Cole devoured his in minutes, and I handed him half of mine. “Here. It’s way too much burger for me.”
“You sure?” The sandwich was halfway to his mouth.
“Positive.”
“I don’t know how you girls exist on such tiny amounts of food.” He plowed it into his mouth. The evening’s events had definitely not upset his appetite. He wiped the pristine linen napkin across his mouth. “So I guess you and Jude are a thing.”
His comment caught me off guard, and I wasn’t sure how to respond. Especially because I really had no idea if we were a thing. Jude’s attitude toward me seemed to have changed as drastically as his sister’s spirits.
“We’re not really a thing,” I finally said, and realized my words were depressingly true. As much as I would have liked there to be a thing, I’d gotten myself into something much more complex than I’d imagined. The rocky and unfulfilling relationship I’d had with Chandler at school had been pretty straightforward. Fairly early on I’d discovered Chandler wanted to be with me just as long as no one of importance knew about it. At first, I’d been willing to accept it because I’d had a crush on the guy, and who doesn’t want to be with the most popular guy in school? But my heart was never at risk with Chandler. Deep down, I’d known it, and it’d been easy to let him go. But with Jude, my usual confidence, the usual defenses I put up around my heart had disintegrated with his first kiss. I’d known from the beginning that nothing about the relationship was good or solid, but I’d let myself fall for him.
Cole gulped back the last of his cola. “I don’t know about that. I think it’s a thing to my brother.”
Of course, I desperately wanted to ask him why he thought so, but then I’d never thought of Cole as someone who was good at reading other people’s feelings. His thoughts seemed mostly centered around Cole. I decided to change the subject because this one was making my already bleak mood worse.
“Cole, don’t you think you should let your dad know that things are getting bad?”
He leaned back against the seat. “Yeah, probably. I guess Jude and I have been putting it off because Dad usually blames us when Finley’s upset. Then he comes back with his entourage, and it only causes more chaos.”
“First of all, I like your dad, but there can’t be anything more unfair than him blaming you both for Finley’s depression. She needs some professional help and a doctor.”
He picked at the fries in his basket but this topic seemed to have thrown a curve in his otherwise seemingly endless hunger. “I think my dad has had so many problems with drugs through the years, even with prescription stuff, he thinks they’re all bad now.”
“But he still drinks.”
He chuckled. “I know, ironic, isn’t it?”
“Couldn’t you convince your dad to come home without his people this one time? Finley adores him, and he might be just what she needs to bring her out of this.”
It was rare to see Cole deep in thought, but he seemed to be considering my suggestion. “You might be right. I’ll talk to Jude about it and see what he thinks.”
As we slid out of the booth, Cole checked his phone. “Huh, there are three missed calls from Jude.” He dialed Jude. “He’s not answering.”
I’d left the phone Jude had given me on my nightstand.
Cole looked back at me and both our thoughts could not have been plainer if they’d been floating around our heads in bold print. The hamburger did a full leap and somersault in my stomach as we raced out the door to the truck.
Cole raced up the street toward his house. My fingers wrapped tightly around the arm rest in the car as my intuition told me the worst had happened. Tension and dread pulsated around Cole too. We spotted the flashing red lights long before we reached the security gates.
My hands were shaking and the blood had drained from my head as his tires screeched up the long driveway to the mansion. A fire truck, police car, and ambulance were blocking the curved driveway. A gurney was just being pushed into the back of the ambulance.
Cole slammed the truck into park and we jumped out. Jude appeared suddenly around the back of the ambulance, looking pale white and in shock. As soon as he saw us, rage added some color back to his face.
“Where the fuck have you two been?” he said. The expression he shot me nearly dropped me to my knees in anguish. Jude blamed me for this.
“What happened?” Cole asked.
“Finley swallowed a bunch of dad’s sleeping pills.”
“Is she all right?” Cole asked.
“I don’t know. They’re taking her to pump her stomach right now. I called Dad. He’s on his way. Why’d you leave her alone?” Again his question was aimed directly toward me. Cole did not jump to my defense, and all I could do is cry. Jude spun around. “I’m going in the ambulance. Follow in the truck.”
Through a flood of tears, I stumbled behind Cole to the car and collapsed into the front seat. I slumped down into a fog of despair, wondering if all this was truly happening. At first the summer job had seemed like a dream come true. It was a way to make money, get a taste of independence, and I couldn’t deny the fun of the luxurious lifestyle, something that was completely out of my range of reality. But it had quickly slid into a heartbreaking nightmare. The shocking reality of the scope of Finley’s problems was only the half of it. I’d fallen for Jude, and now, he’d shown me with no question for misinterpretation that I meant nothing to him. If I had, he would never have looked and spoken to me the way he had. Now I wanted nothing more that to be away from this job and this family.
Cole hadn’t said a word, and it was better that way. I was just as angry at him for not saying anything in my defense. But the person I was most ashamed of was me. I’d let Finley down. I’d failed at my job. Even if it was a job that was way out my skill level, I’d failed miserably and there was nothing I hated more than that.
Finley had already been wheeled inside by the time we reached the emergency room entrance. Jude had followed her into the ward. Because he was family, Cole was allowed past the double doors, but I had to stay in the waiting room.
My limbs felt heavy, and my head throbbed from crying as I lowered myself into a waiting room chair. There were pleasant paintings on the wall, and someone had coordinated a color scheme of rose and blue with fake flower arrangements and furniture upholstery. The last time I’d been in a waiting room was when Sophie was three and had fallen and cracked her chin open. She’d needed twelve stitches and she’d bled so much I was certain she would die from it. I remember sitting, holding my dad’s hand, and feeling sick to my stomach with worry. And I remember hating the cold, dreary, and crowded waiting room. We’d had no money or medical insurance, and Mom had held a cloth against Sophie’s chin while Dad drove us across town through irritating traffic to the county hospital. With the amount of blood covering Mom and Sophie’s clothes, I was certain they’d rush them right through the door and to a doctor. But at a county hospital, they took the most life threatening injuries first, and that meant gunshot wounds. There seemed to be a lot of them that day, and we’d waited anxiously for them to help my little sister. It was one of the worst days in my memory, and yet, it had been nothing compared to this day. Jude had been so busy chastising me, he’d left us with little information. I had no idea what kind of shape Finley was in.
Sitting there, with my arms crossed tightly against my churning stomach and a bleak bitter feeling flooding chest, I suddenly knew how badly Finley had been feeling these past few days. Even when things had sunk to their absolute worst, and my family and I had spent several weeks living in our car, I hadn’t experienced this sensation of complete and utter hopelessness. It drained every ounce of energy from me, and I wanted to roll off into a dark hole or fall into a deep, endless sleep . . . just like Finley had wanted.