Fallen (Seven Deadly Sins #2)(53)
Author: Erin McCarthy

A sad ending indeed to a sad life.

One questions how many women like Miss Faye wander our city, at the mercy of fate and fortune, weary from the fight to subsist.

It would seem the murder of Anne Donovan provides no answers, only questions.

Gabriel was reaching in the hall closet for a towel when he heard a knock on the door. For a flash of a second, he thought it was another demon. A female. Then he dismissed the idea, not sure why he had even thought it was. He couldn’t feel any energy, only the warmth of a human being outside his door. Definitely a woman though.

Rapping on the bathroom door, Gabriel waited for Sara’s “come in” impatiently. He wanted to dispense with whoever was standing outside the door so he could go back to Sara. Finish what they had started. What Sara had started. What he wanted to finish, regardless of the consequences.

He quickly opened the door and tossed the towel on the floor, unable to prevent himself from glancing inside. She was still behind the shower curtain and he couldn’t see her at all, which was probably a good thing. “There’s someone at the front door. I’m going to answer it. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

She laughed. “Where would I go? I’m naked and wet.” Just what he didn’t need to hear. And he decided not to mention that he had brought her a towel. “Be right back.”

The minute he opened the door, he regretted it. It was the girl from the po’boy shop. The girl who Sara said had stopped by earlier. He’d already forgotten her name, yet she was standing on his doorstep, big, wet tears in her eyes and her arms crossed tightly on her chest. She had a giant army green purse over her shoulder, diagonally so that she didn’t have to hold it, yet she was still clutching it in front of her.

This was going to take tact. Something he wasn’t all that great at. “Hey, this is a, uh, surprise. How are you?” he asked, hoping to feel out exactly why she was there.

“How do you think I am?” she asked, her voice high and shrill. “I’m awful. I’m sucky. You’re just standing there looking at me all politely and you have a woman living with you. I’m in love with you and you have a woman living with you.”

Not knowing where to go with that, Gabriel shook his head, keeping his voice even and, he hoped, soothing. “I’m not sure why that would matter to you. You and I . . . we said hello a few times. We didn’t have a relationship beyond that.”

“Yes, we did.” Her voice was trembling now. “It was there, in the way you looked at me, in the way you touched me. And I felt it. When I met you, I knew that you were it for me. I met you and that was it, do you know what I mean?”

Gabriel felt absolutely awful. He couldn’t even remember her name, and she was declaring that her life had altered when meeting him. It was a burden he despised, one that he resented, loathed, felt the injustice of over and over. Why should someone else be punished for his sins?

There was no answer, only the echo of the question in his head, and the feeling that there was something he was missing, something he was supposed to know, to learn, to solve. An end.

“I do know what you mean, and that’s really flattering, but I’m not worth it, honestly. I don’t deserve these feelings you have for me.” Gabriel wanted to touch her, to reassure her, but that would be a mistake. That would only encourage her.

She was weeping now, her nose red and dripping, tears streaming down her face. Swiping at her cheeks with the canvas of her purse, she said, “Don’t do that. Please, God, don’t do that.”

“Do what?” he asked, wishing he knew how to free her, how to just make it all go away.

Of course, he knew how to create the illusion of making it go away. That was what absinthe and opium could achieve. The modern version of heroin would work just as well if not better. But that would only accomplish oblivion for him, not her. It wouldn’t fix anything. And he would hate himself even more than he did standing there watching her sob, pathetic and irrational.

“Look at me like that. With pity. I don’t want your pity. I want your love.”

He didn’t know how to erase the pity from his eyes, from his face, from his soul, when he did feel it. Pity for her that she had fallen victim, that she was suffering. “I don’t have any love to give.”

Maybe that was true. Maybe that was why he stayed this way, year after year. Maybe that was why he could never return. He hadn’t loved, enough or well. Hadn’t loved God, himself, Anne. Maybe he didn’t even know what love was.

But he did know he wanted to reach out to this girl, wrap her in his arms and tell her he was sorry for her pain, sorry he had stumbled across her path, ripped her out of normalcy and into agony.

“Gabriel, is everything okay?”

Damn. He turned and saw Sara standing in the living room in her tank top and skirt, no bra, toweling her wet hair dry.

Before he could respond, she glanced around him and saw the girl in the door.

“Rochelle? What are you doing here?”

Rochelle. That was her name. How ironic that Sara remembered when he didn’t. “Sara, just give Rochelle and me a minute.” He didn’t think it was a good idea for Sara to be involved, for Rochelle to be further humiliated.

But when he turned back to face the girl, he caught a glimpse of shock and horror on her face before she sobbed and ran, her pace so fast Gabriel was afraid she was going to trip and fall down the narrow stairs.

“Damn.” He said to Sara over his shoulder, “Stay here. I need to talk to her. I can’t let her leave like that.”

“Gabriel, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

But he was already heading down the stairs. This was his fault. He needed to fix it. He didn’t know how, but he had to try.

When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he saw that Rochelle had stopped in the passage to the street, bent over her purse.

“Rochelle, I’m really sorry if I’ve hurt you, but I had no idea you felt this way about—”

Gabriel forgot what he had been trying to say when Rochelle turned, her big dark eyes wide and glazed with shock, pain, misery. Something fell out of her hand, clattering on the bricks, and he realized it was metal, long and narrow, with a straight edge. A switchblade. Her wrists and palms were covered in blood as she held them out to him, eyes beseeching, purse falling slack against her thigh.

It was almost impossible to process, to believe what he was seeing. Her pale fingers raised up, the vivid red of the blood streaming across them, back down her wrists, the jagged wounds brutal and desperate, the crimson stain pouring over the swarm of butterfly tattoos on her young, delicate skin.