confidante, her soul mate. And now she had no one.
She was still thinking about it when she heard laughter in the hall, outside her door, and was surprised to realize that she was hearing the voices of her parents. Her mother seldom laughed at anything, but as Gabriella listened, she sounded almost girlish. Their voices drifted away eventually, and she heard their bedroom door close heavily. She had no idea what was happening in there, and wondered if they were fighting. But it didn't sound like it. They sounded happy as they laughed and giggled. And for a long time, Gabriella just sat there waiting. They'd have to come back eventually if only just to feed her.
But by the end of the afternoon, they still hadn't reappeared, and she knew that there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn't knock on their door, or speak to them through it. She could hardly demand an explanation as to why they had been ignoring her, or why they had left her to her own devices, and neglected to give her dinner.
In the end, they never came back to her that night. They had come to some kind of temporary peace, and were happily consummating it in the privacy of their bedroom. Eloise had forgiven him for the night before, which was rare, and he was so startled by it and she looked so pretty that day that he was actually attracted to her. That and the fact that he'd had several drinks at the Plaza at lunch helped to soften him to a woman he normally detested. For some reason, they were both feeling unusually mellow. But none of their newly found warm feelings extended to their daughter. John knew it would only be a temporary peace, as did Eloise, but it was enjoyable anyway, for however long it lasted. And Eloise decided not to take a single moment away from their time in bed to bother feeding Gabriella.
Gabriella knew she could have gone downstairs. There were still leftovers from the night before, but she had no idea what would happen if she dared to touch them. It was best to just stay in her room, and wait. They couldn't be that long. They were only talking, after all, with the door closed. But as she sat and watched first six and then seven and eight o'clock come, and finally nine, and even ten, it was obvious to her that she had been forgotten. She went to bed finally, grateful that the day was done and nothing particularly untoward had happened to her. But it could still happen, just as it had the night before, if her father angered her mother, or abandoned her, walked out and left her, as he did so often, however much or little she deserved it. Anything was possible, and Gabriella would have to pay the price for all his weaknesses and failings. But this time nothing happened. He didn't go anywhere, and the two lovebirds remained in their room, and Gabriella fell asleep finally, without her dinner.
Chapter 4
BY THE AGE of nine, having survived two more years of her parents’ unthinkable behavior, Gabriella had retreated into a world where she could occasionally escape them. She wrote poems, stories, letters to imaginary friends. She had begun to develop a world where for an hour or two at least, her parents and the tortures they inflicted on her seemed to vanish. She wrote about happy people in pretty worlds, where wonderful things happened. She never wrote about her family, or the things her mother still did to her whenever the mood struck her. Her writing was her only escape, her only means of survival. It was a respite from a cruel world, despite seemingly comfortable surroundings. Gabriella knew better than anyone that neither her address, nor the size of her father's income, or the distinction of the families from which her parents came, protected her from the kind of realities that other people's nightmares were made of. Her mother's elegance, and the jewels she wore, and the pretty clothes that hung in her own closet, meant nothing to her. She knew the meaning of life better than most, and the stood early on what was important, and what wasn't. Love meant everything to her, she dreamed of it, thought of it, wrote of it. It was the one thing in her life that had eluded her completely.
People still talked about how pretty she was, how well