Inner Harbor
Page 41

He simply stared at her. "Are you serious?"
"She's had no one to depend on," Sybill began, then closed her eyes again as a knock sounded on the door. "I'm sorry, but I don't think I can eat."
"Yes, you can."
Phillip opened the door for the room service waiter, directed him to set the tray on the table in front of the sofa. He dispatched him quickly, with cash and a generous tip.
"Try the soup," he ordered. "You need something in your system or the medication's going to end up making you nauseous. My mother was a doctor, remember."
"All right." She spooned it up slowly, telling herself it was just more medicine. "Thank you. I'm sure you're not in the mood to be kind."
"It's harder for me to kick you when you're down. Eat up, Sybill, and we'll go a round or two."
She sighed. The leading edge of the headache was dulling.
She could handle it now, she thought. And him as well. "I hope you'll at least attempt to understand my point of view on this. Gloria called me a few weeks ago. She was desperate, terrified. She told me she'd lost Seth."
"Lost him?" Phillip let out a short, sarcastic laugh. "Oh, that's rich."
"I thought abduction at first, but I was able to get some of the details out of her. She explained that your family had him, had taken him from her. She was almost hysterical, so afraid she'd never get him back. She didn't have the money to pay her lawyer. She was fighting an entire family, an entire system all alone. I wired her the money for the lawyer, and I told her I'd help. That she should wait until I contacted her."
As her system began to settle again, she reached for one of the rolls in the basket beside her bowl and broke it open. "I decided to come and see the situation for myself. I know Gloria doesn't always tell the entire truth, that she can slant things to suit her position. But the fact remains that your family had Seth and she didn't."
"Thank God for that."
She stared at the bread in her hand, wondered if she could manage to put it in her mouth and chew. "I know you're providing him with a good home, but she's his mother, Phillip. She has a right to keep her own son."
He watched her face carefully, measured the tone of her voice. He didn't know whether to be furious or baffled by both. "You actually believe that, don't you?"
Color was seeping back into her cheeks. Her eyes had cleared and now met his steadily. "What do you mean?"
"You believe that my family took Seth, that we took advantage of some poor single mother down on her luck and snatched the kid, that she wants him back. That she even has a lawyer working on custody."
"You do have him," Sybill pointed out.
"That's right. And he's exactly where he belongs and is going to stay. Let me give you some facts. She blackmailed ray father, and she sold Seth to him."
"I know you believe that, but--"
"I said facts, Sybill. Less than a year ago, Seth was living in a set of filthy rooms on the Block in Baltimore, and your sister was on the stroll."
"On the stroll?"
"God, where do you come from? She was hooking. This isn't a whore with a heart of gold here, this isn't a desperate, down-on-her-luck unwed mother doing anything she has do to survive and keep her child fed. She was keeping her habit fed."
She only shook her head, slowly, side to side, even as part of her mind accepted everything he said. "You can't know all this."
"Yes, I can know it. Because I live with Seth. I've talked with him, I've listened to him."
Her hands went icy. She lifted the pot of tea to warm them, poured some slowly into a cup. "He's just a boy. He could have misunderstood."
"Sure. I bet that's it. He just misunderstood when she brought a john up to the place, when she got so stoned she sprawled on the floor and he wondered if she was dead. He just misunderstood when she beat the hell out of him when she was feeling testy."
"She hit him." The cup rattled into the saucer. "She hit him?"
"She beat him. No controversial yet civilized spanking, Dr. Griffin. Fists, belts, the back of the hand. Have you ever had a fist in the face?" He held his up to hers. "Figure it out. Proportionately, this would be about right, comparing a grown woman's fist to, say, a five-, six-year-old boy. Put liquor and drugs into that fist and it comes faster and harder. I've been there."
He angled his fist away, studied it. "My mother preferred smack--to the uninitiated that's heroin. If she missed her fix, you learned to stay far out of her way. I know just what it is to have a vicious, f**ked-up female take her fists to me." His gaze whipped back to Sybill's. "Your sister won't ever have the chance to use them on Seth again."
"I--she needs to go into therapy. I never… He was fine when I saw him. If I'd known she was abusing him--"
"I haven't finished. He's a good-looking kid, isn't he? Some of Gloria's clients thought so."
The color that had come back to her cheeks fell away. "No." Shaking her head, she pushed away from him and staggered to her feet. "No, I don't believe that. That's hideous. That's impossible."
"She didn't do anything to stop it." He ignored the pale cheeks and fragility now and pushed. Hard. "She didn't do a goddamn thing to protect him. Seth was on his own there. He fought them off or hid. Sooner or later, there would have been one he couldn't fight off or hide from."
"That's not possible. She couldn't."
"She could--especially if it earned her a few extra bucks. It took months with us before he could stand to be touched in even the most casual way. He has nightmares still. And if you say his mother's name, it makes you sick to see the fear that comes into his eyes. That's your situation, Dr. Griffin."
"God. How can you expect me to accept all that? To believe she's capable of that?" She pressed a hand to her heart. "I grew up with her. I've known you less than a week, and you expect me to accept this horror story, this vileness as fact?"
"I think you believe it," he said after a moment. "I think, under it all, you're smart enough, and let's say observant enough to know the truth."
She was terrified. "If it is the truth, why didn't the authorities do anything? Why wasn't he helped?"