Gabriel’s Bible
Chapter 09 - Gabriel’s Bible
For nearly thirty-one years Chloe's father had been living in the same little house outside Chicago, tending his tomatoes and fixing whatever the neighbors brought him, while Arthur Sterling believed the daughter they'd both loved was dead.
Gabriel Bennett had known something Arthur did not. That knowledge did not make him a bad father. It did make Chloe wonder how many times he had sat across from her at breakfast with a sentence he could not bring himself to say.
She found Marisol in the kitchen at sunrise, peeling apples for a pie. The window had fogged above the sink. Noah was asleep in his basket, one foot escaped from his blanket.
"Why did Elise tell Arthur to ask Dad?" Chloe said.
Marisol put down the knife. "I didn't know she wrote that."
"But you knew Gabriel had spoken to her."
"He had a letter. He told me he burned it, because the names in it were dangerous."
"Did he?"
"I thought so."
Marisol dried her hands and went to the bedroom. She returned with Gabriel's Bible, its spine broken and pages softened by years of handling. Between the Book of Ruth and the First Book of Samuel lay a folded sheet of paper. Chloe recognized the scent of old tobacco from Gabriel's coat, although he had given up smoking long before she was born.
The letter was brief. Elise thanked Gabriel and Marisol for protecting Clara. She said she had intended to come for her daughter but had been forced to change plans. There were watchers outside the house. She trusted Gabriel to keep the child safe while she found a way to tell Arthur everything without warning Dominic.
At the bottom was a second sentence, written later in hurried ink: Arthur knows about the fire, not about the exchange. Vale watches his mail. If I cannot reach him, tell him after the hearing.
"What hearing?" Chloe asked.
Marisol shook her head. "Gabriel went to an attorney that summer. He said there might be an inquiry. Nobody called him back."
The letter carried no date after its postscript, but the paper had been folded around a receipt from August 1995. Ruth's office found a corresponding sealed witness statement in the files of a state inquiry into a collapsed charity. Gabriel had testified that he was caring for a baby he believed to be Clara Sterling. The inquiry was closed without public findings. Vale had attended as counsel for a donor.
"Someone knew where I was," Chloe said to Ruth. "Someone in an official room heard my father's name."
"Yes. And someone kept that information from Arthur. The record will help us identify who."
Ruth obtained permission to review the surviving materials with investigators. Gabriel's statement described Anita delivering the baby, a man in a dark car watching the house and an envelope of cash slipped beneath the kitchen door. Gabriel had given the money to the police. The statement had been marked unreliable after a witness contradicted him.
The witness was Evelyn.
Chloe stared at the page until the letters lost their shape. She had wanted a single moment to explain all the hurt, one decision from which the rest had flowed. Instead there had been dozens, distributed across years and people: a paid signature, an unopened letter, a mother who protected her son by sacrificing another woman's child.
She called Evelyn herself.
"Did you tell the state that my father was lying?"
Evelyn didn't bother asking what she meant. "Vale said Gabriel was trying to take advantage of a grieving family."
"He had a little girl in his house. He was telling the truth."
"I knew that later."
"When?"
Evelyn said nothing.
"You watched Gabriel raise me. You came to my wedding. You sat beside him at the rehearsal dinner and accepted the flowers he grew for you. Did you ever feel ashamed?"
"Every day," Evelyn whispered.
"Then why did you keep doing it?"
"Because once you've lied long enough, the next truth looks like the thing that will kill you."
Chloe was quiet. There was something almost honest in the answer. Honesty had arrived too late to be useful as protection, but perhaps not too late to matter to the person speaking.
"You can tell investigators what happened," Chloe said. "I won't arrange that for you."
When she put down the phone, Noah began to cry. It was an impatient, indignant cry, the kind that meant he was hungry and refused to be philosophical about it. Chloe lifted him and sat by the window until he settled. She wished adults could be so plain about what they needed.
Arthur arrived in the afternoon carrying a repaired gate hinge, which he had installed himself after three failed attempts. His expensive trousers were dirty at the knee. Marisol inspected the work and pronounced it acceptable, a verdict that seemed to please him more than any award he'd received.
Chloe showed him Elise's letter. He read it once, then again, tracing his wife's handwriting with his finger without touching the ink.
"She came home after that hearing," he said. "She told me she was sorry for the way things had happened. I thought she meant the fire. She was trying to tell me something else."
"Why didn't she?"
"I don't know. Fear. Dominic. Maybe I made it impossible for her to speak."
For a while neither said anything. Then Arthur asked for one favor: would Chloe let him help pay for Marisol's roof, which had leaked every winter since Gabriel died?
"You can't fix thirty years with roofing shingles," she said.
"No. But I can fix a roof."
She considered this. It would have been easy to mistake his offer for ownership, just as it would have been easy to reject a practical kindness merely to prove she could survive without it. She was trying to build a life in which neither money nor resentment made the decisions. "Ask Marisol. Don't tell her it's decided."
"I will."
It was the smallest possible beginning. She found she could live with it.
The next morning an investigator telephoned Ruth. He had received a package containing the original payment authorizations from Conrad Vale's office, along with a dated ledger showing that Dominic had directed funds to Evelyn after Gabriel's testimony. The sender had identified herself.
May you like
Anita Mercer had finally come home to give evidence. But before Ruth could tell Chloe where to meet her, another call came through.
Anita's temporary apartment had been entered overnight. Her private photographs and notes were missing, and a message addressed to Chloe lay on the kitchen table.
