Chapter Sixteen
Talon
"Where is she?" I demanded as I crashed through the front door to the chocolate shop.
Skylar looked up at me, startled by my sudden and rather loud entrance.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Don't act like that," I said. "You know exactly what I mean."
"We can't find Gabrielle," Jackson said walking in behind me.
"You can't find her?" Skylar asked.
By the surprised and concerned tone of her voice, I knew that she doesn't know where Gabrielle was either. I let out an angry, exasperated growl and began to pace back and forth in the shop. Skylar had come around from behind the counter and was looking at each of us with expectation in her eyes.
"She left sometime yesterday," Aiden said. "We're hoping that you might know where she went."
"What do you mean she left sometime yesterday?" Skylar asked. "Where did she go? Why did she leave?"
"These would be the questions that we've been asking ourselves" I snapped.
"She didn't do anything wrong," Lucas pointed out. "You don't need to talk to her like that."
"Don't tell me how I should talk to people," I said.
I was furious, but that was only covering up the fear that had started building in my belly the minute I read the note that we had found on the desk in the study. We had been out of town for the day at a business conference that Gabrielle hadn't wanted us to go to. She said that we shouldn't have to travel the weekend after Thanksgiving, that we should be able to take the time off and be at home. We had all apologized to her and told her that we wanted to spend the time with her, but we needed to go to this conference. There were important clients who were going to be there and they expected us. Though we knew that she was upset, we had all left anyway. It was something that we needed to do. But now that we had found the note she had left behind, I hated myself for not listening to her or understanding just how much this was hurting her.
I had called her the night before, wanting to talk to her before she went to bed, but she didn't answer. I figured that she had just been tired and gone to bed early. The midwife had said that the second trimester was going to be easier on her and she wasn't going to feel as sick or as tired, but Gabrielle had seemed worn out in the evenings and I assumed that she was taking the opportunity of an empty house to catch up on some extra rest. It hadn't occurred to me that I should have been worried, or that I should have thought that anything else might be going on. When we got home, though, the house was still and quiet. There was never any staff in the house on Sundays, but the space seemed empty in a way that it hadn't before. I had hoped that she was just out for the day. Maybe she had gone to do some shopping or to visit her parents or her sister. As soon as we went into her bedroom, however, we knew that that wasn't the case. Her closet door was standing open and she hadn't fully closed one of the drawers and her dresser. Almost all of her clothing was missing. The pillow and blanket that she had brought with her the first night that she came to stay with us was also gone. Her makeup and brush were gone from the bathroom. It looked as though she had gathered nearly everything and simply left.
Jackson had been on the phone, trying desperately to call her, when I saw it sitting on the desk in the study. It wasn't until then that I realized that I had been holding on to a fear that she hadn't just walked out of the house, but that someone had taken her. The realization that she had left on her own exploded inside of me and for a brief, selfish moment I couldn't decide which was worse. If she had been taken from us, it would be horrifying, but I would know that I could seek vengeance against someone who tried to claim her from us. I could bring her home and take care of her, make sure that she was alright and comfort her. This, however, wasn't the case if she had just decided to walk out. If she had left, it meant that she didn't want to be there, that she didn't want us to find her and bring her home. It would mean that she was gone.
I wasn't going to accept that. I wasn't going to just take the words of her note and let them be the last thing that passed between us. That wasn't enough. It would never be enough. I would never be able to accept her being gone from my life, but especially not like this. The note had felt cold and distant, something that I would never use to describe Gabrielle. It's a little more than that she had changed her mind and had decided that she didn't want this life and was leaving. There was no explanation. There was no indication of what had happened that had made it so that she would change so incredibly quickly. I couldn't imagine that it was only that we had gone to the conference, but there was a gnawing, digging feeling in the back of my mind that told me that if we hadn't left, she would still be here. This was a time when she needed us, and we had left her at home even though she asked that we didn't. Had she been struggling for weeks and just not told us? Had this been the thing that had pushed her over an edge that we didn't even realize she was standing at?
I needed to find her. I needed to know what had happened that had snapped the bond that I felt that we had been forming. I was scared in a way that I had never experienced, feeling a helplessness that I hadn't felt since the days leading up to my mother's death. I wanted Gabrielle home. I wanted to know that she and our baby were safe. I needed the opportunity to understand what we had done and to make amends for it in any way that we could. I knew that this had gone beyond what any of us had expected when we first began the arrangement. We knew that we were attracted to her, but that was enough then. It wasn't now.
"You really don't know where she is?" Jackson asked.
Skylar shook her head. She looked worried and like she was going through her mind trying to come up with anything that might explain her sister's disappearance, but then her expression changed. She looked at us quizzically.
"Why does it matter to you so much that she left?" she asked. "Where did you find a note from her? Is she supposed to be catering another event for you or something?"
I realized then that Gabrielle still hadn't told her family about us or about the baby. We had interacted with her sister several times over the course of the last few months, and had even met her parents, but she had always been careful to describe us as people who gave her work, and possibly as friends. She told us that she didn't know how to explain to them that she was having our child and that she had given them another explanation. She had promised that she would come clean with them, but apparently she hadn't yet. This bothered me more than I expected that it would. I knew that we hadn't exactly come forward and advertised our relationship to the people around us, but we also hadn't taken any measures to conceal it. I didn't want her to be embarrassed about our relationship or our child, but in that moment I realized that I had never done anything to tell her that. None of us had. None of us had, even for a moment, made sure that she understood how much we valued her.
I looked at my brothers. I could see the same pain and anger in their eyes, but I knew that this wasn't the moment to reveal our relationship to Skylar. We needed to find Gabrielle first, and then we could move on from there.
"We were supposed to meet her," I said, trying to skirt around the questions without outright lying. "She left a note in the house."
The sentence was awkward, but it seemed to assuage Skylar. She nodded.
"I haven't heard from her," she said. "We talked yesterday morning, but she didn't mention anything about leaving."
"How did she sound?" Lucas asked.
"How did she sound?" Skylar repeated, seeming unsure of what he might have meant by the question.
"Yeah," Lucas said. "How did she sound? Was she upset? Angry? Stressed? Did she sound like she was distracted or that she might be planning anything?"
"No," Skylar said. "She actually sounded really happy. She made sure that I was still coming in here today, but didn't sound worried or anything. As a matter of fact, when I said that my youngest had been feeling a little clingy and I was worried that he might be sick, she told me not to worry about it and that if I needed to stay home today, I should. She seemed really breezy and carefree."
"Are you sure?" Aiden asked.
Skylar turned a glare toward him.
"This is my sister," she said. "I would know if there was something wrong with her. Don't you think that if there was something wrong with one of your brothers, you would know?"
"But you have no idea where she might be?" Jackson asked.
"No," Skylar said.
It sounded like this realization was painful to her, like she had been trying to convince herself as much as she had been trying to convince Aiden.
"Will you get in touch with us if you hear from her?" Jackson asked.
Skylar nodded.
"I will."
"Thank you."
We rushed out of the shop and back to the car that we had brought, not having bothered to get the driver to bring us. I got behind the wheel of the car and we headed directly toward the apartment where Gabrielle had lived before she started staying with us. I used the key that she had given me to open the door, hoping that she was there, hoping that she had meant that she was just leaving the house. Maybe she meant that she had changed her mind about living with us. Maybe she meant that she had decided that she wanted to go through the rest of the pregnancy in her own space. I didn't understand why she would have decided that, but I clung to it, telling myself that at least that would mean that she was still close by and we hadn't totally lost her.
As we stepped into the apartment, however, I felt deflated. The apartment was as quiet and still as the house had been, holding the same almost desolate feeling. I knew that even if she had come here after leaving the house, she hadn't been here for long. We walked through the apartment, taking note of everything that was there and anything that wasn't. It seemed that she had taken a few things from here as well, but it was harder to tell. I was hoping that we would find another note from her here, that she would suspect that this is where we would come to look for her and she would leave us something else. By the time that we had made our way through the entire apartment, however, we hadn't found anything.
"Maybe we should check at the Club," Lucas said. "She could have gone there just to get away for a while."
"Why would she do that?" Jackson asked.
"She said that she had changed her mind," Lucas said. "But it doesn't say what she changed it about. She told us that she wasn't angry with us for leaving to go to the conference, but maybe she actually was. Maybe she said that she changed her mind because she realized that she actually was upset with us and that she wouldn't be home waiting for us when we got back."
I hadn't thought of this and when I heard it, I felt a little burst of hope inside me. When we left, Aiden had asked her if she was mad at us. Though she reiterated that she wasn't happy that we were leaving so soon after Thanksgiving for a work trip, even though we had asked if she wanted to come along, she told us that she wasn't mad and that she would be at home waiting for us, happy to welcome us back home. If she had gotten more upset after we left, she could very well have changed her mind and decided that she actually was angry and that she didn't want to wait for us. She could have just stormed off to the Club, wanting some time alone, and was planning on coming back when she had calmed down and figured that she had taught us our lesson.
Feeling much more at ease, we got back into the car and headed for the Club. I was trying to come up with how we should apologize to her, what we should say or do to make it up to her, as we walked around the grounds. The cold weather had driven everybody back inside and soon we realized that she wasn't out there. We went inside and headed directly for the private wing. If she wanted to relax, this is where she would get the most privacy and comfort. She had full access to the family account and I was hoping that we would walk into her bedroom and find her surrounded by ice cream, binge-watching one of the shows that she adored but that made me cringe.
Just as the house and the apartment had been, the wing was empty with no sign that she had been there any time recently. We split up and scoured the rest of the club, beseeching everyone we encountered, hoping that someone had seen her in the restaurant or getting a massage. When we met back up at the front entrance, however, we all confirmed that she wasn't there.
"What do we do now?" Aiden asked.
"Let's go back to the house," Lucas said.
"No," I said. "We need to keep looking for her. We need to find her."
"We have no idea where to look," Jackson said. "Her sister doesn't know where she is, so she's not with family. She isn't anywhere that we can think of. Besides, the note said that she would get in touch with us. I'd rather be there in case she comes home."
I relented and we headed back to the house. My chest was aching and my stomach felt like it was turning itself inside out. We walked inside and immediately dropped onto the furniture in the living room. None of us spoke for several minutes as we all tried to process what was happening. In an instant we had lost Gabrielle and our baby, and it seemed like the future that we had been so hopeful for had just closed in front of us.
"We seriously fucked this up," I finally said.
"We didn't do anything," Aiden argued. "We had to go to the conference. There was nothing that we could do about it. We said that she could come along with us. She decided not to."
"No, but that's the point," Jackson said. "We didn't do anything. It has nothing to do with the conference. She's gone because we didn't do anything. Each of you knows that this isn't just about the baby anymore. Don't you?"
"Of course this is about the baby," Aiden snapped. "That was the agreement. She made a commitment to us and she's trying to back out."
I narrowed my eyes at my youngest brother.
"Why are being like this?" I asked.
"Because I'm pissed," he said. "I'm pissed at her for walking away. I'm pissed at myself for feeling this way. And I'm scared to death that I'm never going to see her again and be able to tell her either one."
He leaned forward and put his head in his hands. I knew exactly what he was feeling because the same emotion was crushing down on me.
"I love her," Jackson admitted. "I don't want this to just be about raising the baby anymore."
"Me neither," Lucas agreed. "I want Gabrielle to be a part of our family. Really part of our family."
"I've always wanted that," Aiden said.
"But have you ever told her that?" Lucas asked.
"None of us have," I snapped. "None of us have ever bothered to tell her that we love her or that we want her to be a part of our lives not just because we're going to be raising a baby together, but because in her we have found everything that we have ever wanted. Now she's gone."
Jackson
"It's been three weeks, Gabrielle. You have to tell us more than that. You can't just say that you've changed your mind."
"Yes, I can," she said.
My hand tightened on the phone and I felt blood rushing to my head.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked. "Why won't you tell us where you are or what you're doing?"
"Because I don't want to. I already told you, I thought about it and decided that that's not the life that I want. I just can't handle it."
"Come home. Come talk to us. We all have things that we want to say to you."
"I'm sorry, Jackson, but I just can't. I really need this time to myself. I hope that you can respect that."
"I can't respect that. You just left without any explanation, without even a thought about what it was going to do to us."
"Not everything is about you all the time. There are other people in this world, and I happen to be one of them. I'm afraid that you don't have any choice but to just let me go."
The words sank heavily into my stomach, falling like a hot rock.
"What about the baby?" I asked.
She paused for a brief moment.
"The baby is fine," she said.
"Healthy?" I asked.
"Yes. Growing a little bigger than average, even."
I gave a chuckle.
"Yeah. We were all pretty big." The mirth slipped away and the desperation came back. "I want to see you. I want to see the baby."
She drew in a breath that sounded like it was filled with the rattle of unspoken emotion.
"I will check in with you again," she said. "And I will let you know when the baby is born."
"We want to see him. He's still our child."
There was a long, tense pause.
"We'll have to come to some sort of arrangement," she said. "I really have to go. I'll call you again soon."
"Gabrielle, wait. Where are you? Are you doing alright? Do you have everything you need?"
"I'm fine. Thank you. I'll talk to you later."
She hung up and with the threat of another long stretch of not hearing from her and then a court battle hanging over my head, I walked back into the house. I took off my coat and handed it to the housekeeper as she walked through the foyer carrying an armful of fresh linens. She and the rest of the staff were scurrying around trying to make sure that they got as much done as possible before the end of the week when their vacations would begin. In their hearts and outside the gates to the Griffin estate, Christmas was starting to glow. Decorations adorned nearly every house, snow had fallen, and people seemed brighter and more cheerful. Once through those gates, however, all festivity came to a stop. There was nothing on our grounds or inside the house that gave any indication that Christmas was coming in less than two weeks. I was glad for the vacation that we gave the staff each year. To them, they looked forward to the time that they would get to spend at home with their families. For me, I just wanted the house to be empty. I didn't want to think about the holiday. I didn't want to pretend that I was happy. So far none of them had mentioned Gabrielle and I was thankful for that. The fewer times I had to talk about it, the better.
"Did you talk to her?" Aiden asked as he came out of the kitchen.
I nodded.
"She still won't tell me where she is."
"Did she say anything else? Did she tell you why she left?"
"No. She just said that she decided that she doesn't want this life anymore."
"And the baby?"
I sighed, feeling fresh pain cut through me.
"She said that she would keep us updated and let us know after she gave birth."
"After? She won't even tell us when she's in labor?"
I shook my head and crossed the foyer to the staircase, wanting to go upstairs to my bedroom and just be alone.
By New Year's Eve I hadn't heard from Gabrielle again. We had tried to call her, but she never picked up. More often than not, the call simply went straight to voicemail. My heart ached every time that I thought about her. I couldn't understand what happened. It didn't make any sense. I had felt like everything had been going so well. All four of us had grown ever closer to Gabrielle over the last year and we were starting to feel strong and bonded, like the family that we had envisioned. For so long we had pretended that this was about raising a child to carry on after us, but it was obvious that that wasn't what it was about anymore. She was embedded in our hearts and there was nothing that we could do to overcome that. There was nothing that I wanted to do. I only wanted her.
She was gone so suddenly that even though it had been more than a month, the pain and shock was still fresh. There were still moments when I expected to see her, to walk into her bedroom and she would be sleeping there, to be able to slip into her bed with her and feel her body mold so sweetly against mine. Every day there was a new reminder that she wasn't there anymore, a reminder that something had shattered, though I didn't know what it was.
That night I stood at the window, watching the faint glow of fireworks far in the distance, and wondered what Gabrielle was doing. I wondered if she was thinking about us or if she ever regretted walking away. I wondered if she was at home or if she was out, surrounded by people, losing herself in them rather than in us. Wherever she was, I wished that I was there with her. I didn't want to begin a new year without her.