she had arranged several pieces of bread smeared with the organic peanut butter from the farmer’s market. Then she topped them off with slices of apple. She ordered Theo to make some coffee—a no brainer— since one corner of the kitchen was a barista’s dream coffee station with a setting that made a carafe of coffee at the touch of the button.
The click-clack of the coffee maker graduated to the loud grinding of coffee beans. Gabby wondered if they would wake up Declan or Levi, but maybe the cinder block walls were a good insulation against the noise. She barely heard anything from the outside when she was in her bedroom, which was good and bad, considering the situation.
“I don’t think I saw Emma today,” Gabby remarked as she walked over to the living room holding her platter of peanut-butter apple sandwiches.
“She didn’t have any lines to rehearse,” Theo mumbled, setting the coffee and a carton of milk on the coffee table. “Crap. Mugs.”
Gabby switched on a lampshade and sat, eyeing her creation. Not waiting for Theo, she took a slice and started munching. Funny how something as simple as a peanut butter toast was imminently satisfying when you hadn’t eaten for eighteen hours. Her brother returned and poured the brew into a mug and handed her the milk. When she was done, he poured his own then he sat down beside her and grabbed a piece of bread, eyeing it suspiciously before taking a bite, then another.
“Well?” Gabby asked when he polished off his first slice.
He went for another one and shrugged. “It’s okay.”
When Gabby didn’t say anything, he smirked. “What? It’s nothing special. It’s peanut butter and bread.”
“Such appreciation,” she mocked and helped herself to another one.
“Kidding,” he chuckled. “It’s good. Okay?”
They ate together in silence. After Gabby satisfied her gnawing hunger pangs and got more energized by the dose of caffeine, she asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be laying off those video games?”
“I’m fine, Mom.” As soon as the words came out of his mouth, a stricken look came over his face. “Sorry. You must hate Claudette. If it’s any consolation, I call her Claudette or Mother.” He looked away. “I kinda get your dislike for me. You’re not even really my sister and Peter kept forcing me on you to make a relationship.
“I know you and Dad had issues,” he continued. “Claudette made it sound like you were a bad influence on me, which by the way is one of the reasons why she and I don’t get along. At first, I believed her, but then the few times Dad talked about you, there was regret in his voice.”
“He talked about me?”
Theo gave a sad smile. It pained him still to talk about Peter no matter how much he tried to hide behind a mask of teenage arrogance. “He did. He was very proud of Dead Futures. We watched it together, you know. When I was ten.”
“You did?” she whispered, emotions for her father she thought she’d never feel again formed a lump in her throat. She released a deep breath as the first wave of grief she was waiting for swelled. She pinched the corners of her eyes.
“There it is,” Theo muttered.
She shot him a questioning glance.
“I never saw you cry for Peter. You were just there at the funeral. Stoic.”
Gabby was disconcerted at being called out on this. There was a lapse of silence as she considered it. “I guess that was my way of coping when it came to Peter,” she said slowly. “There was resentment, you know, hurts buried deep from his abandonment. That Beverly Hills mansion was like a crypt. Money and luxury were not what I needed at that time.”
“So, you married Nick.”
She gave a small nod. Gabby wasn’t proud of how she’d reacted. She knew Nick loved her in his own way, but he wasn’t Declan. Besides, filmmaking would always be Nick’s priority.
“I felt like I was tossed at sea and Nick was my lifeline. I didn’t know how to cope. Losing the baby, Peter bailing. The divorce.” She didn’t know how to handle grief. Her own mother died in a car accident when she was three. She had no memories of her at all. Some of her father’s girlfriends tried to nurture her, while others treated her like a nuisance until Dead Futures made her a star. She’d been pampered all her life. Claudette was Peter’s fourth and last wife and was closer to Gabby’s age than Peter’s.