Taken by the Highest Bidder

Back at the small town villa in the historic district, Sam collected a sleeping Gabby from the neighbor’s house, carried her home, put her in her bed and after a lingering glance into the little girl’s simple bedroom, shut the door.

Sam curled in a chair downstairs in the living room, a blanket pulled over her shoulders. The house was chilly but Sam couldn’t turn up the heat. There wasn’t money to pay for such extravagances. There wasn’t money for anything.

Tears started to her eyes but she pressed a hand to her face, held the tears back. Don’t cry. You can’t cry. Tears are for children.

But some tears fell anyway, escaping from behind her hand, from beneath the tightly closed eyelids.

It was all too bitter, too brutal, too lonely. She’d tried so hard to give Gabriela a better life. That’s why she’d married Johann, that’s why she put up with his abuse. Sam had done everything in her power to help things here, improve things for the child. But none of it mattered. Johann was determined to gamble and drink, no matter the cost.

Much later she finally fell asleep, still huddled in the armchair and didn’t wake until she heard Gabriela bounding down the stairs.

“Where’s Papa?” Gabby asked, nearly five years old and endlessly enthusiastic.

Gabby had already dressed in her school uniform and even in her dark gray uniform with the white piping, Gabby was beautiful. A day rarely passed without someone stopping Sam to comment on Gabriela’s stunning looks, and Gabby was stunning.

Gabby’s mother had been a model from Madrid. She’d done some small films in Spain and hoped to go to Hollywood to try her luck there, but died tragically a year after Gabby was born. The details about Gabby’s mother’s death were all a bit sketchy, but Gabby had inherited her mother’s Spanish beauty with her classic features, her dark hair, and those green-gold eyes bordered by shamefully long, jet-black lashes.

“Good girl, you’re all ready,” Sam said standing and folding the blanket. “And your papa’s out but he’ll be back later,” she added, trying to look unconcerned, trying to look as if she hadn’t spent the night crying in a threadbare overstuffed armchair worried sick about a future that looked increasingly bleak and chaotic.

“He hasn’t been home in days,” Gabby complained. “And you’re still wearing your fancy dress.”

It was Sam’s one and only fancy dress. Sam checked her smile, knowing it was brittle, and false. “I fell asleep reading,” Sam fibbed, refusing to worry Gabby. “But let’s have breakfast now and then we’ll do your hair for school.”

Sam kept Gabriela chattering until she’d walked her to school a quarter mile away, but once Gabby ran into the building, leaving Sam on the pavement, Sam felt her defenses crack and fall.

What were they going to do? How were they going to manage? No home, no money, no food, no tuition for Gabby’s school…

Sam had nothing of her own, not even a bank account. When Johann married her, he stopped paying her a salary and what little Sam had saved over her years as a nanny had been spent on Gabriela. Johann had never understood that little girls quickly outgrew their clothes and even much beloved dolls eventually wore out.

As she walked the eight large city blocks back to their villa town house, Sam struggled with the reality of their lives. In the four years she’d been with the van Bergens, things had gone from bad to worse, and worse to nightmarish. If she had family, she’d take Gabby and go there now. But Sam had no family, had spent most of her childhood and teenage years in the orphanage in Chester.

She’d left school at seventeen, and with the help of a parish scholarship, attended Princess Christian College in Manchester, but even with the scholarship she’d had to work several jobs to pay her bills.

Money had always been very tight. Sam had never been spoiled. And yet even living frugally, and even knowing how to scrimp and save, Sam knew her situation now was far more dire than it had ever been. Sam knew she could fend for herself. But what about Gabby? How would Sam take care of Gabby if they had no home, no income, no place to go?

Climbing the four steps of the town villa, Sam entered through the front door and was just about to unbutton her coat when she heard Johann call to her.