Silent Scream by Hooley Maria Rachel; Moeller Stephen

Author:Hooley, Maria Rachel; Moeller, Stephen
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2010-07-06T04:30:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Long after Tammy had vanished, leaving him to battle his demons, Gabriel lay back on the couch and tried not to think about all the things he’d witnessed today. Most of all, he tried not to think about Jessie. But today, of all days, she’d been with him most of the time, hidden in Maddie’s tears, Sam’s anger, and Tammy’s need to understand when even he himself did not.

Some shattered things didn’t ever go back together. Jessie was dead, Sam was broken, and so was he. Perhaps the fractures differed by degrees, but what did that matter? Did it make any of them less damaged, less handicapped by loss?

The grandfather clock chimed eleven, and Gabriel closed his eyes, wishing he could sleep, but when he shut out the world, images of his sister danced across the blackness in pictures as still as she had become all these years. Lifting his arm, he punched the pillow before cradling his head in his palm and shifting his hips, trying to get comfortable.

Although it had been years since Jessie’s death, nights like this suggested no time at all had passed, and he could feel grief tightening his chest, loneliness seizing his body like a winter chill he couldn’t warm away.

He thought of Maddie, sobbing, calmed only by pills and sleep, and he wondered if every night since the attack had been like this for her. She was afraid of him, even when she tried not to be—even when she was safe and beyond the mystery of night and pain, even when he tried so damned hard to be as gentle as he could. Yes, she was afraid of him; he knew that. But what he hadn’t realized until tonight was how afraid he was of her. She made him remember things he wanted to bury forever. Sam wasn’t the only one who knew the ultimate price of love.

He focused on the sound of his heart beating, trying to ease the flow of images flooding his brain—images he’d forgotten. His shoulders, although still aching with tension, relaxed, and he found himself merging toward darkness and the blessed blackness of sleep.

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