Chapter 4 Jessiah #3
I didn’t argue, since I never lied to Eli on principle. “It doesn’t matter if she’s disappointed. What’s important is whether it was the right thing for you not to go to the game today.”
“No idea. At first it was, but then later I wondered if it might have been better to at least try.”
“Don’t give yourself a hard time,” I said. “It’s in the past now. And next time maybe you’ll decide differently.”
Eli sighed. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know why it’s still happening. It was so long ago. I should really be over it by now.”
“There’s no should for this kind of thing, little guy.”
“No? Because it was such an awful trauma?” He snorted and shot me a look. “Other people go through much worse, and they’re fine. Just not me.”
My eyes narrowed, but not at him. “Is that what you really think? Or is it what other people tell you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he mumbled, and went back to drawing in earnest.
It seemed so long ago, the moment it had all begun—and yet, at the same time, it felt like yesterday.
Eli had been nine years old when he was kidnapped.
We still lived in Lower Manhattan back then, and he was being driven home from school when the chauffeur suddenly turned into a side street and stopped.
Several men had dragged Eli out of the car, put a bag over his head, and packed him off to somewhere in Harlem, where he endured almost ten days of constant threats and mistreatment in a pitch-dark cellar before he was eventually found.
I’d never been more scared than the moment we discovered that the car that should have brought Eli home from school had been found abandoned.
Trish and Henry were completely beside themselves and ready to pay any amount of ransom money, but the demand never came.
Even the NYPD were at a loss. Eli’s eventual rescue was solely thanks to a private investigator who was able to track him down through her criminal contacts, but by the time she got to the kidnappers’ hideout, they’d long since cleared out.
Even after Eli was returned safely home, Trish and Henry spared no cost to find the men responsible, but to no avail, and after a year of fruitless investigation, the case was closed, and filed away as unsolved.
To this day, Eli didn’t know who his kidnappers were or why they’d done it, and since then, fear had been his constant companion.
For the first year after it happened, he’d barely wanted to leave the apartment, and he had a panic attack every time he went out in public.
At some point, along with his therapist, Adam and I managed to teach him how to cope with the attacks better, and for a couple of years things seemed okay.
That was why I’d left. But then our mother and Henry got divorced, Adam died just six months later, and Eli fell back into his old habits again.
Whenever he was at school, or outside, or every time he got in a car, he was terrified something else would happen.
We now had a driver who was an ex-marine and so well paid that he could never be bought, but Eli’s trust was broken.
So it was even more important for me to stay in New York City, within his reach.
I was the only person in his life who placed no expectations on him, the only buffer between him and his parents’ ambition.
“What are you drawing?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Oh, it’s just a sketch, something that just came to me.” Eli held the tablet out toward me. I made out a building, easily twenty stories high, with a modern, angular design and staggered sections lined with plants.
“What’s that?” I pointed.
“Vertical greening. I saw it on a building in Australia and thought New York City could use it, too. There’s Central Park, of course, but more plant life would be good for the air quality.”
“Looks really cool.” These kinds of ideas were why my mother was so adamant that Eli should function.
He was kind of a genius. He had a feel for planning and design that was far beyond his years, which was why he was Trish’s hope for the future of the firm.
Adam had been a numbers freak—rational and strategic, just like her—but Eli was an artist, someday maybe even a visionary.
But only if he wasn’t put under pressure.
I could see that, but clearly our mother couldn’t.
“There’s something else I wanted to show you.” Eli scrolled through the files on his tablet. “Just a sec, it’s in here somewhere.”
“Jess?” My mother appeared suddenly in the doorway. “You should change—we have to go in fifteen minutes.” She disappeared again.
“That’s my cue, I guess.” I got up and gave my brother an apologetic look. “I’ll see you next week, little guy. And you can show me your other designs, okay?”
Eli gave a smile and a nod, but it hurt to see the look he gave me—as if he wished I wouldn’t leave him here in the Fortress of Solitude. I felt the weight of it on my chest.
“Jessiah!” Trish called firmly from somewhere down the hall.
I sighed, heading for the door. “Coming already.”
A last, encouraging smile in Eli’s direction, then he picked up his headphones and I pulled the door shut, leaving us both just as alone as we had been before.