“How is she?” I asked.
“Not sure. She seems all right but that could change at any time. I know she didn’t want Max to know anything.”
“Honestly, the guy looked more worried about Finley than freaked out by what Teresa told him.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You sound really tired,” I said.
“I’m beat.” He lifted his dark lashes and stared at me.
I was acutely aware of a slight tremble in my hands and knees. No guy had ever produced this type of reaction in me, and I was starting to feel wholly vulnerable in his presence.
“I was just going to change out of this dress.”
He stared at me. “Leave it on.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to—”
He was across the room before I could finish. “I said leave it on,” his voice was deep and hoarse. His arms went around my waist and he hauled me so hard against his chest, I let out a tiny chirp. He held me tightly against him with one arm while the other hand dropped to my thigh and then slowly his fingers lifted the hem of the short dress up. With one fluid movement, he had my panties around my ankles. I felt all but naked standing in front of him in only the soft summer dress. The cool air in the room swirled around my naked legs and beneath the skirt to my bare skin. He kissed me roughly and then peered down at me.
“All in all, this has been a shitty day. In fact, the only good thing about this whole goddamn day has been you in that dress, Valley.” He kissed my shoulder and I relaxed against him. His rough fingers dragged a tantalizing path up my bare thigh. “I need this, Eden. I need you.”
Chapter 21
The morning after the Teresa disaster, Jude and Cole had returned to work and Finley had slept late. I stayed in my room and read, waiting for her to wake. When she finally did, instead of stopping at my door to burst in, climb on my bed, and tell me what our day’s activities would be she walked past. I hopped over to the door and peered out.
Finley was dressed in gray sweats with no bracelets or other adornments, just a gloomy expression. Some Pig followed behind closely, most likely wondering why breakfast had been skipped.
I followed her downstairs but didn’t say a word, and she didn’t look back to speak to me. A cold knot formed in my chest, and all of Jude’s warnings and predictions bounced around in my head. Still I felt confident that Finley could be easily snapped out of this strange dark mood. By the end of that first day with the other Finley, I realized that I was a completely ignorant fool.
Over the next several days, I watched Finley evolve from a petite force of nature who could light up a room with her energy to a pale, withdrawn girl who hovered around the house like a gloomy mist. Aside from her tiny stature, white blonde hair, and blue eyes, which had lost their luster completely, there was nothing about Finley I recognized. She spent the entire day huddled in a tight, impenetrable ball of silence, speaking more words to her pig than to me. She had few words for her brothers too, and the strain of it was showing heavily on their faces. Her abrupt plummet into depression had brought the entire mood of the house down, and even Jude and I hardly looked at each other. I felt completely helpless and completely out of my depth. There was nothing I could do except sit and hope she would somehow lift out of it.
Jude and Cole seemed to be working extra long hours, and I felt certain that it was purposeful to avoid being home. Several times, they’d argued about whether or not they should call their dad home, but they compromised on just letting him know that she was feeling down. And feeling down was a humongous understatement. Feeling down comes from losing your favorite necklace. Feeling down comes from starting your period the day before the class pool party. Feeling down comes from forgetting the homework you spent two hours on the night before. Finley had long passed feeling down. She seemed to have slipped into a long black tunnel where no light could be seen on either end.
***
A knock on the door roused me from a restless sleep. It was just after six. I shuffled to the door and opened it. Jude was standing in the hallway dressed for work. He stared down at a phone on the palm of his hand. He’d hardly looked me in the eye for the past few days, almost as if he were embarrassed by the whole situation or as if he felt like he’d failed his sister in some way.
“You need a phone,” he said in a tone that was completely foreign and distant. “I put our phone numbers in there. Call if you need us.”
A lump the size of an orange formed in my throat. He spoke to me almost as if we were strangers, and suddenly, I wanted to be far away from this place and back with my kooky but normal family. Finley had not been carrying her phone, and I was sure it was no longer charged. So I had no way to communicate with my family. They had planned to call me with their new number and address the moment they arrived. Now I had no idea where they were or how to reach them and they were no doubt worried about the loss of contact. In that respect, it was hard not be angry at Finley for being so self-absorbed in her own problems that now I was just an employee who was there to keep an eye on her. For the first time since I’d arrived, I felt that she was regretting my presence as much as I was regretting being there.
I responded to Jude with the same distant tone, only I had to make a conscious effort to make it sound that way. “All right.” I took the phone, but as I pulled my hand away, Jude grabbed tightly hold of my wrist. He still hadn’t looked at me. Instead, he stared down at his long, thick fingers holding the frail bones of my wrist.
“You warned me,” I uttered quietly, but the words seemed to echo loudly through the vacant hallway.
He nodded and then pulled me into his arms. He held me for a long time without saying a word and then as quickly as he’d grabbed me, he released me and walked away.
***
Following the same routine as the last several days, Finley emerged from her room around noon still dressed in sweats. I was fairly certain she was sleeping in them. We walked silently downstairs, and I noticed that she didn’t even bother with her routine of tapping the banister.
The housekeeper, Tilly, met us at the bottom landing. “There’s a package for you, Miss King.”
I looked over at Finley, but even news of a package did not unfreeze the permanent frown that now marred her pretty face. I picked up the package that she seemed to determine to ignore and followed her to the couch where she immediately turned on the soap operas she’d been watching all week. I placed the package on the table in front of her.
“Coffee and cereal?” I asked. She was eating only tiny amounts, and cereal seemed to be the one food she would agree to. As usual, she didn’t answer, so I walked into the kitchen to get some. Some Pig followed and I scooped some of his food into his bowl.
We sat there for several hours. Finley stared at the television, and I read a stack of magazines. I’d grown weary of the mundane articles and pages of advertisements. I glanced at the unopened box. “It’s from your dad. Aren’t you curious what’s inside?” I asked hoping to spur her into a conversation.
She shook her head. “Go ahead, open it.”
I pulled off the strip of packing tape. There was a small handwritten card on top. “I’ve heard these herbs are good for when you’re feeling down. Love Dad.” I read it to her but got no reaction. There were several fragrant boxes of expensive looking tea inside, and I lifted them out and looked at them. Now I knew what Jude was talking about. Her dad was in denial. Tea? He thought flowery smelling tea was going to snap his daughter out of a darkness that had swallowed her so completely, it was as if only the shell of Finley existed.