jo_mama

i don't think gideon would be saying "i love you" - he's got serious hang-ups on the word and he's too controled to just let that slip out.  i'm more apt to think he's saying something to himself.  he's a victum of sexual abuse who's never saught help - it would make sense if every act of sex (especially new ones) brought up unwanted images/feelings that he might have to coach himself through.

"trouble" by taylor swift

i don't think the biggest problem on his end is to trust her - i think his problem is possessiveness.  she is not a girl that does what she's told, and that drives him crazy.  at this point he would have plenty of reason not to trust her - she kisses ex boyfriends, sees his brother after he warned her not to, she runs away constantly.  the trust problem is all hers.

i think that the snippet about dancing in the club - her saying she is "dancing like a single woman" is a sign that they are still keeping the appearence of a breakup in entwined.  he's not getting jealous because he trusts her, now,

calling the police never makes for a good story.  just because that is what people should do does not mean that's what happens.

So Ms Magdalene

I doubt she'll be starting any trouble in EWY. Her hopes and dreams of being with Gideon are long gone..! What I don't understand is Eva say's Christopher " knew her body well" so they must have been sleeping together for a while, why would she take that chance, not even knowing if Christopher would use that against her for revenge with Gideon..!

Clearly the girl is dumb...!

i think she is sleeping with christopher in a desperate attempt to be close to gideon.  or maybe she understand how gideon feels about christopher, and an affair with him might make gideon want to protect maggie, or realize that he wants her?  desperate girls come up with the craziest stuff, so really almost any explaination could be.

i thought that he returned the ring to her on monday only because she left the ring for him on friday.  he would have had to opportunity to run into her all weekend, so monday was the first chance he had.  it's a simple explaination.  i think he trusts eva at this point (as we hear him say in the security office the next day (i think?).  the only thing she does that really stirs him is visiting lucas' office, and i don't think that is lack of trust in her as opposed to lucas.  i don't think the article about brett would phase him, as he surely knew of her lunch date with him before then.  trust is going to be a fun color on these 2 in the next book.

didn't eva already ask him about why he has majority interest?  it was in the bath, i think, on their weekend.  i could be wrong.  but he didn't answer her in either case.

 

the premise that he just 'acquired' a majority share is hard for me to believe.  why would the majority share be available?  if it was vidal's company he had to make the decision to allow his holding to go below 50%.  additionally, gideon is not merely holding his shares and waiting to ruin the business at his discretion - he's active in the vidal record business.  he knows how's signed under their label, and their bands know well enough that he's in charge by looking at him.

And I love how Angus' loyalty and protectiveness extends to Eva. Clearly, he can see Eva means the world to Gideon and that he's never loved a woman the way he loves her. And that for all the rockiness of the relationship, Eva's good for Gideon in many way. I'll bet that when Gideon and Eva were apart, Angus felt miserable about it too.

angus is just a good guy.  remember that he offered corinne a ride, just because he ran into her. 

a confidentiality clause could prevent a dr lucas from being able to speak about gideon.

why is it assumed that the vidals payed people off?  i really don't think there's enough money to get a doctor to ignore sexual abuse of a child.  and even if there were - who would they be protecting?  the only reason to cover up would be is vidal was the abuser, and then what good is it when the child himself cannot be paid off?  he was 11, 12?  it's not like he's too young to remember, so they just paint their kid off as crazy the rest of his life and hope he never talks to anyone?  it's all a little much for me. 

 

i don't think they paid to cover anything up - they simply did not believe him.  there must be another reason the doctors didn't find any evidence of abuse - maybe because he wasn't abused in any way that would leave marks?  it would be very plausible that the abuse came down to "he said/he said" and the troubled youth lost out to the reputable adult.

   

Hi Jo-mama,

I too am curious to see how much of a role Magdalene will play in the next book. I really wonder what kind of background or information Magdalene could provide that would make her a vital character or one worthy of us dissecting her (just kidding)? Gideon himself stated that Magdalene was nothing more than a family friend and as such I don't see him confiding his deepest darkest secrets to her? I also don't know whether Magdalene would have been privy to the abuse that Gideon suffered? It isn't clear whether Magdalene was friends with Christopher in the early days or whether this was something that developed later on in adulthood when perhaps desperation finally set in and Magdalene realized that she didn' t stand a chance of winning Gideon's heart or affections.

The answers to those questions will help to determine whether the reader will pity poor Magdalene or absolutely hate her....for reasons yet to be revealed? How many more days until June 4th? What do you think?

magdalene is a family friend, but their mothers are best friends.  best friends, at the affluent level that these women would be, are going to know everything.  maybe magdalene still isn't privy to as much, but there is certainly opportunity for sylvia to take it that direction.

OK, I'll bite first Megan. We can have a lot of fun with this thread hashing the whole Vidal family.

 

Important to re-read pages 319-321 of Reflected. This is the scene where Gideon finally starts talking about the sexual abuse. If we're to believe every word tells Eva is the truth this time, the actual abuser is a male doctoral student who accompanied a therapist the Vidals hired to treat Gideon for anger issues.

 

What led to the conversation? Eva told him she wasn't coming back. She'd had it with the empty promises and the shutting out and the silences and the secrets. " ... you've never let me in." were her final words on the subject. They sat there in silence for a little bit. Then Gideon started spilling his guts.

 

She didn't get the whole truth, only pieces of it. But I have to believe that every piece she did hear was the truth. Gideon wouldn't dare tell any more lies. He was desperate. "If I lose you Eva," he said hoarsely, "I have nothing."

i've said it before and i will say it again - gideon does not specifically say it was the doctoral candidate.  he just says he was left alone with 'him' a lot.  it would be fair to assume that it was the doctoral candidate, but also plausible that it was some other male who was around.

 

i accept only 3 possiblities from our current pool of charecters - vidal, the doc lucas, or this unnamed doctoral candidate.  i could be convinced into any of these camps.  and i also accept the 4th option, which is that it was somebody we have not met or spoke of, yet, or may never (as he might have been 'taken care of' in some respect).  the only 2 people i will not accept would be christopher and angus, who were present in gideon's life then and far too unlikely as suspects.

although i am curious about raul's appearence at that time.  i'm really starting to like angus

Good morning, GiGi. Those of us in Camp Gideon Did It would conclude, based on what Detective Graves told Eva, that Nathan did die somewhere between 6-9 p.m. while the party was in progress.

Per Graves,: At some point during the party, the hotel was cleared out for nearly an hour because of a small fire in the kitchen of the hotel restaurant. Gideon was seen walking around outside talking to people, such as firefighters. But the scene was chaotic. Somewhere in the middle of this, she claimed to Eva, he slipped away, went to Nathan's hotel (15 minutes away on foot) and stabbed him once through the heart. Nathan's body was discovered sometime Friday morning (Graves told Eva and her Dad this Friday night at her apartment.)

 

In a huge percentage of the time, when someone dies in a hotel room, it's housekeeping that finds the body. Depending upon the hotel's check-out schedule, housekeeping starts work mid-late morning.

 

And this is key: Graves did not ask Eva and Gideon where they were "last evening." She asked them if they could tell her where they were "yesterday." She was casting a very wide net about their movements prior to Friday morning.

Unless a murder is witnessed at the time it happens, a medical examiner cannot say exactly when the victim died. Don't believe what you see on TV dramas where a coroner on the stand says "the victim died at such-and-such time." As a former journalist who covered the criminal courts, I can say that in real life, the best estimate that can be given is a two-hour window. And this is only under ideal circumstances where a body is found within about 24 hours of death. The two means that medical examiners most rely on when they have a "fresh" corpse is how much the body's interior has cooled (via means of taking the temperature of the liver) and the degree of rigor mortis present. The longer a body goes undiscovered, the greater the margin of error, because there are many outside factors that can affect how quickly the body goes entirely cold, how soon rigor mortis begins and ends (it does wear off) and how soon/quickly a body begins to decompose.

So at an absolute bare minimum to cover the two-hour wiggle room, Gideon needs his alibi to run uninterrupted two hours on either side of that party: 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. To be extra cautious (and Gideon was very methodical) he ought to have had an uninterrupted alibi starting earlier in the afternoon (a cinch at work) and continuing through the middle of the night. Being with Corrine until the wee hours of the morning after the party would accomplish two things: give him an unbreakable timeline and fool the cops into thinking he was now in a sexual relationship with Corrine. Given her status as his former fiancé, this would indicate a serious reconciliation between the two. I think this is why he picked Corrine over Magdalene as his cover. If it ever got as far as the cops questioning Corrine, she could say at a bare minimum that Gideon was with her all night, even if all they did was talk.

Gideon was methodical about arranging things so Eva had an uninterrupted alibi starting that afternoon and continuing all night. Because he's been pressuring her, she didn't leave the office for lunch. He had Angus pick her up right after work and drive her to the therapy appointment with Dr. Petersen, then drive her home. And when she arrived home, her roommate was there, because Gideon had arranged for Cary to be moved home from the hospital the day before. Naturally, Eva would stay in for the night, because her roommate/best friend was still in such rough shape he was being cared for by a private nurse.

 

In fact, Eva's alibi continued through early the next morning. Gideon knew she was due to pick up her Dad, who was taking a red-eye flight to  La Guardia. Gideon had a car waiting for her at her place around 5 a.m. And not Angus driving either. This is the first time we see his other driver, Raul. So where was Angus, the only person Gideon ever trusted to drive Eva? Maybe picking up Gideon from wherever he spent the night? Mind you, Eva refused to accept Raul's ride, but he could, if ever questioned, confirmed what time she left her place Friday morning.

 

Yes, GiGi, I've got it bad with all my theories. I'm enjoying myself in these threads as part of re-reading the stories in light of the snippets and while awaiting June 4.

i think it is interesting that you are applying real-wrorld knowledge to a piece of fiction.  as you said, we hear all the time on court dramas that coroners pinpoint time of death quite exactly - why, then, would we expect anything else from a book?  sylvia's a smart gal, but i won't assume she has the same firsthand knowledge that you do.

Even with the meds, Gideon was still leery of sleeping in the same bed as Eva, because he'd attacked her in his sleep. He insisted that for now they sleep (literally sleep) apart. Eva asked him if he meant different beds or different apartments. His response was different beds. Eva's got her own bedroom at his place. She's got a guest room at her's. (To my knowledge, he hasn't used her guest room but she has used her bed at his place.)

right, they were already sleeping apart.  after the second attack he insisted they sleep in seperate beds from then on, medication or no.

I think the fact Gideon found out so quickly it had been Nathan who attacked Cary as proof he was being followed by Gideon's people.

 

Cary was jumped from behind outside around the corner from a nightclub Friday night by someone with a bat. "Took me straight down and whaled on me a few times. Never got a chance to defend myself." Why did Nathan take off after only a few blows if he was in such a rage? My guess: someone chased him off, and that someone was the tail Gideon had on him. A tail would be watching from a short distance, not up close.

 

Gideon and Eva were at the concert at the time. Then came the fight in the alley between Gideon and Brett. Followed soon after by the sex-fueled fight Gideon and Eva had in the limo, which at the time was en-route to North Carolina. They arrived early the next day. Gideon made sure both his cell phone and her's were sent back north in the limo. And he deliberately made sure the house did not have a working phone nor Internet connection.

 

They got back to Eva's apartment just before midnight Sunday. That's when Gideon found out first; he checked his messages and found Stanton and Monica called. Early Monday morning, before work, Gideon stopped back at the hospital to see Eva and he was as tender as ever. As he walked away, he took a call to his cell phone.

 

Sylvia said Gideon's plan involving "leaving" Eva did not involve the North Carolina weekend. So it had to start after they got back. If you read closely, you can see things changed Monday. Instead of going back to the hospital after work, he took Corrine out to dinner and made sure their picture was taken. Tuesday morning before work was when Eva figured out something had changed, that Gideon had neither called nor texted her cell for 24 hours.

 

I'm sure Gideon's people were trying to reach him Friday. But he wasn't answering his phone. And no one could get in touch with him all weekend. I can't see his people leaving any sort of voice mails containing information of such a incredibly sensitive nature: that the guy he was paying them to tail committed serious assault and battery. They'd have kept calling until he answered his phone. Monday morning makes the most sense for when they finally did get him to answer a call.

it's a reach.  nathan may not have been out to kill cary in the first place.  and if gideon's people wanted to reach him on friday they need only contact the head of their team, angus, who was driving the car.  gideon did realize nathan's involvement early monday, but it could be a guess at that point, or perhaps that his security team had all weekend to look into it.

Because of Gideon's need to control  and because of his intense reaction when Eva told him what Nathan did to her..

 

I believe that Gideon had Nathan followed from day one.

i think cary's beating is irefutible proof to the contrary.  sylvia would have thrown us a clue if gideon's security team had witnessed the attack.  maybe they would have intervined at some point, or gideon would have received a phone call en route to the beach, or any of 100 different things.  she has given us no reason to think he was tailing nathan, ever.  i can't be on board with storyline that doesn't exist.

Angus is the only adult from Gideon's childhood with whom he's close. He started out driving Gideon to school when he was still a kid. Gideon hired him away from Christopher Vidal Sr. as soon as he was old enough to do so (and wealthy enough too, but we know Gideon started accumulating his fortune as a young man.) And Gideon trusts Angus so much that he entrusted Angus to protect the person who means everything in the world to Gideon: Eva.

 

Angus had to have done something monumental for him when Gideon was young to earn such trust. Remember, Gideon is a man with very serious trust issues, so serious that those issues kept driving Eva away and ultimately caused her end the relationship. My theory of the day: Angus was the only adult who had the courage to speak out that Gideon was being abused. The red flag went up not because Gideon said something to his parents, but rather, Angus did. And Angus remained the only person in that house who believed Gideon even after his own family concluded he was lying because he was messed up and desperate for attention. To this day, his mother still denies anything happened.

 

Near the end of Reflected, Gideon finally began to reveal some details to Eva about what happened to him as a child. I'm certain that in Entwined, he'll continue to talk more with Eva about his abuse past and about his family, then and now. Certainly, Eva has questions she wants answers to, such as why did Gideon gain financial control of his stepfather's business.

 

He shared only a few pieces of the story as he sat there in the car with Eva. But we have to assume that every word of what he did say was true. The only reason he was finally revealing such closely-held secrets to Eva was he at last believed she had ended things for good. She made it clear she would no longer tolerate him refusing to be honest. She told him point blank she'd already begun moving on with her life, a life that no longer included him. He became desperate that he'd lost her. And so he began to talk. 

 

A summary of what Gideon did reveal to Eva during that crucial conversation:

• The abuser was a male doctoral candidate tagging along with a therapist, a woman, the Vidals originally hired to treat Gideon for anger issues. Gideon's anger issues were so bad that his younger half-brother, Christopher Jr., was starting to imitate his brother by throwing violent tantrums too. 
• Christopher was five at the time. Doing the math, Gideon would be somewhere between the ages of 10-12.
• The therapist was supposed to be treating Gideon, but she ended up instead spending her time with Gideon's mother, who was in the midst of a difficult pregnancy (carrying Ireland) and stressed with parenting two out of control boys (Gideon and Christopher).
• Gideon increasingly was left alone with this doctoral candidate, and that's when the man started abusing him.
• The behavior Gideon described started out as the man telling Gideon he needed to learn how to in order to relieve stress (this is "grooming" behavior). Then the man told Gideon he was doing it "wrong" and he began to "teach" Gideon how to do it the "right" way by touching him (now we're at the level of molestation.) And that every single time, the man forced Gideon to come so that the man could justify Gideon "wanted" it (a common means of keeping young victims from revealing abuse, brainwashing them into believing they're guilty).
• At that point in the conversation, Eva had heard enough. She climbed out of her seat in the car and into Gideon's lap, holding him close and comforting him by shushing him and telling him he didn't need to say more. So Gideon didn't get into any of the things that happened next. But we can guess from his violent nightmares Eva witnessed, (moans of pain and even during one nightmare, him crying out "it hurts!") that forcible penetration of Gideon came next.

What I really hope we learn in Entwined, as Gideon continues to trust Eva, is he'll talk about some of things that did come next:

• How did the red flag go up?
• Who were the two pediatricians Elizabeth Vidal consulted to examine him?
• What came next when his mother concluded he was lying. Did the abuser continue to have access to Gideon?
• When did the abuse finally end?
• How did the rest of his childhood and then his teens unfold?
• How soon into young adulthood did he begin extracting revenge against his family by cutting them off (i.e. rarely if ever seeing them and refusing to step foot in the house again)?
• Why did his revenge include gaining financial control of the Vidal family business?
• The full role Dr. Lucas, a pediatrician, played? Sylvia has told us he was not the abuser. Gideon has told Eva two scraps of info: that Lucas alienated him from his family, and Gideon sought revenge by seducing Lucas' wife, getting her to fall in love with him, then dumping her and sending her back to her husband.
• Most important of all: where is Gideon's abuser today, and what has Gideon done to get revenge against him?

i believe your 4th point here is inferred, but not a fact based on what gideon has said.

 

i think we're all in agreement, then, that angus is something special.

i'm wondering what angus and gideon might have been through together.  during the gideon/brett fight angus seemed completely comfortable abandoning gideon there, telling eva something like "he knows when to stop".  i still don't understand why they had to leave - there was no danger for the rest of them.

that is exactly why i think he never had nathan followed.  i don't have any reason to think gideon did have nathan followed, other than considering the story as real rather than fictional.  sure, if one of the richest guys in the country was being blackmailed he could surely hire somebody to track him.  but here, there's no reason to draw that conclusion.  actually, as you said, many reasons to believe to the contrary.

Hi Jo-mama,

I agree with your posting. I guess what will remain to be seen is if Angus knew about Gideon’s childhood abuse, if/when he found out about it and if he did anything about it. I think that those are all really important questions that will help the reader understand the Angus/Gideon relationship more. What do you think?

i would love to find out that angus discovered gideon's abuse and protected him.  we know that is his role, so it is no far reach to assume he played it.  he is the only person from his family life that gideon brought into his current life, and there must be a reason for that.

i do not think gideon was tailing nathan.  while that does seem like a good idea, now, i think his focus was protecting eva and not following nathan.  if he knew where nathan was all the time he would not have been so angry when she went out to lunch or didn't wait for his car to take her to work.  that week is when we are introduced to raul, which is evidence of gideon beefing up his security around eva.

Wow, you are on to something about Magdalene possibly being important in the next book. Not only has she know Gideon for a long time, she's known Gideon's mother for a very long time. Still does. Elizabeth Vidal's best friend is Magdalene's mother. It might be foreshadowing that Magdalene tattles to Eva when it's convenient for her. She certainly tattled an awful lot about Corrine. What else might she be willing to reveal to Eva? Especially because Magdalene has every reason to believe Corrine's on top now. And it was always Corrine who was Magdalene's chief rival. If she could stir things up in the Gideon/Corrine department by getting Eva involved in something concerning him, it would be to Magdalene's benefit. The more trouble she can cause in the Eva-Gideon-Corrine love triangle, the better. That's exactly what she did do the night of the dinner at the Waldorf and the follow-up phone call she made to Eva the next morning

it's something that bothers me in all the speculation about gideon's abuse - because there are several allies of his that were there then and still in his life in a positive way.  magdalene and angus both would have had opportunity to know of the abuse, and either believe him or not.  magdalene would have been a child, herself, and possible unaware. 

 

but angus - i think he might have been a champion for gideon.  maybe he's a champion for eva, now, too.

silly me for not editing my profile.  geez.

 

i'm not sure what to think of magdalene.  she's a family friend of gideon's, which puts her in a position of being the girl he "thinks of like a sister".  we all know that girl.  , i've been that girl.  pathetically fallen for a guy who sees their relationship as friendly - sigh.  that girl, unlike corinne's charecter, will settle for whatever relationship she can get with gideon, and if that means she has to be besties with his current fling (be it corrine or eva) she'll do that.  poor thing is screwing his brother for crying out loud!  if that's not taking what she can get i don't know what is.  i don't want to think she's devious. i think she will be incredibly important, though, since she has known gideon for so long.