tell him, wishing I didn’t have to do that but knowing it was my only choice. If I hadn’t, he would have followed me, would have hurt himself or gotten himself killed. He’ll be out for a while.
By the time he wakes up, I’ll have done what I need to do.
I stick the gun in my purse and then quickly walk out of the house.
My mother’s on a walk, but Camille is still inside.
I walk through the kitchen where she’s making piss-poor sandwiches, keeping my head high.
“Gabrielle,” she says to me as I walk past her. “Pascal was looking for you. He seemed rather upset.”
“He’s in my room taking a nap,” I tell her. “I’m going to go find my mom on her walk.” I can hear her muttering something behind me as I grab his car keys from the bowl in the foyer and then leave via the front door.
In seconds, I’m in his car, the engine revving and driving down the driveway toward my freedom. Toward Gautier’s judgment day.
I honestly never thought this day would come. For a while there, it felt like a far-off goal, a dream—or a nightmare—I once had. When I was in Mallorca those weeks ago, I wanted to call the whole thing off. I wanted to give up my quest for revenge, all because of Pascal. Because I didn’t want any secrets between us, because I didn’t want to have to kill his father and potentially kill what we had.
Kill our potential.
Very real feelings were getting in the way of a very real goal.
But then this morning, everything changed.
I had tried for a while to talk to my mother. She’d become more elusive to me the longer I’d been here, and sometimes it feels like I’m farther away from her now, living in the same small house, than when I was overseas. If I tried to bring anything up in any way, anything real and raw, she would shut down in front of my eyes. That zombified version of her would come out, the one with the fake smile and the blank eyes and the incessant nodding. I could never get through to her.
Earlier today, I had a plan.
I asked her to have lunch with me, and we started eating on the patio. I played along with her. I talked about boring stuff like fashion and the weather, and I asked her lots of questions.
Then I started talking about my father.
That’s something I never bring up.
I needed to shock her into reacting. Into getting her head out of that fixed place.
It worked too.
She got defensive, angry. I kept pressing questions about why he was abusive, why we left him, if life with Gautier was truly any better. She was so disgusted by what I was asking that she got up and went inside the house.
I followed her, right into the kitchen.
She always starts putting things away or cleaning the dishes when she’s nervous. The tic of a maid, I guess.
I cornered her so she couldn’t pass by me without trying to fight me physically, and I kept asking questions, and then I started turning the blame on her, because any time in the past I’ve said “I feel,” it’s been met with indifference. But by saying “you did this,” I enabled her to be reactive. She wasn’t able to shrug and smile and pretend everything was fine.
I told her she was abused by her husband and then abused by Gautier.
I told her she let me be abused by him too.
I told her she’s weak and that she’s let herself fall in love with him.
I told her that she’s dumb and thinks that he loves her too.
I told her she must hate me for letting Gautier do the things to me that he did.
And I told her she must hate herself for letting a man become more important to her than her daughter.
She must hate herself for letting herself be abused for far too long.
These were all horrible things to say, and I was shaking, crying, hating myself for saying them to her. She was a monster sometimes, and in that moment, I was the monster too.
Like mother, like daughter.
It almost worked too.
I almost had her.
I saw the cracks in her facade appear; I saw the words sinking in, or trying to. I saw a woman on the verge of the truth that she kept from herself, on the verge of a breakdown.
But then that truth never came. The cracks stopped flowing. The pain