Page 50 of Deliver Me

Amy paused, giving him a moment to collect himself as the courtroom sat in silence. They all watched as he paused, his lip trembling as he composed his thoughts.

“And was Gabriel also treated this way?” she said once he seemed to have gathered control of his emotions.

“He was,” Michael said. “But he didn’t get scared like the rest of us. He got angry. Richard preached all the time about our sins and how tainted we were. Really awful stuff, you know? But Gabriel would go without his food or his blankets instead of doing what Richard told him to do, so they got rough with him more than the rest of us.”

“What did Richard tell him to do?”

Michael shrugged helplessly. “Not to sneak food to people that were being punished was the first thing. He brought me a piece of bread back from dinner that first week he was there, and Richard split his lip wide open.”

“What else?”

Another pause, longer this time. “Gabriel was big, even back then he was tall for a kid, so Richard wanted him to help with the rest of us and he wouldn’t do it. We were all mad about how they treated us, we all hated Richard, but Gabriel … Gabriel was stubborn. The more Richard tried to break him the angrier he got.”

“Did Richard ask for his help with anything else?”

“Yeah, he …” a small sob broke from Michael, his breath catching as everyone looked away to give him a moment. “Richard, he thought he could pray the gay away. When that didn’t work, they went with more aggressive methods. Gabriel wouldn’t help with that.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Lansing, but can you explain to us in more detail exactly what happened and what Gabriel saw when he was there with you?”

Michael pressed his palms to his eyes, trying to stop the steady drip of tears. Beside Mia, Brittany was stiff and tense, her nails digging painfully into Mia’s hand. “Um, Richard was … He was convinced that having sex with a woman would fix me and he wanted to intimidate me into doing it.”

“But Gabriel wouldn’t do that?”

“No, he wouldn’t, not even when they hurt him instead.” Michael looked at Amy helplessly. “He came back to the room one night, looking worse than any of us that I ever saw, but he wouldn’t hurt any of us.”

“And Richard was the one who hit you?”

“Sometimes it was him, but most of the time he just liked to stand off to the side quotingscripture,” Michael sneered at the word, like it was contemptible in its very existence, “while his buddies did the dirty work. He had a guy, Charles, and he did most of it. That guy was huge, not even Gabriel stood a chance against him.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lansing,” Amy said, and he visibly tensed as she walked back to her seat, his eyes never looking up from the floor.

Gabriel watched Mr. Price stand to question Micheal and Mia noticed the clenched set of his jaw, the haunted regret in his eyes as Michael had to defend himself against the prosecution's accusations that he was lying for attention. Mia knew him well enough to know he was blaming himself for what the witnesses were going through and she smiled encouragingly at him when he glanced her way even though he wasn't supposed to interact with them while they were in the courtroom.

Amy called Brittany next, and she stood on legs that wobbled, holding onto Mia’s hand until she could stand on her own and make her way to the front. Her steps were slow and measured, a clear reluctance in her stride that was made even more obvious by the pinched look on her face when she turned to face them all.

They waited for her to be sworn in as Mia wrenched her gaze away from the small, terrified woman to Gabriel’s hunched form. He was staring straight ahead, his hand holding the arm of his chair so tightly that she was surprised it hadn’t cracked under the strain. He hadn’t seen Brittany in thirteen years and Mia swallowed her tears and her sudden insecurity as he stared with something close to longing at another woman’s face.

“Good morning, Mrs. Townsend,” Amy began, and Brittany turned away from looking at Gabriel to look at her instead.

“Good morning,” Brittany repeated, her hands twisting and untwisting in her lap.

“You also lived with Gabriel at Richard’s school?”

Brittany’s face twisted into a scowl. “I would agree that it wasn’t a school, but I did live there with Gabriel and Michael.”

“Were you there the whole time that Gabriel was there?”

“Nearly the whole time” Brittany clarified. “I think I got there a few weeks after him.”

Amy nodded again, continuing her pacing. “And what can you tell me about the living conditions while you were there?”

“The same as Michael,” Brittany said, ignoring the tears that slipped down her cheeks. Mia wasn’t certain if they were born from sadness or anger. Her tone had plenty of both. “Richard Miller was a bastard who cared more about the rules in some fucking book than he ever did about any of us.”

Amy’s demeanor remained carefully neutral in the face of her outburst. She waited patiently for Brittany’s body language to relax before she proceeded with her questioning. “Can you tell us about your experiences at Richard’s? About what brought you there?”

“My parents brought me there,” she said with a bitter laugh, swiping at her cheeks in annoyance. “They caught me sneaking out at night, meeting my boyfriend and getting high, and they didn’t like it. Richard told them he could settle me down, so they dropped me off and didn’t even look back.”

“And did he? Settle you down?”

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