Chapter 17: Realization
POV: Zac
I told her 6 and it was now 6:15 and Taylor was finally ready to go. I’d sent her a text but she hadn’t replied, it was possible she was cooking or in another part of the apartment. The ride home felt long but I was counting on a massage and maybe more, going weeks at a time was not normal for me and she rarely made it easy on me! But I also knew it was worth it. My car was parked in the driveway when Taylor dropped me off so she was home. I expected to smell lasagna and maybe see her in a gown or some other short article of clothing but when I opened the door it was quiet.
“Gabby?” I called.
There was no response and the apartment didn’t smell like anything was cooking, I glanced into the kitchen the stove top was empty and the oven was off. Had she forgotten?
“Gabriella? Where are you?” I called.
She wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room, so I went through, the laundry room door was open and the washer indicated it was done, but she wasn’t there nor was she on the patio, the guest bathroom. or our bedroom. Fearing she’d fallen in our bathroom I ran there but it too was empty as well.
Where the hell was she? I got my phone and called her but could faintly hear the ringing in the living and I followed it and then I paused. Her phone laid on the table in the living room on top of photos and there beside it was her wedding band. I picked up one of them and could feel the increased heart rate. I ran out of the apartment and down the street, she had to have walked! I ran all the way to the front gate. The attendant gave me a weird look.
“Did my…wife…come through here?”
“Mrs. Hanson? Yeah. She left walking about 4:45 maybe? She was just going for a walk but I haven’t seen her return, assumed she came in the back way.”
“Thank you.”
If she left that long ago, she could be anywhere by now and if she called someone to pick her up then she surely could be anywhere! I ran back to the apartment and checked the phone, she hadn’t sent any text messages or called anyone since she talked to me. I sat here and stared at the pictures before me. They were real ones, for sure I remembered a few of the encounters. But, these pictures were taken before I ever met Gabriella. My hair was super short in them and it wasn’t when I met her. The only two that seemed remotely new were the ones where I had my hand on their ass and those seemed to be edited because my arm was like super long, because the girl was short. I would bet the real pictures were somewhere on the internet.
About 7:45 I called Abigail, if she left headed to anyone it would be her. Abigail would be pissed off and there was a chance she wouldn’t answer my call or if she did, she’d simply scream at me. I would take being screamed at to know that she was there and okay. I was shocked she answered and that it was her normal tone of voice, no sense of anger.
“Hey Zac, I didn’t expect you to call me.”
“Please tell me Gabriella is with you, I don’t care if you cuss me out afterwards just tell me she’s there.”
“Sorry, I haven’t spoken to her since about three forty, I had to get back here for a lecture. Why would I cuss you out?”
“She hasn’t called from any number?”
“No. Why are you asking?”
“She’s not here and it looks like she got pictures of me with other women, I swear to god Abby there not from this tour.”
The other end of the line was quiet. “I’ll be there in 15, you better fucking open the door.”
She arrived at 10 after 8 and I had the door open waiting, I didn’t want to piss her off too! The first thing she asked for were the pictures, which I handed to her. She glanced at them first and then kind of studied them, thank god I wasn’t ‘visible’ in any of them!
She walked to the table and picked up the envelope they came in.
“It wasn’t mailed, so someone had to drop them off and I am betting it’s someone that knows where she lives and that she was here alone. But, that’s a problem for later on.”
She had me call Taylor, Isaac, my parents, Shawn and Stella. None of them had seen or heard from Gabby since the last time I spoke to her. Based on when the attendant saw her leave, she probably got them right after I hung-up.
“Why did you even leave her alone?”
“She’s fine Abby.”
She looked at me stunned. “Fine? Have you even really talked to her lately?”
“I talk to her every day Abigail.”
“No Zac I mean really talk. Have you asked how she felt about your fans really? How she felt about anything?”
“No Abigail, I don’t bother to ask common questions. Of course I ask.”
“Have you seen her drawing pad?”
“No. She won’t show me anything in it and she’s kept it pretty damn close to her the last few weeks.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know, if it’s not here probably in her portfolio.”
She evidently knew where it was because she vanished and returned with the pad, showing me the dark ones.
“I showed you that one.”
“You didn’t tell me she kept on drawing these dark ones. Gabby is what I call an emotional drawer, she draws how she feels most the time, unless she’s given something specific. The problem is Gabby is also very closed off.”
She flipped it to the last drawing and I stared at it a moment before taking it and then sitting on the sofa, scanning the previous ones too. The broken and cracked crib, decaying rattles, leaking bottles, broken toys it was all there.
“Has she talked to you about the miscarriage at all?”
“How do you even know?”
She sat down. “I saw the condoms she bought and didn’t know, Gabby never wanted children. I’ve never seen her hold a baby of any age. She went to put them up and I saw it laying on the counter and just flipped to the last one then back, when she came out I asked.”
“She told you?”
“I guessed and she confirmed, she wouldn’t even say miscarriage or miscarried, she stopped like it was some word she couldn’t remember. How did she react when you told her?”
“She cried, not like full blown breakdown but it was enough for me to believe she was hurting.”
“Has she mentioned it at all?”
“No…but when we got back to the hospital that night she had drawn a picture of a baby, the mother is a fan and missed the show because she had her. She evidently saw her in the nursery. Isaac and Taylor didn’t know about the miscarriage, no one else knows but you. Anyway, she’d drawn the baby.”
It took me a few moments to find the picture and I handed it to her, Taylor had printed it off for her.
“They said to take it to her and we did, she asked if she wanted to hold her but she refused. She asked Gabby for a picture of them, she needed to get something and just handed her the baby.”
“How did she react?”
“She didn’t. She just stood there like a statue and when Ella started screaming Isaac took her.”
“You three were stupid enough to ask her to go back down there?”
“She went there on her own! It’s the only way she could have seen that baby.”
She picked up the one from Rochester. “This is why she left.”
“They aren’t real! You can call my brothers and ask them Abigail. I never left their sight! I never did this. She’s the only person I’ve had sex with since September!”
“She’s not going to see that Zac! All she saw in these photos was the location and what you were doing. She didn’t analyze them, she didn’t call to verify anything. She wouldn’t have paid any attention to your hair or clothes or the girls. The only thing she saw was that Max and I were right about you.”
“Would she call him?”
“No. I’d love to say I could call him and she’d be there asleep but I called on the way over. He hasn’t heard from her.”
“Where would she go Abigail? She doesn’t know anyone.”
“Is Sierra in town still?”
“You know about her?!”
“She told me about Sierra, she was dating Newton and he introduced them. Eventually they had sex and well, over months they rather fell for one another. Gabby called me freaking out when she told her she loved her.”
“Loved her? Bullshit, they basically hate each other.”
“Gabby ran Zac. She used Newton’s cheating behavior to justify her running away. Truth is she was afraid Sierra would leave her like Shawn and Max. I believe that Gabby loved her then, not now but then for sure. Did you call her?”
“No.”
I called Sierra to ask and she hadn’t seen her either. That was everyone that I knew.
“Who would she go to?”
“I don’t know Zac. She knows a lot of people but she hasn’t contacted them in years.”
“She wouldn’t go to Simon would she?”
“I hope not because if she goes there then Shawn will be calling you when she’s brought in.”
That thought scared the hell out of me. She made a dozen more calls to people she knew but none of them had heard from her. I knew the police wouldn’t do anything until she’d been missing for 24 hours.
“Why would she leave everything?”
“It’s what she does when she’s hurt. Shawn left and she destroyed everything she’d drawn for him, which was pretty much everything. When Max left she just went fucking insane.”
“I’m such an idiot.”
“Now you know why we pushed for a divorce so much.”
“You pushed because you hated me, had nothing to do with anything else. Don’t even try to say that wasn’t true.”
“That was Max’s reason. He doesn’t like you for some reason, I can’t imagine why. Mine wasn’t because I particularly hated you, I actually think that you’d be good for her. You don’t party, you don’t do drugs, you rarely drink and you do care. But, you don’t know anything about her really.”
“Doesn’t seem like you do either, you no more know where she is than I do.”
“But I know why she left. I know why she snapped on your fan, I know why she’s been drawing fucking cribs for weeks, drawings you didn’t even know about. I don’t need her here to explain that shit to me Zac. She’s been under stress since you left on this tour. Fans calling her as whore, a slut, fat, a whale, constantly telling her that you are out doing this with others. She couldn’t walk in peace without bitches telling her shit. The appendix caused her to bloat up a bit and she thought she’d been over eating. But your fans didn’t give a shit, they just kept on and on.”
“I addressed that!”
“You stayed in two nights and your fans instant reaction was how much of a bitch she was for making you stay inside. They turned it all around on her, it was her fault you didn’t come out, she told you not too, she was jealous of them, you just wanted to pacify the fat cow was how one bitch said it. They still do it, but not as bad.”
“Well, Mrs. Know it all why did she snap on the fan?”
She got her phone and pulled up a video, the video was taken from a fan in front of her and I knew it was that walk, my god she looked miserable.
“Stacy did you hear? There is a girl from Rochester saying she hooked up with Zac after the show and she might be pregnant.”
“Wow, I wonder how Mrs. Whale would respond to that.”
They laughed. “He’ll probably divorce the slut and go be with his baby’s mama.”
I could see Gabby’s face and her nails digging into her palms. Sierra came up and called her Kitten.
“Oh my god, kitten? Meek little kitten no wonder he’s just fucking everything around and impregnating other women.”
She stopped the video because what came next was Gabby’s explosion.
“She was fine until they mentioned the baby, her entire body language changed there and it’s clear that is something that is bothering her. As for why she ran my guess is she remembered that conversation when she saw that photo. In her mind Zac, while she was in the hospital hurting because she’d lost a baby, you were only wanting to make another one with someone else.”
I didn’t even realize exactly how bad the fans truly were, sure I’d seen the message and the tweets and shit, but seeing them and how they took pleasure in hurting her was totally different. This wasn’t a tweet or a message on some photo she may never see, these girls knew she was there and knew she heard them. They could see how it affected her.
“This isn’t going to help me find her.”
“No. I’m sorry Zac, you won’t find her until she’s ready to be found. I’m going to go home and keep trying people maybe I’ll get lucky. You might want to do some web searching because I wasn’t against your marriage because I solely hated you. I was against it because thirteen days wasn’t enough time for you to be able to read her well. Months this has gone on and you haven’t known about it.”
“You said she never wanted kids?”
“She told me when we were thirteen, but based on those drawings and how detailed they are I would say miscarriage has certainly had an effect on her emotionally.”
“I’ll call my friends and we’ll start early AM, I’ll just drive every street and road until I find her.”
She got up and left without another word, I sat down and did a little searching, it didn’t take much to find the YouTube videos of her, the one of her backed against the fence afraid and hurting just pissed me off. I was a shitty ass husband and I deserved for her to leave like this. I’d done nothing to prove to her that while I said I loved her, I really did. At 11 Taylor called.
“I just left Stella’s, why did you ask if we’d seen Gabby?”
“Because she left, she left her phone here and her wedding band and I have no idea where she is.”
“She what?” he asked.
I actually heard tires squealing in the background. “Did you just slam on the brakes?”
“I damn sure did. What the hell do you mean she left?”
I explained it to him, but there wasn’t much he could do, so I told him to go home in the unlikely event she went there. I spent most of the night staring at my phone hoping she’d call, sleep evaded me until I really just couldn’t stay awake anymore.
May 25, 2008
Everyone knew she’d left and they were all on alert, but I had not told anyone about the miscarriage though because she wasn’t here and I didn’t want them to freak out. Abigail was the only one that really knew still.
We were at the studio but I was just staring at my phone. I’d spent Wednesday and Thursday driving the streets of Tulsa trying to find her, but I never did. Friday and Saturday I had to come here and I would fly home to see if she was back, but she wasn’t there. I had called everyone every day but no one had seen her or heard from her. Shawn had called everyone he remembered and nothing.
“Zac?” Taylor asked.
“What?” I asked.
“Can we get this done today please?”
“I don’t want to do anything Taylor but find my wife. Yet you dragged me in here.”
“I’m sure she’s okay.”
“Prove it, because she didn’t take a damn thing with her. No clothes, no money, no cards, not even her ID! She left everything at home because someone decided to play some cruel ass fucking joke.”
“She’ll be fine Zac, she’s not an idiot.”
I snorted. “Not like either of you care what happens to her.”
“Excuse you, we know you’re tired and we’re going to excuse that bullshit right this minute but you need to watch your mouth. We drove the streets for two fucking days as well.” Isaac snapped.
“You were fifteen feet from her when those bitches were calling her names, yet who did you get pissed off at? Her! Why? Because she fucking defended herself against them.”
“I thought this was settled!” he said.
“Settled my ass you never said you heard them! Fucking videos show you turning around! Fuck no wonder she fucking ran.”
“It’s not my fault she ran Zachary! She ran because she thought you were being a whore again.”
“Again? Fuck you Isaac.”
“Guys calm down.” Taylor said.
“Fuck it. You two wouldn’t even care if she was still pregnant. It’s not like either of you have to deal with any fucking thing, your girlfriends are fucking fine. They are at home and their jobs fucking safe! While my wife is god knows where with who the hell knows.”
“Wow, if she was still pregnant? What the hell are you talking about Zac?” Taylor asked.
Fuck! I couldn’t back track now.
“Her appendix wasn’t the only reason she was at the hospital. The doctor told me when he took me back she miscarried, somewhere around five to seven weeks, he wasn’t sure.”
“I thought you used condoms every time?” Isaac asked.
“Yeah, well I didn’t think having sex with my wife was a bad thing Ike.”
Taylor just looked stunned. “You let us drag her down to that room with a baby there, knowing she’d been told she lost a baby? God damn Zac, you could have said something.”
“Like what? Sorry Tay, we can’t join you because we just lost a baby and it just feels like death warmed over to be seeing this newborn. I didn’t even think it would hurt but fuck.”
“I can’t imagine how she felt.” Ike said.
“Apparently she never wanted kids anyway, so I don’t know but she spent weeks drawing broken cribs and cracked rattles. So, I guess even though she never wanted them it hit her hard.”
“You haven’t told Mom and Dad have you?” Taylor asked.
“Oh come on Taylor, that would be beyond cruel. You know how much Mom hurt over losing Elizabeth and the others. There is no way I want to tell her that she’s lost a grandbaby too. She didn’t want anyone to know and I agreed. Why should we tell people we were expecting but not anymore.”
“You said New York…did her fucking friend cause her to miscarry?” Isaac asked.
Even I was taken aback by the venom in his voice. Taylor must have been too because he scooted away a bit.
“No. I really wanted to blame him but the doctor said she wasn’t far enough for him to be able to do anything. He said there was no real reason, it just happened. Could have been stress, could have been from the appendix, could have been nothing at all.”
“Why don’t we cut out and see if we can cover some more streets.”
We got up and left, I kept driving the streets and waiting for her to call me. I ended up at home around 1 am, curled up on the sofa crying myself to sleep because what if she left Tulsa?! What if she got hurt and I couldn’t find her?
The number of what if’s that could happen to her was extensive and none ended well. I was certain she wasn’t with Simon because he was still sending her e-mails and I just wanted to find him and strangle him or something.
I’d finally broken down and called Maxwell myself yesterday and he sounded shocked that she’d been gone that long but he sounded sincere when he said she wasn’t with him. Yet, he also commented that he was certain if she left me, she would come to him, since she wasn’t there I had to be lying about her being home. His words were suspicious to me, because why would he assume she would come to him? Was he that cocky to believe she would just go to him? He didn’t believe she was missing, it just farther sealed my initial idea of him. He was a fucking asshole.