Gabriel's Inferno (Gabriel's Inferno #1)(182)
“I didn’t see her again for a long time. I assumed she’d had the abortion. I didn’t even bother to find out, that’s how f**ked up I was. A couple of months later, I stumbled into the kitchen one morning and found an ultrasound snapshot on my refrigerator. With a note.”
He slumped back in his chair and placed his head in his hands. “She wrote, ‘This is your daughter, Maia. Isn’t she beautiful?’” Gabriel’s words were half strangled by the sob that escaped from his chest.
“I could see the outline of her little head and nose, her tiny arms and legs. Little hands and little feet. She was beautiful. This beautiful, fragile little baby. My little girl. Maia.” He swallowed another sob. “I didn’t know. It wasn’t real. She wasn’t real until I saw her picture and…” Gabriel was crying.
Julia saw tears roll down his cheeks, and her heart ached. As her own eyes filled with tears she moved to go to him, but he raised a hand to stop her.
“I told Paulina I’d help with the baby. Of course, I was broke. I’d spent all my money on drugs and had already run up a tab with my dealer.
Paulina knew that and somehow she still wanted me. We got back together, and she’d read on my couch while I wrote my dissertation. She stayed away from the drugs and tried to take care of herself and the baby. I tried to quit, but I couldn’t.”
He pulled his head up to look over at Julia. “Do you want to hear the rest? Or are you ready to leave now?”
She didn’t hesitate. She walked over to him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “Of course I want to hear the rest.”
He clung to her tightly, but only for a moment before he pushed her away and wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand. She stood to one side awkwardly while he continued his confession.
“Paulina’s parents lived in Minnesota. They weren’t wealthy, but they would send her money. Grace used to send me money too, whenever I called her. Somehow we were able to stay afloat. Or at least, delay the inevitable.
But I used most of the money for drugs.” He laughed darkly. “What kind of man takes money away from a pregnant woman and wastes it on cocaine?”
He quickly continued. “One night in September, I went on a bender. I was gone for a couple of days, and when I finally came home I collapsed on the sofa. I didn’t even make it to the bedroom. I woke up the next morning completely hungover. I stumbled down the hall and saw blood on the floor.”
Gabriel covered his eyes with his palms, as if he were trying to blot out the vision. Julia found herself holding her breath as she waited for his next revelation.
“I followed the trail and found Paulina lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood. I tried to find her pulse, but I couldn’t. I thought she was dead.” He was silent for a few minutes.
“If I’d checked on her when I got home, I could have called an ambulance. But I didn’t. I was high, and I crashed, and I didn’t care about anyone but myself. When they told me she lost the baby, I knew it was my fault. It was a completely preventable death. I might as well have killed her with my own hands.”
He held his hands in front of his face and turned them slowly, as if he were regarding them for the first time. “I am a murderer, Julianne. A drug-addicted murderer.”
She opened her mouth to contradict him, but he quickly cut her off.
“Paulina spent weeks in the hospital, first with physical problems, then with depression. I had to take a leave of absence from Harvard because I was too drugged up or drunk to work. I owed thousands of dol ars to some dangerous people and had no way of coming up with the money.
Paulina tried to kill herself in the hospital, so I wanted to check her into a private mental health facility, somewhere where they would be gentle with her. When I called her parents begging them to help, they told me I was a disgrace. That I needed to marry her, then they’d help us.”
He paused. “I would have done it. But Paulina was too unstable to even discuss it. I made up my mind that I would discharge my duty to her, and then kill myself. That would put an end to all of our problems.”
Gabriel looked up at her with cold, dead eyes. “So you see, Julianne, I am one of the damned. Through my own depraved indifference I caused the death of a child and the permanent destruction of a young woman’s bright future. It would have been better if I had had a millstone hung around my neck and been cast into the sea.”
“It was an accident,” said Julia quietly. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He laughed bitterly. “It wasn’t my fault that I had sex with Paulina and made a baby? It wasn’t my fault that I treated her like a whore, addicted her to drugs, and pressured her to have an abortion? It wasn’t my fault that I stumbled in, high, and didn’t even bother to check to see if she was in my apartment?”
Julia took his hands in hers and grasped them tightly. “Gabriel, listen to me. You contributed to the situation, yes, but it was an accident. If there was so much blood, then something was wrong with the baby. If you hadn’t called the ambulance when you did, Paulina would have died. You saved her.”
He wouldn’t look up, but she moved her hand to his chin and forced him to look at her. “You saved her. You said yourself that you wanted the baby. You didn’t want the baby to die.”
He flinched beneath her touch, but she would not release him. “You are not a murderer. It was just a tragic accident.”