Falling for the Brother

“I’m sorry,” she told him.

“I was about to say the same thing. You all have so much to do and you’ve wasted your time on what turned out to be a childish prank. I’m embarrassed.”

“As you probably know from your time with the FBI, Miriam’s sense of a loss of personal power is a key element of abuse,” she explained. “A victim’s power is taken away a little at a time, whenever her abuser lashes out, whether physically or verbally. It’s a slow process, because there are usually times of love and kindness between the incidents, and because the abuse comes from someone the victim trusts, so she’s often not aware that it’s happening until she finds herself feeling completely powerless.” She was giving him basics—a very elementary version of what she’d learned during her victim advocate training with The Lemonade Stand.

He watched her. “I know I didn’t help when I all but kidnapped her and gave her an ultimatum to make her stay.”

“From what Lila told me, you tried to explain it to Miriam. To get her to see reason—even just to give you a little time to clear Bruce’s name. But she couldn’t or wouldn’t see the reason.”

“It’s so unlike her.”

“But not an unusual reaction for a victim. Whoever’s hurting Miriam has convinced her that the breakdown is her own fault.”

“She continues to insist that she fell off a damned stepladder. If I hadn’t met with the doctor, seen the physical evidence in the images he showed me, I’d believe her. She’s convincing.”

Harper’s stomach dropped. “I’ve seen that kind of behavior before,” she told him. “In some of our more severe cases here. But I’m not the expert. You really should talk to Sara. It could be that Miriam’s been manipulated to the point that she believes she fell off a ladder…”

Then something else occurred to her. A thought she kept to herself. It was awful.

“What?”

She shook her head. She had no expertise whatsoever when it came to this part of the Stand’s business.

“You know something you aren’t telling me.”

“No, I don’t.”

“What were you just thinking?”

His gaze held hers and she had the strongest urge to give him everything he wanted.

Had to be left over from the night she’d felt like dying and he’d found her. Taken her with him, rather than let her sit alone in her misery. He’d been kind to her that night. A good friend.

A good brother.

She was the one who’d turned the evening into something completely different.

“Please, Harper. I’m out in the cold here, I’m doing this one solo. I’d like to know what you’re thinking.”

“I have no professional experience, just basic training so I can protect our residents.”

“I understand. Full disclaimer noted.”

“We had a resident one time, an older woman, older than Miriam. She’d accepted the abuse because she’d been afraid that if she said anything, she’d end up in a nursing home. Her abuser, a niece, threatened her, telling her she’d ship her off if she didn’t mind her p’s and q’s.” P’s and q’s. Harper could remember the woman’s tone of voice. “What made me think of it now is…this resident confided the whole thing to me late one night. She’d called security for a chaperone so she could take a walk. She’d been crying, feeling completely powerless. She was petrified that when she got out of the Stand her family was going to put her in a home.”

“Did they?”

“I honestly don’t know. I didn’t ask.” And she had to admit, “I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t do anything to help her, couldn’t do anything about the outcome. I have a job to do. I have to maintain a certain distance, keep boundaries, so I don’t miss something.”

The compassionate look in his eyes reminded her again of the night they’d shared. Maybe the problem was that it was the only real memory she had of him. The few other times they’d seen each other had been brief. With Bruce running the show. Somehow, that explanation soothed her.