Gabrielle remained silent and she did not look toward Brianna. Instead she held Theodore’s gaze with eyes that carried a deep sadness so heavy that it made his chest ache.
“Drive already, Theodore,” Brianna continued impatiently. “Do not let this pathetic scene ruin our afternoon. And those babies probably belong to some random man you slept with, right Gabrielle?”
The insult triggered a memory that struck Theodore with brutal force.
One year earlier he had been standing inside the marble entrance hall of his Manhattan mansion while divorce papers lay scattered across a glass table. There had been financial documents showing massive transfers supposedly made by Gabrielle, photographs that seemed to capture her entering a hotel with another man, and finally the missing diamond necklace that had belonged to his mother which had mysteriously appeared inside Gabrielle’s suitcase after Brianna suggested searching her belongings.
Theodore still remembered Gabrielle kneeling on the floor in tears.
“It was not me, Theodore,” she had cried desperately. “Brianna hates me and she is lying. Please listen to me because I am trying to tell you something important.”
Blinded by anger and humiliation he had refused to hear another word.
“Take her out of my house immediately,” he had ordered the security staff. “She leaves with nothing.”
Gabrielle had been forced out that night without money and without protection.
Theodore had never allowed her to finish the sentence she tried to say.
A loud car horn from another vehicle passing behind them snapped him back to the present moment.
Brianna pulled a twenty dollar bill from her purse, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it through the window so it landed in the dust near Gabrielle’s feet.
“Here you go, homeless lady,” Brianna said with cruel amusement. “Buy some milk for those little bastards.”
Gabrielle glanced down briefly at the money before raising her eyes again toward Theodore.
There was no hatred in her expression.
Only a quiet sorrow that carried an almost painful pity.
She gently covered the babies’ heads with her hands to shield them from the dust cloud and then picked up her bag of cans before continuing down the road without speaking.
Theodore felt something inside his chest tearing apart.