur in Mia’s mind. She already knew he’d run from one kind of monster to another, but Gabriel had been brief on the details. He’d described his time spent with Richard with anger, but his time with Seth had been cloaked in shame. She hadn’t pressed him, knowing the overall picture had been enough, but the story that spilled from the mouths of the witnesses was worse than anything she’d imagined. It was an ugly truth that left them all reeling.

Vincent Russel was the first on the stand and he was tense as Amy approached him with an easy smile, walked him through the pleasantries, and then began. “Do you remember when Gabriel first came to Seth?”

“Yeah.” His face was impassive, as he brushed blond hair away from his face. “Seth found him living on the streets, just like the rest of us.”

“The rest of you?” Amy coaxed. “Who was that, exactly?”

“Seth had a whole house full of kids. Runaways mostly.”

“I see,” Amy said, tapping her finger on her chin as she appeared to contemplate his response. “You all lived in this house?”

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