Chapter 13
Fai
The moment Sarah gave me that look, I knew whatever she had to say wasn’t good. She was shaking in her boots when Gabriel and I had walked through the door after our hike.
I nodded to her, indicating that I understood and explained to Gabriel I was going to take a shower. It was a plausible excuse. I stunk after hours of hiking and sweating.
“I think I’ll hop in the shower too.” He walked towards the stairs that led to his room and bathroom. “Want to grill tonight? I have some steaks I’ve been meaning to cook up before they go bad.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I forced a smile, the kind that said ‘everything’s fine’ while screaming the opposite to anyone who really knew me. But he didn’t know me well enough to see through it. Not yet.
He smiled back, taking the stairs two at a time. When I heard the door open and close, my face dropped and I walked into mine and Sarah’s room. She followed closely behind me, easing the door shut with a soft click behind us.
I turned to her in a mix of confusion and worry. “What the fuck is going on? Are you okay?”
She sat on the edge of the bed with a sigh. “It’s been quite the morning, and we need to talk about what I learned.”
I sat in the chair, peeling off my sweaty socks and tossing them into my suitcase that was acting as my laundry basket. “You mean your newfound interest in Mormonism?”
She rolled her eyes. “We both know that was my horrendous version of a cover-up. Though, do you know why one would put money in one of their books? Don’t the Mormons pay money to their church leaders?”
I looked at her, completely at a loss.
She caught my expression, her lips pulling up into a small, apologetic smile. “Sorry, not important.”
I shook my head, but a smile peeked through at her ramblings. I peeled off my hoodie, pulling it over my head, and throwing it in with my socks. I went to empty my jean pockets, but my fingers found the sobriety chip and the ring, as they always did.
I left them where they were. The chip wasn't something I wanted to get into with Sarah right now, and the ring even less so.
She didn't need to see another chip, and she certainly didn't need to know I still carried my wedding ring.
Not with a boyfriend in the picture. Though if I was being honest with myself, I wasn't entirely sure why I still had it either.
I just couldn't seem to let go of the gold band.
“I was having a rather boring morning, so I thought I would look around,” Sarah continued, bringing my focus back.
“You mean you were snooping?” I asked with a raised brow.
She waved me off. “Semantics. I was looking around—”
“Snooping,” I interrupted, correcting her.
She shot me a glare and I held my hands up in surrender before motioning her to continue.
“Fine. I was snooping, but I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I was just curious to know Gabriel better,” she explained.
I was grateful she was finally admitting to snooping, but I didn’t like the implications.
“You could just ask him your questions.” I rubbed my hands down my face, contemplating if I could get in a nap before dinner. “He’s very willing to open up. You just need to ask. We talked a lot on the hike—” I tried to explain, but it was her turn to interrupt me.
“Yes, I know, and I usually would never condone snooping, but I found something interesting on his desk.” She explained excitedly, retelling her escapades.
I looked at her, shocked. “You went into his closed office and went through his desk?”
She weighed the question. “It wasn’t locked or anything and he never said we couldn’t go in there, and it wasn’t in his desk. It was on it. It was this notebook. I think he uses it as a diary based on the dated entries. He was talking about you and writing to you, and this was a few months ago—”
“Wait.” I held a hand up, urging her to stop. “Let me get this straight. You went into his closed office, found a diary, opened it, and read it? Is that right?”
Sarah was one of the most well-rounded individuals I had ever met. She didn't do irrational things. This felt both irrational and invasive, and neither of those words fit her.
She seemed to register how it sounded, her eyes going wide. “No, it’s not like that at all. I wasn’t searching for anything. It really was by accident that I found what I did.”
I leaned back in the chair, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes. “Okay… moving on from the practical breaking and entering, why were you reading his journal?”
“Fai, it sounds much worse than it was,” she defended. I gave her an incredulous look and she rolled her eyes. “Will you just listen to me for a moment before you start arguing?”
I took a steadying breath, but nodded in agreement and motioned for her to continue.
“Thank you,” she sighed, sitting higher now that she had a chance to explain.
“I thought I found the private investigator’s report and I really was just reading through it out of curiosity—the thing is, neither Will nor I believe Gabriel actually hired a private investigator.
I think he found you himself and then lied about the PI. ”
She looked at me expectantly, as if she had dropped a bomb of new information—not just a theory based on her quick reading of random documents and, apparently, Gabriel’s diary.
“I’m just going to move on from you reading Gabriel’s diary to Will. Did it explicitly state somewhere that he hadn’t hired a private investigator?”
She shook her head. “Well, no. But—”
“Did it say anywhere that he’s lied to us at any point? Or prove that he’s lied to us?” I interrupted.
Her shoulders slumped, defeated. “No, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t.”
“True,” I agreed. “But it doesn’t mean he did.”
“Fai, I really think something’s off with him,” Sarah argued.
“Hmm… well, let’s think about it?” I said, my tone sarcastic.
“Maybe it’s his brother and his brother’s snooping ex-wife visiting him for the first time after thirty years of only hearing stories about said brother?
I know that would throw me off… wait?” My face dropped, my tone growing serious.
“It did. This situation we’re in is insane, Sarah.
Of course he’s going to be a little off.
I bet he’s having just as hard a time processing this as I am. ”
She looked at her hands, playing with her fingers, her voice growing quiet. “Why can’t you trust me on this?”
I took a deep breath and leaned forward, taking her hands in my own, urging her to look at me.
Her chocolate brown eyes met mine. “I do trust you. I believe you can sense when something’s off with him.
Honestly, I trust your intuition about people more than my own.
You’re quite literally trained to notice unusual behavior.
But I’m living through this situation too.
There could be reasons for him acting strangely, being flustered, or even cagey—his world is upside down, just like mine.
I trust you, Sarah, I really do. But out of everyone in this house, you’re the one acting the strangest.”
She pulled her hands back slowly and leaned away, putting distance between us. "I don't trust him."
“Maybe not yet, but we’ve been here for a day. We barely know him, why don’t you give him a chance?” I reasoned.
She searched my eyes. For what? I wasn’t sure, but I don’t think she found it. She embodied defeat, her shoulders slumped, her expression downcast. “Do you trust him more than me?”
“No,” I said without hesitation. “I don’t trust him at all.
But that’s also my little brother. My little brother, who like me, is completely alone in this world.
No one… and I mean no one understands what that feels like more than me.
So no, I don’t trust him, but I’m willing to give him a chance. Why aren’t you?”
“Because something is suspicious. Sometimes it feels like he’s acting, not being genuine. Always plastering on a smile, even when he shouldn’t. Normal people don’t behave like that, Fai,” she argued, her voice rising.
I motioned for her to keep her voice down, pointing up to where his room was, where I could hear water running.
“Can’t you just give him a chance?” I pleaded. “I’m glad you’re here, truly. But I don’t need you to try and pick out everything wrong with him. I need you to support me, Sarah. Can you just do that? Be my friend instead of a psychologist?”
I could see her struggling… really struggling to agree, but after a moment of tense silence she nodded her head and spoke softly.
“Okay. I can do that. But you have to be okay with me… analyzing Gabriel. I won’t share anything with you, but I really feel like something’s off and I would like to know why. ”
I licked my lips as I thought it over. It was a fair request. She would support me externally, but internally do what she needed to in order to feel comfortable. It was a fair compromise. “I can be okay with that.”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. It was one of those smiles she used to give me after an argument. It was her way of telling me it would be okay, even if it wasn’t just yet. “I am sorry I went through his things. It really wasn’t intentional.”
“I know,” I explained. “And I’m sorry for getting defensive. Can you understand why I did, at least?” I asked with a smirk and raised brows. “You did read someone’s journal.”
She closed her eyes softly and smiled before looking back at me. “You have me there. It wasn’t okay, but who leaves their journal out on the top of their desk? That feels like user error to me.”
I laughed, standing up slowly, my muscles fatigued from the day. “Well I’m going to take a shower and nap like it’s no one’s business.” I reached behind me, pulling off my shirt and throwing it in my suitcase with the rest of my dirty clothes.
I looked back to Sarah, who was staring at me, her mouth slightly open, and I could have sworn she was blushing.
“What?” I asked, looking down at my chest, wondering if I had a smear of dirt on me or something.
She shook her head quickly, as if she were shaking off a thought. “Sorry, it’s nothing. Take your shower.”
I let it go and wandered out toward the bathroom.
I jumped at footsteps down the hall. I turned to see Gabriel who was standing near the bookshelf by the phone, still in his hiking clothes, eyes moving between the two as though he were trying to work something out. I had assumed he was in the shower. I was certain I had heard it running earlier.
I took advantage of the moment while he didn’t notice me to try and figure out what Sarah saw.
But to me, nothing seemed off—at least, nothing major.
He acted just like anyone else. Sure, his memory wasn’t perfect, and he startled easier than most…
but he was my brother. Maybe I was being naive, choosing not to see what was in front of me, but what I saw when I looked at him was myself.
He was here, isolated from the world, having lost the most important person in the world to him just a couple of years back. He seemed to be floundering after losing our mom.
Maybe he had lied about hiring a private investigator to find me, but what did it matter? The end result was the same. He had found the only family he had left and, in doing so, gave me the family I had been desperate to finally have.
Well… to have again. I had a family, once upon a time.
While I wasn’t isolated physically at home, I had isolated myself from the people I loved the most. Pushing them away in what I believed was an effort to protect them, but maybe it was an effort to protect myself?
If I pushed them away, if I hurt them, they couldn’t hurt me.
The idea of being alone felt safer. But the act of being alone was crushing.
Gabriel was alone. It fundamentally changed a person when they were forced to face this cruel, unforgiving world, alone.
He had lost the only family he had ever known.
Of course that left a mark. I understood it better than most. We had both lost the most important person to us, just in different ways.
I looked back at the closed door of the room where Sarah sat on the bed, not knowing she still held my heart in her hands. That she always had and always would.
Maybe Gabriel was a little off. But who wouldn’t be after losing their everything? I certainly was.