Page 97 of Purchase Power
Lucy finally took a bite. The food was delicious, of course. Bernard always more than earned his employment in Gabriel Manor. “I can handle whatever you want to tell me. I already think you’ve married your stepsister. How can get it much worse than implied incest?”
“See, that’s where your story completely unravels. I can’t fault you, based on the few tidbits you were probably able to find. Much of it was kept away from the actual courts, but some things leaked out, especially with the old staff who used to work here when I was a child. We had to bribe them into silence. For my sister’s sake.”
Lucy hesitated before taking another bite of food. “What happened to your sister?”
Noah drank much of his wine before answering. “Regardless of what privileges you may see in my house, my sister in particular had a brutal childhood.” His finger tapped the stem of his wineglass, lips pursed and head slowly shaking. “She stopped mentally developing around the age of eight. Well, that’s not quite right. It’s more difficult than that. It’s like she’sawareof being older, but her brain has never quite caught up with her body. She knows how old she is. She knows how other adults her age usually act. She simply… doesn’t do it herself. While women her age are clubbing, working, and going to college, she’s still playing with dolls and having tea parties with stuffed animals. Or playing chess and drawing. Those are her favorite hobbies. I often play chess with her.”
Noah looked to the prepared chess board in the living area of his master suite. Lucy had noticed it before, of course, but never imagined him playing with his sister. “I see. Does she have some genetic thing? A head injury? What happened?”
“As far as I know, she was a healthy kid before my mother married Ronald Gray.”
Although Noah didn’t spit that name onto his plate, the indignation was still there.So, it does have to do with his stepfather.He seemed to be the biggest piece of the Gabriel puzzle, but Lucy had never quite figured out how.
“You assumed Stacey was my stepsister for some reason. What article did you find that you led you to that conclusion?”
Lucy told him about the lifestyle parenting article his mother and stepfather gave, and how Ronald spoke of Stacey as if she were his own flesh and blood. “Not weird when stepparents are concerned, I guess,” she said, “but he didn’t talk about you the same way. So I assumed she was only your sister by marriage.”
Noah downed the rest of his wine before getting up. He asked Lucy if she wanted a shot of liquor. When she declined, he poured himself a shot of whiskey and returned to the table. “You sure?” he asked. “Because you might need a little liquoring up for this.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
Noah downed his shot and stabbed his food with a fork. “My mother remarried quickly after my father left. Even then, I thought it was strange that she had already met a man willing to marry her. Guess I was cynical enough even back then, but I thought he wanted our money. Later, I found out he was almost as rich on his own, but that didn’t make me feel any better. Maybe he wanted more money. I mean, my mother was a lovely woman when she was younger, but unless she was having an affair with Gray before the separation, the timing was suspect. I never shook the feeling that he wanted something from us.”
He looked at Lucy as if waiting for her to figure it out on her own, but she had vowed to not say a damn thing unless he asked her a direct question. After all, she had already proven incapable of figuring shit out on her own. She might misconstrue his precious facts again.
“So, to catch you up, Stacey is my mother’s daughter, and she is the way she is because of severe trauma she suffered as a young child.”
He kept staring at Lucy. Something didn’t sit right in her stomach, but she ate, anyway.
“Stacey and I didn’t always have a strong relationship.” Noah tapped his fork against his plate. “She’s a few years younger than me, so a clingy little sister cramped my style with my friends. I guess that’s why I didn’t notice anything until it was too late. After all, our stepfather was nice enough to me… he even took an interest in my equestrian pursuits, you know… but he wasn’tinterestedin me.” He paused again. “He made sure to tell me multiple times that he wasn’t gay.”
Lucy struggled to swallow her next bite.Stacey seems like a sweet girl for suffering whatever she did.It was like her brain didn’t want to admit it was smart enough to catch Noah’s drift. Doing so meant losing her appetite. There was enough sadness and pain in the world. Why think about the one thing all of humanity could agree was beyond the pale?
“Lucy…”
“I get it.” She dropped her utensils and took a deep breath. “Your stepfather was the lowest scum on the earth.”
Noah sighed, the weight of the world on his shoulders. Lucy had never seen him so deflated before. Not even when she was spurning his advances and insinuating it was over between them. “The lowest of the low. Now I know he married my mother so quickly because she had a little girl. And in a big house like this, it’s easy to keep secrets.”
“But…” Lucy sucked in her lip, biting back the bile gurgling in her stomach.That poor girl. The poor, poor girl.“Didn’t someone figure it out?”
“Yes.” Noah drew in a deep breath. “I did.”
Lucy was left speechless. How old would Noah have been at the time? Eleven? Twelve?
“It started when she was five. Possibly four. I remember walking in on it when I was almost in middle school. Now I think he did it on purpose. That demon never touched me, but he didn’t mind having me know about it.”
“Jesus…”
“You have to understand, my stepfather was a charming man, even to a jaded kid like me. It was no wonder my mom was so in love with him after the dead car battery that is my father. He also played with us a lot. When he wasn’t taking me to the tracks and throwing me crazy birthday parties, he was building a giant play structure in the yard for my sister and her friends. I mean, he knew what he was doing with us in private was wrong, but I think in his own twisted head, he really… loved children. And my mom saw only the part of it she wanted to see.”
“Noah, I…”
“No. Let me finish. Please.” Noah tossed his napkin onto the table and pushed back his seat. He’d finish, but he’d do it while standing in front of the window, staring down the sun. “My father was in Europe. My mother wore the rose-colored glasses of a woman who wanted to believe she had the perfect life. Ever since my father fucked off with our last nanny, we never had another. I’m sure some of the staff knew about it, but with all of the money flowing through this house, they were bought off to not say anything. I don’t know how many times Stacey cried and they looked away.”
This is crazy. This has to be a way to get back at me…Yet Lucy didn’t know why he would jump to something like this. It wasn’t like the man she knew. The man standing rigid, hands behind his back and disgust on his face.A face I’ve kissed.
“Candace was the first adult to find out. She was ‘just’ a maid back then. No seniority. But she was one day assigned to my sister’s room when the usual maid was out sick. She saw the bruises and the blood when helping Stacey change for bed. I guess Gray had been by that day.”
