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Gabriel covered his eyes with his palms, as if he were trying to blot out the vision. Julia found herself holding her breath as she waited for his next revelation.
“I followed the trail and found Paulina lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood. I tried to find her pulse, but I couldn’t. I thought she was dead.” He was silent for a few minutes.
“If I’d checked on her when I got home, I could have called an ambulance. But I didn’t. I was high, and I crashed, and I didn’t care about anyone but myself. When they told me she lost the baby, I knew it was my fault. It was a completely preventable death. I might as well have killed her with my own hands.”
He held his hands in front of his face and turned them slowly, as if he were regarding them for the first time. “I am a murderer, Julianne. A drug-addicted murderer.”
She opened her mouth to contradict him, but he quickly cut her off.
“Paulina spent weeks in the hospital, first with physical problems, then with depression. I had to take a leave of absence from Harvard because I was too drugged up or drunk to work. I owed thousands of dol ars to some dangerous people and had no way of coming up with the money.
Paulina tried to kill herself in the hospital, so I wanted to check her into a private mental health facility, somewhere where they would be gentle with her. When I called her parents begging them to help, they told me I was a disgrace. That I needed to marry her, then they’d help us.”
He paused. “I would have done it. But Paulina was too unstable to even discuss it. I made up my mind that I would discharge my duty to her, and then kill myself. That would put an end to all of our problems.”
Gabriel looked up at her with cold, dead eyes. “So you see, Julianne, I am one of the damned. Through my own depraved indifference I caused the death of a child and the permanent destruction of a young woman’s bright future. It would have been better if I had had a millstone hung around my neck and been cast into the sea.”
“It was an accident,” said Julia quietly. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He laughed bitterly. “It wasn’t my fault that I had sex with Paulina and made a baby? It wasn’t my fault that I treated her like a whore, addicted her to drugs, and pressured her to have an abortion? It wasn’t my fault that I stumbled in, high, and didn’t even bother to check to see if she was in my apartment?”
Julia took his hands in hers and grasped them tightly. “Gabriel, listen to me. You contributed to the situation, yes, but it was an accident. If there was so much blood, then something was wrong with the baby. If you hadn’t called the ambulance when you did, Paulina would have died. You saved her.”
He wouldn’t look up, but she moved her hand to his chin and forced him to look at her. “You saved her. You said yourself that you wanted the baby. You didn’t want the baby to die.”
He flinched beneath her touch, but she would not release him. “You are not a murderer. It was just a tragic accident.”
“You don’t understand.” His voice was cold, listless. “I am just like he is. He used you, and I used her. I did more than use her. I treated her as if she were a plaything and gave her drugs, when I should have protected her.
What kind of devil am I?”
“You are nothing like him,” she hissed, her emotions getting the better of her. “He has no remorse for what he did to me, and given the opportunity he would do it again. Or worse.”
She took a deep breath and held it. “Gabriel, you made some mistakes.
You did terrible things. But you’re sorry for them. You’ve been trying to make up for them for years. Shouldn’t that count for something?”
“All the money in the world cannot pay for a life.”
“A life you didn’t take,” she countered, eyes flashing.
He hid his face in his hands. This was not how he expected this conversation to go.
Why is she still here? Why hasn’t she left me?
She stepped backward and watched him momentarily. She could feel the despair rolling off of him in waves as she frantically wracked her brain to find some way to reach him.
“Do you know Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables?”
“Of course,” he muttered. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“The hero abandons his sin and performs a penance; he looks after a young girl as if she were his own daughter. But all the while, a policeman hunts him, convinced that he hasn’t reformed. Wouldn’t you rather be the person performing penance than the policeman?”
Gabriel didn’t answer.
“Do you think that you should have to suffer for your sin forever?”
No response.
“Because it seems that’s what you’re saying — you won’t allow yourself to be happy. You won’t allow yourself to have children. You think you’ve lost your soul. But what about redemption, Gabriel? What about forgiveness?”
“I don’t deserve it.”
“What sinner deserves it?” She shook her head. “When I told you about what happened with him, you told me to forgive myself and let myself be happy. Why can’t you do the same thing?”
He looked down at the floor. “Because you were the victim. I’m the killer.”
“Let’s say that’s true. What would be an appropriate penance, Gabriel?
How would justice be served?”
“An eye for an eye,” he muttered.
“Fine. An eye for an eye would mean that you would have to save the life of a child. You’re responsible for the death of a child, so justice requires that you give back a life. Not coins, not presents, but life.”
He sat motionless, but she knew he was listening.
“You saved Paulina’s life, but I know you won’t count that. So you need to save the life of someone else’s child. Wouldn’t that pay for your sin? Or at least offer some kind of restitution?”
“It wouldn’t bring Maia back. But it would be something. It would make me less — evil.” Gabriel’s shoulders hunched in his chair as he hung his head low.
The pain in his voice almost rent Julia’s heart in two, but she continued bravely. “You would have to find a child who was in danger of dying and save her. And that would be atonement.”
He nodded slightly, stifling a groan.
Julia sank down on her knees, taking his hands in hers. “Don’t you see, Gabriel? I am that child.”
He lifted his head and stared at her as if she were mad, his watery eyes boring into her own.
“Simon could have killed me. He was so angry when I slapped him, he was going to break through my bedroom door and kill me. Even if I had called nine-one-one, they never would have arrived in time.
“But you saved me. You pulled him away from my door. You kept him from going back into the house. I am alive now only because of you. I am Tom’s baby girl, and you saved my life.”
He remained motionless, entirely without words.
“A life for a life — that’s what you said. You think you took a life, and now you’ve saved one.
“You have to forgive yourself. Ask Paulina to forgive you, ask God to forgive you, but you have to forgive yourself.”
“It isn’t enough,” he whispered, his great, sad eyes still wet with tears.
“It won’t bring your daughter back, that’s true. But think about the gift you gave Tom — his only daughter. Turn our debt into penance. You are not a devil, you’re an angel. My angel.”
Gabriel stared at her quietly, trying to read her eyes, her lips, her expression. When he was finished, he held his hand out and drew her into his arms, settling her on his lap. He held her for what seemed like forever as his tears spilled onto her shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I waited so long to tell you. I’m sorry my story is true. I’ve killed your faith in me. I know that.”
“I still love you.”
She tried to soothe him by murmuring in his ear, by letting him release his grief through his tears. And when his tears final y subsided, she touched the buttons of his white shirt and began undoing them quickly, before he could ask what she was doing. She peeled the shirt back from his naked chest and ran her fingers around his tattoo. Then slowly, very slowly, she lowered her lips to the dragon’s mouth and kissed it.
When she sat back, Gabriel stared at her in silent wonder.
She removed her scarf and gently lifted his hand so that he was touching her bite mark, a mark that had faded slightly but not disappeared. And she placed her hand on top of his tattoo. He winced and closed his eyes.
“We both have scars. And maybe you’re right, they won’t disappear. But I am your atonement, Gabriel. My life is your gift to a father who could have lost his child forever. Thank you.”
“I’m a hypocrite.” His voice was rough. “I told Tom he was a terrible father. What kind of father was I?”
“A young one. An inexperienced one. You shouldn’t have been taking drugs. But you wanted Maia. You said so yourself.”
He shuddered as they clung to one another.
“Nothing I can say will bring her back. But if it would comfort you, I would say that I believe your little girl is singing with the blessed in Paradise.
