With Grace.” She wiped his tears away. “I’m sure that Grace and Maia would want you to find love and forgiveness. They would pray for your redemption.
They wouldn’t think that you’re evil.”
“How can you be sure?” he whispered.
“I learned this from you. Canto thirty-two of Dante’s Paradiso describes the special place God has for children. Of such are the kingdom of heaven.
And in Paradise, there is only love and forgiveness. No hatred. No malice.
Only peace.”
He pulled her close and the couple, held one another tightly. Julia could not have imagined Gabriel’s secret. And although she was distressed with the way his melancholy disposition had fashioned his grief, his grief was something she could not deny.
She hadn’t loved a child only to see the child die. So she was moved with compassion for him and an abiding wil to help him recognize his own self-worth and to accept that he was loveable, despite his past sins. Seated on his lap with his tears still dampening her blouse, the picture that was Gabriel Emerson became strikingly clear. In many ways, he was very much a frightened little boy, fearful that no one would forgive him his faults. Or love him in spite of them.
But she would.
“Gabriel, you can’t be comfortable in this chair.”
He nodded against her shoulder.
“Come.” She stood up and took his hand, pulling him to his feet. She led him over to the sofa and encouraged him to sit down, while she flipped the switch for the fireplace.
He kicked off his shoes, and she coaxed him to stretch out lengthwise, resting his head in her lap. She traced his eyebrows and began running her fingers through his uncombed hair. He closed his eyes.
“Where is Paulina now?”
“In Boston. When I received my inheritance, I set up a trust fund for her and bought her an apartment. She has been in and out of rehab a couple of times. But she’s well looked after, and she went back to Harvard part-time a year or two ago.”
“What happened the night she called during our dinner?”
Gabriel gave her a puzzled look before recognition flashed across his face. “I forgot that you heard that call. She’d been drinking and got into a car accident. She was hysterical on the phone, and I thought I was going to have to fly down there. She only calls when she’s in trouble. Or when she wants something.”
“So what happened?”
“I ran back to my apartment, but before I left for the airport, I called my lawyer in Boston. He met her at the hospital and assured me that she wasn’t as badly injured as she led me to believe. But she was charged a day or so later. There was nothing I could do but hire someone to defend her.
She has been pretty good lately, but this happens from time to time.”
Perhaps it was the flickering glow of the fire. Perhaps it was the stress of having revealed his darkest secret. But at that moment Gabriel looked remarkably old and weary for his thirty-something years.
“Do you love her?”
Gabriel shook his head. “I don’t think my feelings count as love, although I feel something for her. She was never familiar to me, much to my shame. But I couldn’t abandon her. Not when her family was so far away and they refused to help. I was the cause of her problems and the possibility that she’ll never have another child.” His voice grew uneven, and he shivered.
“Is that why you decided not to have children?”
“An eye for an eye, remember. When she cried in my arms and told me, I made the decision. I had a hard time convincing a doctor to agree to perform the procedure; they all argued that I was too young and that I would change my mind. But finally, I found someone to do it. Strangely, it comforted me at the time.”
He reached his hand up to caress the curve of Julia’s cheek. “I told her about you. She has always been jealous, but she knows I can’t give her what she wants. Our relationship is — complicated. She will always be part of my life, Julianne. I need you to realize that. That is, if you still…”
She pressed their lips together. “Of course I still love you. You’re supporting her and helping her whenever she gets into trouble. That’s the honorable thing to do.”
“Believe me, Julianne, I am far from honorable.”
“Would you…tell me about your tattoo?”
He sat up so that he could remove his shirt, which he dropped unceremoniously onto the Persian carpet. He reclined on her lap and looked up into her eyes, which radiated acceptance and concern.
“I had it done in Boston after I was released from rehab.”
Julia kissed the dragon once again, very, very gently.
Gabriel inhaled sharply at the feeling of her mouth against his naked flesh.
She moved her hands to stroke his hair, hoping it would comfort him.
“What does the dragon represent?”
“The dragon is me or the drugs or both. The heart is mine, and it’s broken, obviously. Maia will always be in my heart. You probably think it’s horrible — to have such a morbid and ugly thing on my body. Permanently.”
“No, Gabriel, I don’t think that. It’s like…a memorial.”
“Paulina was about five months pregnant when she lost the baby. She was not in her right mind and neither was I, so we didn’t have a funeral.
A couple of years ago I had a headstone erected for Maia in Boston.” He grasped Julia’s hand in his and kissed her palm.
“She isn’t buried there.” His voice was pained.
“She wouldn’t be there, anyway, Gabriel. She’s with Grace now.”
He paused and stared at her as his eyes filled with tears again. “Thank you for that,” he whispered, pressing his lips to her hand once more. “There’s a stone angel on either side of the headstone. I wanted it to be beautiful.”
“I’m sure it’s lovely.”
“You’ve already received part of her memorial.”
She looked puzzled.
“Your bursary. I named it for her — Maia Paulina Emerson.”
Julia wiped a tear that sprang suddenly from her eye. “I’m so sorry I tried to give it back to you. I didn’t know.”
Gabriel reached up and kissed her nose. “I know that, my love. At the time, I wasn’t ready to explain how significant the bursary was. I only wanted you to have it. No one else was worthy.” He kissed her again softly.
“I should tell you that I asked Rachel about it. She had no idea.”
“No one knows about Maia and Paulina except for Richard. And Grace. I was so ashamed of everything. They thought it would be enough for Scott and Rachel to know about the drugs. No one knows about the tattoo, however. You’re the only one.”
She tangled her fingers in his hair, willing him to find peace. “Your Puccini scared me,” she whispered.
“It seemed…fitting.”
She shook her head.
“The way I treated Paulina. She loved me for years, and I couldn’t love her back.” He shrugged awkwardly and shifted his gaze so that his intensity burned into hers. “I would never treat you like a butterfly, like something I’ve captured for my own amusement. I’d never pin you to a card and pull off your wings.”
She shook her head as a pained look crossed her pretty face. “Gabriel, please. I trust you. You are not Puccini’s Pinkerton. I know that.”
In proof of her declaration, she kissed him, moving her mouth in concert with his until she had to pull back to draw breath.
“I don’t deserve you,” he whispered.
“Maybe we don’t deserve each other, but I can choose who I love. And I choose you.”
He frowned as if he didn’t believe her.
“Please let me love you.” Her voice cracked on the last two words, and a stray tear pushed down her cheek.
“As if I could even contemplate living without you.” He drew her to him, the desperate passion of his tortured soul binding the two together.
She met him movement for movement, taking and giving all at once as she leaned over the beautiful man who rested his weary head in her lap.
His mouth found her wrists as he kissed them with wet, open kisses, sucking gently at the delicate place where pale veins were covered by rice-paper skin.
“Forgive me, Julianne, but I need you. My sweet, sweet girl. So much.”
His eyes were a blue fire, and his voice was gravelly.
Before she knew what was happening, he’d repositioned himself so that he was sitting on the couch and she was straddling him. Their upper bodies pressed tightly together, his hands worshipping the gentle sway of her lower back and the curve of her behind through her wool trousers.
In the back of her mind, Julia recalled one of the black-and-white photographs from Gabriel’s bedroom. And in that instant, she recognized its beauty and its passion from a first person perspective. It was want and need and desperation and deep, deep unconditional love now made free through the telling of dark, hidden secrets.
He felt her love in her kiss, her embrace, the way her fingers lightly brushed the back of his neck and the surface of his tattoo, coaxing open-mouthed kisses up and down the lines of his chest. She would give him everything. She would do anything to take away his pain, including offering up herself.
The Sacrifice of Isaac.