Gabrielle

by Lucy Kevin

  *

  “You never told me how you and Dylan became friends at school. I would like to hear the story,” was what my grandmother asked when I went inside to help clean up. Not He’s a lovely boy or Don’t worry, honey, I know how much he means to you, and we’ll all be more relaxed next time.

  “On his first day at school we played piano together in one of the practice rooms,” I said bluntly.

  She raised a delicate eyebrow. “Alone?”

  “Yes. And the rooms are pretty small,” I said, digging my heels in harder.

  She wasn’t supposed to judge him.

  But he had been right: She had.

  “I know you think I’m being judgmental,” she began.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I’m sure he’s a very nice person—”

  “He is,” I said, cutting her off again.

  “Let me finish, ma petite,” she commanded softly. “I can see the attraction. He is very good-looking. Very mysterious. I once knew a man like that and he was like a drug. I couldn’t get enough of him, even when I knew he was bad for me.”

  I worked to keep my face expressionless even as I wondered, Have you been watching us outside?

  “You’re just mad that my being with him means I can’t be a courtesan,” I accused her.

  “That is incorrect, Gabrielle.”

  She rarely called me anything but ma petite. Which meant she was beyond pissed.

  But so was I.

  We were evenly matched.

  “I want the best possible life for you. Happiness. Great success. Bountiful wealth. And only the truest, purest love.”

  “And you think Bradley can give me that if he’s my protector, don’t you?”

  “I think you and Bradley have a great deal in common. Similar upbringings. A shared love of music. And you have a physical connection as well. I saw that with my own eyes yesterday.”

  I pressed my lips together. Since I couldn’t deny it without lying, I couldn’t say anything at all.

  “I have a connection with Dylan too. A really big one.”

  “Yes,” she conceded. “I can see that you do.” But she obviously wasn’t happy about it.

  I guess I’d always thought that when I finally fell for a guy, I’d be able to talk to my grandmother about it. To share my excitement. To cry on her shoulder if I needed to.

  Instead, we were standing on opposite sides of a sharp metal fence, unable to give an inch to each other without the chance of getting cut and bleeding.

  *

  I could have called Missy to talk about things some more, but I already knew what she thought: That it was cool and exciting to have two guys possibly falling for me. She found it all romantic—not just the triangle I suddenly found myself in with Dylan and Bradley, but even my courtesan legacy.

  I couldn’t call Dylan to talk, not when I knew he was already upset about this afternoon.

  And I definitely couldn’t call Bradley. He’d be understanding. And way too easy to talk to about everything. I couldn’t allow myself to be tempted by him given the facts: He could never be there for me in any way that I really needed him to be. I wasn’t looking to get married at eighteen or anything, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know better than to fall for a guy who could never even marry me “one day .”

  Without even my grandmother to talk to—it hurt so much, more than anything else, really

  —I did the only thing I could. I yanked open my bedroom window and let the wind blow inside and over me. If only it could blow away everything that was hurting, if only it could arrange everything back into the neat, straight little lines they had been in before I met Dylan and Bradley…and heard about the curse. Yet again, it was me and my piano. I put my headphones on and started to play.

  It didn’t take long for the words to come.

  I have been lost, but I’m wanting to be found

  And I have looked everywhere, but the truth doesn’t make a sound Still the wind it blows by me …

  Honestly, I didn’t realize I was crying until a tear dropped onto middle C and my finger slipped across it.

  I hated feeling so weak, hated the girl inside who didn’t seem to know which way was up anymore.

  I did know, damn it!

  As a sharp breeze blew my hair back from my shoulders, I repeated the final line of the first verse: Still the wind it blows by me, saying …

  There’s no one stopping me but me

  And there’s no one in my way

  And I am here to do what I can

  There. I’d admitted it. I was confused about Dylan, about Bradley, about my tense post-tea conversation with my grandmother, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t find my way out if I tried really hard.

  It should have helped. It should have made a difference. And yet, my tears still came.

  There wasn’t a single part of me that wanted to write the second verse, that wanted to sing the words that were inside me, but when the wind blew my bedroom door shut, I knew I couldn’t just sit there and watch it anymore.

  I needed to do something.

  Finishing this song was something.

  I have cried just like this so many times before

  Every time I just sat there and watched the door slam And these big lies have been holding me down

  But now there’s …

  There’s no one stopping me but me

  And there’s no one in my way

  And I am here to do what I can

  I am strong

  Though it’s not always clear to me

  Why I do what I do

  I will let my spirit shine through this time

  And there’s no one stopping me but me

  And there’s no one in my way

  And I am here to do what I can

  Just as they had in the song I’d written a week ago, the words that met the music I was making morphed back and forth from dark to light.

  It was almost as if my musical subconscious was trying to clear a landing path for me.

  I have been lost, but I’m wanting to be found

  I have looked everywhere, still the truth doesn’t make a sound But now there’s …

  No one stopping me but me

  And there’s no one in my way

  And I am here now

  And I am here still

  And I am here to do what I can

  What I can

  I sat back after finishing the song, feeling as if I’d just sprinted around my school’s track.

  But regardless of how hard I’d tried to find my way through the song, I hadn’t.

  I was just as lost. But determined, too.

  More determined than ever to figure things out.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnJGP4mkNwY

  http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/what-i-can/id427761572

  WHAT I CAN by Gabrielle LeGrande / Lucy Kevin © 2011

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was easy to find out where my father had lived and whom he had lived with.

  Shockingly easy. As in, how could I have not come by here before?

  I kept trying to remind myself, however, that there had been no reason before. I had thought my father was a single, unattached man who had fallen in love with my mother.

  Somewhere between the ages of five and seventeen, I had assumed that they were engaged to be married on the day he died. That they’d been slow to the altar, but it had definitely been in the plan.

  Why, I wondered now, had I thought that? Was it something my grandmother had told me when I was little girl? Or was it simply that any little girl playing dress-up assumes that becoming an adult means wedding dresses and veils?

  One thing was absolutely certain: Never in the past twelve years would it have occurred to me that my father had been married to someone else while he was with my mother.

  Or that one day I’d be knocking on his widow’s door.

  Now, as Bradley and I stood outside the woman’s building, his concern was a palpable thing
. I didn’t have to look at him to see that he was worried about me.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t do a thing to assuage his concerns. Because I was worried, too.

  I couldn’t believe I was about to meet with the woman who had supposedly been married to my father. On the one hand, I desperately wanted it to be a lie so that my mother and father wouldn’t actually have been a part of the courtesan/protector world. But on the other, a part of me wanted it all to be true so that I could ask my questions—and hopefully get answers—not only about my father, but about why the three of them had set this arrangement up…and if this woman had known about me all along.

  “Don’t be nervous,” Bradley said as he stood beside me. “Whatever happens in there today, whatever she says, you’re going to be okay.”

  I was so glad he was here with me. If it were just me, I would have already turned around, would have tried to block the whole thing out for as long as I possibly could.

  It was why I’d asked him to come in the first place. Because I knew I needed support if I was going to try and be brave and get some answers.

  I couldn’t possibly ask my grandmother to come. She didn’t know I was going on this quest. And of course, I couldn’t possibly have asked Dylan to come with me.

  I couldn’t believe I had ever thought to dislike Bradley, that I had been wary of him.

  Of course, I couldn’t help but constantly compare Dylan and Bradley. After all, apart from my grandmother and Missy, they were the two people I was spending all my time with, both in person and in my head.

  They both had their pluses. Dylan had nothing to do with this crazy world of mine.

  Bradley was helping me deal with some really hard stuff in the crazy world.

  But they both had their minuses, too. I didn’t feel that I could be completely honest with Dylan. And Bradley would never be able to have a normal relationship with a woman.

  I sighed, knowing that right at this moment, I shouldn’t be giving over my mental space to the two guys who were currently making up a very strange triangle with me.

  I had to focus on one thing.

  Mrs. Jude Porter.

  I hadn’t been sure what the etiquette was in this situation. Perhaps I should have called ahead and made an appointment with her, but calling up and saying, Hi, I think your dead husband was my father over the phone was way too weird. Even weirder than just arriving unannounced and surprising her.

  A housekeeper opened the door. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came.

  Bradley smoothly said, “Hello. We were wondering if Mrs. Porter was home?”

  I had been banking on the fact that both Bradley and I looked perfectly angelic and innocent, that there was no way anyone would think we were here to cause trouble.

  “Please wait here,” the woman said, depositing us in an ultramodern living room.

  Everything about the interior of this house was totally different from my own house. It was cold, austere, stark.

  Mrs. Porter came out and she looked exactly like the house. All lines and angles, a bit unnatural. And yet, she was beautiful at the same time, like a really lovely sculpture in a museum that had a Don’t Touch sign next to it.

  “Hello, children. May I help you with something?”

  I shouldn’t have wanted to laugh, but the way she said Hello, children was funny.

  Without even having to look at him, I knew Bradley was wearing that faintly amused look of his.

  And thank God he was. Because right then, nerves hit me hard enough to nearly buckle my knees at the thought of the conversation I was about to have with this stranger. At least with Bradley calm and relaxed at my side, one of us didn’t look like we were going to pass out.

  I tried to think of a way to begin the conversation, but my mind had gone completely blank. That, fortunately, was when Bradley took over.

  “We’re sorry to inconvenience you, but we have a bit of a strange question to ask you.”

  “A strange question?”

  In that moment several things happened. One, Mrs. Porter finally looked at us. And by us, I mean she looked at me. Closely. The second thing that happened was she got this slightly horrified look. Her brow didn’t wrinkle—I didn’t think she’d be able to do that for a few more months, until the injection wore off a bit—but the sentiment of a frown was there all the same.

  A split second later, I saw it in her eyes.

  She recognized me.

  Everything was true.

  “Never mind,” I said quickly, trying to find my way back outside, away from her, out of this terrifyingly cold house.

  Bradley clamped his hands on my shoulders and refused to let me go. “You need to talk to her.”

  I wanted to yell at him, How the hell do you know what I need?

  But the fact was, if anybody on this planet could understand, it was Bradley. He and his siblings had been the byproducts of a business deal, while his father had found “true love” with a courtesan. And now he was being pushed into another marriage deal, one that meant he would have to live out a mirror image of his father’s life.

  “Breathe,” he said softly, his body hiding me from her. “We’ll make it as quick and as painless as it can be, but I think you really need to do this now.”

  By the time Bradley stepped out of my way, Mrs. Porter was perched on the edge of an expensive modern chair, clear and plastic-looking, like the ones in art museums. She wasn’t staring at me anymore. Instead, she was looking at the fibers of the rug at her feet as if they held the secret to life.

  It was so tempting to let Bradley speak for me again. I knew he was happy to do it, and that he would likely put things much more tactfully than I was about to, but I was quickly realizing that there were some things you had to do for yourself.

  No matter how painful.

  “We’re here because I need to ask you some questions about Cameron Ellis Porter.”

  She nodded silently. “Yes. My late husband.”

  There was no easy way to ask the question. “Do you know, did he have a—”

  Oh God, how was I going to say this? What woman wanted to hear that her husband had a mistress?

  “Another woman? You want to know if my late husband was seeing someone else?”

  She sounded shocked, not so much about the mistress part, but more the idea that I was standing there in her living room asking the question.

  “Yes. He did,” she said and my breath caught in my throat, turning to a full-fledged choke when she added, “And you are his daughter, aren’t you?”

  I guess part of me had been hoping there was some mistake. That there was another Cameron Ellis Porter in the city and the one who had been married to this woman had nothing to do with me.

  “You look just like him.”

  I was crumbling to pieces on the inside. And yet, the oddest thing was that I almost felt stronger at the same time.

  Because I knew the truth for sure now.

  And some answers had to come from the truth, didn’t they?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  At this point it seemed natural for both Bradley and I to sit down. If the woman my father had been cheating on hadn’t already thrown us out, she wasn’t going to now.

  “How long have you known?” I asked.

  “Cameron was always very honest.” Her eyes raked over me again. “Even though I might have wished that he were less upfront, it wasn’t his way.”

  Honest.

  What an ironic word for her to use in reference to the man who had cheated on her.

  Maybe, I thought, she was just saying it to try and sugarcoat his behavior on my behalf so that I wouldn’t think my father was a total monster.

  Honesty. That was what I wanted from now on. From everyone. Starting now.

  “You don’t need to say nice things about him because you’re afraid of the way I’ll react. I never knew him. He died—”

  “Before you were born,” she said, finishing my sentence with perfect ac
curacy.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, a little bit surprised by the words coming out of my mouth, but hadn’t she been a victim, too?

  She wiped at the corners of her eyes with perfectly manicured fingertips. I felt terrible that I’d come here and reminded her of how badly she’d been treated.

  By my father. And my mother.

  “I shouldn’t have come. I won’t bother you again,” I promised her as I quickly stood up.

  I was halfway across the room when she said, “It was my fault, too. I never wanted children. Never liked them. Couldn’t stand the thought of losing my figure. I refused to let him into my bed.”

  So many times over the past couple of weeks I’d wanted to cover my ears with my hands.

  Now a virtual stranger was sitting here talking to me about her sex life. It didn’t matter that it was past tense, it was still much more than I wanted to know.

  “I know this is probably all too much for you to take in right now. But you have to know how much Cameron wanted you.”

  It took everything in me to fight back tears. The last thing I wanted to do was stand there and cry in this woman’s living room.

  When I felt that I had it together enough to speak again, I turned around and said, “Thank you for telling me that. I know seeing me, here in your house, must be a total shock.”

  “I wondered if the day would ever come when we would meet. I should have known that it would. Because you’re his daughter.”

  I could feel tears welling again, but before I could let them spill, I had one more question for her. “I know this is a lot to ask, but if you wouldn’t mind, could I come back sometime to ask you more about him?”

  Her unnaturally inexpressive, unlined face almost showed some emotion. “Of course.”

  Minutes later, Bradley and I were back outside. I had no idea how I’d gotten from her living room back out to the sidewalk. He must have shown me the way, every step.

  “It’s true,” I said as he enveloped me in the safety of his arms. “It’s all true.” My tears started falling. “But he wanted me.”

  The father I had never met, this same man who had made my mother be his courtesan, had loved me.

  Bradley held me tight as the tears came. And when I was finally empty, he lightly brushed them away from my cheeks with the pads of his thumbs.