Marie Ferrarella - Fortune's Heirs - Reunion

“When I was a little girl, my family lived in Red Rock. My parents still live there.” A slight smile faintly crossed her lips. “It was as developed then as it sounds.” For just an infinitesimal second, she was that little girl again, free of the demons she had acquired. “Wonderful place to grow up,” she testified. “My brothers and sisters and I had no end of places to play.”

And then her expression sobered. “There was this one field that ran behind an abandoned old house. We used to call the house the Spooky place—”

“Very original,” Jack commented, never taking his eyes off her. Watching emotions cross her face in the dim light.

“We were kids,” she reminded him. And then, as he continued to watch her, she seemed to brace herself before she went on. “One day, we were playing hide-and-seek.” Her breath began to grown audibly shorter. “The way we had a hundred times before.”

She was going to stop. He saw it in her eyes. “And?” Jack prodded.

Gloria raised her chin, a shaky defiance trying to take hold. And failing.

“And I fell into this abandoned shaft. I found out later that it was an old well that had gone dry.”

Suddenly she was there again, in that hole. The dirt walls threatening to close in on her with every grain of dust that fell. Tears rose to her eyes as she remembered the terror that had gripped her.

“Christina ran for help while my brothers and Sierra talked to me, trying to keep me calm. Christina came back with my mother who’d called the fire department. More and more people kept coming, blocking out the light. It took what felt like forever for them to get me out. I was six at the time,” she whispered, more to herself than to him, “and convinced that I was going to die.”

Gloria caught her lower lip between her teeth as she looked up at him again. “I stopped being fearless that day.”

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