Page 42 of Our Last Resort

Gabriel nods.

“Now can we get out of here?”

He doesn’t reply. Already, he’s folding himself out of his chair. I need to jog to keep up with him. Gabriel, always with his long legs, his six feet, two inches of height, one step for two of my own. I glance at William, who places his phone next to his plate. So smug. So satisfied. He got what he needed.

Gabriel and I move together, out of the dining room, through the hotel, back to the suite.

No need for a discussion. No need to hash out all the possibilities together. I know we’re both wondering the same thing:To be released so quickly—it suggests something went wrong. The cops made a mistake. Overplayed their hand. William didn’t seem worried, just now. If anything, he was righteous. The triumphant confidence of a man who considers himself wronged, and who expects the people in charge to make it up to him.

I take out my laptop.

The equation is simple. Even Gabriel, who’s never excelled at math, has already solved it.

He’s a tabloid owner + he apparently just wriggled his way out of a murder charge + he’s sneaking pictures of us = We’re leaving.

“Eleven okay?”

Gabriel doesn’t need me to explain I’m looking at flights. He gives me a raised thumb, then plops his big, empty backpack onto his bed.

I wait for the flight confirmation to land in my inbox and fill my own suitcase. We work quickly, silently.Goodbye, Ara. Goodbye, dream vacation. Goodbye, plans.

We haven’t talked about the documentary. I haven’t asked Gabriel what he wants to say, or why he’s suddenly decided to sit in front of the cameras.

I’m not even sure what he’s going home to. Gabriel’s life in Seattle is a mystery I haven’t managed to crack. As far as I can tell, he’s given shape to his days like I’ve done to mine. There’s the work he does for Howard, always, first and foremost. Back when I still visited in person, he introduced me to the local hiking scene. Even when his emails got terse, he mentioned books heread, movies he saw—even Titus, the stray cat he took in. That last detail made me smile. We were apart, on our way to estrangement. Nevertheless, our lives found ways to mirror each other.

Still, the quieter Gabriel got, the harder it became for me to picture him doing things—sitting in a park, visiting the Space Needle, finally buying a coffee table instead of the upturned laundry hamper that fulfilled that function during my visits.

But maybe we never needed to talk.

There’s a sixth sense between us. We grew up together, and then we lived together. Our bodies forever crammed into small worlds, cramped spaces.

Sometimes people ask. Not that many get the opportunity, nowadays. But back when I used to date, it came up. I think Annie came close to raising it, once or twice, but she could never find the words. People online, on the other hand, wonder openly.

It’s an expected—if awkward—question, once people realize I spent years of my life pretty much curled up next to a guy to whom I’m not biologically related.

It wouldn’t have been illegal, or even wrong, I guess.

But it was never going to happen.

Few of the children on the compound had siblings, but those who did, knew who they were. For years, I couldn’t figure out why Émile gave them that information. He took so many pains to erase the idea of family from our minds. Then I read a little book calledFlowers in the Attic,and I understood: It was better for everyone if people knew.

Years later, when we finally did the paperwork, when we sent away for birth certificates and Social Security cards and all that good stuff, Gabriel and I got official confirmation: His birth parents and mine were different people.

It was something, seeing their names in writing (mine: Susan and Joseph; Gabriel’s: Patrick and Moira). Parents. What a strange concept. They didn’t seem entirely real, a bit like those very bright frogs whose colors couldn’t possibly have occurred naturally. But they did bring the definitive confirmation that Gabriel and I didn’t share DNA.

For about three days after we got the news, I didn’t know how to move around him; Gabriel didn’t know how to look at me.

Technically, anything was allowed.

But.

That thing between us, it was never nascent love. Never a crush. In my teenage years, when I pondered those things, it was Simon I pictured, not Gabriel. Simon, with his broad shoulders and strong hands. Or Simon’s friend Isaiah, who had the most wonderfully floppy hair and soulful brown eyes. Or Louisa, a girl from my cooking class whose thin hands wrapped themselves decisively around a whisk or a rolling pin, who could cut a whole bowl of apples into slices of identical thinness.

All I’d craved, back when I met Gabriel, was a sibling. That’s what I projected onto him. When all the possibilities opened, that image remained, like the shapes at the back of your eyelids after you stare at the sun.

I wasn’t blind to his physical self. His body meant something to me. Often, it existed as an extension of my own. His breathing meant safety; his hands meant a new world. It was chosen, animal, this thing of ours. It was alive.

And then it died.

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