Cole

by Tess Oliver

  Finley flew off the couch and ran out of the room. Jude raced after her and I followed.

  By the time we’d reached her room, Finley had already crawled under her quilt. She was tucked into a tight ball making her look impossibly tiny in the giant bed. Her white-blonde crown of hair peeked out from the comforter.

  Jude stretched out on the bed next to her looking weary and as if this was the last thing he needed tonight. I sat on a chair in the room in case they needed me, but with Jude, she was in the most capable hands of all.

  “Come on, Doolittle,” he said, “who gives a shit about any of those people. And if Max can’t deal with it then fuck him.”

  Her thin arm and petite hand popped up out of the quilt, and she waved him silently away.

  A faint smile crossed his face, and I realized that I was falling harder for the guy every minute. “You want me to leave, Fin Fin?”

  She put her thumb up in the air and then pulled her arm back under the quilt. Even though she was mostly hidden, the humorous gestures of her hand seemed reassuring. The adrenaline drained from my body. It seemed that she was handling the rotten end to an otherwise crappy evening with poise, and I was relieved. Jude looked equally relieved.

  He lifted the end of her quilt and slid beneath the cover. “Are you still alive under here?”

  Finley giggled. “This is a definite invasion of space.”

  I tiptoed out of the door and was thrilled to get to my room. It had been such a long evening, and it’d nearly ended in disaster. I closed the door behind me and walked to the bathroom to wash my face and get ready for bed.

  The pretty blue dressed sparkled back at me in the mirror. It was easily the nicest dress I’d ever worn, but it had been wasted on a less than successful evening. I swept my long hair up into a ponytail and started the faucet just as a light knock sounded on my door.

  “Valley, it’s me,” Jude said quietly.

  I walked to the door and opened it. The strain of the entire evening showed on his face. He stepped inside, shut the door, and walked over to the chair. He sat down hard, slumped back, and stretched his long legs out in front of him.

  “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 quickl
y 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.

  “Do you want me to brew you a cup?” I asked.

  She shook her head. And that was the end of the conversation.

  After six hours of a soap opera marathon and two bowls of cereal, Finley stretched out on the couch and fell asleep. I covered her with a blanket and went back upstairs. There was a computer in my room that I’d barely used because I’d never had internet at home and hardly knew where to go online. I decided to do a little research into depression. There wasn’t much else to do.

  One hour into my search, I realized you could talk yourself into any disease or malady if you read enough about it. And the volume of information floating around on depression was confusing, overwhelming and, well, depressing.

  I drifted around in the bottomless world of information for awhile. It made me drowsy enough that I got up and climbed onto the bed to take a nap. I’d just fallen asleep when a slamming door jarred me awake again. Heavy footsteps plodded down the hallway and staircase.

  I threw my legs over the side of the bed, fished for my sandals, and headed downstairs. Deep, angry voices sparked off the walls of the hallway leading to the kitchen area where Finley had been fast asleep on the couch. Obviously, she wasn’t sleeping any longer.

  “I don’t know why the fuck you’re blaming me for this.” I’d rarely heard Cole angry, and it sounded strange to my ears.

  “Max is your friend. You should have warned him or told him to stay the hell away if it was going to be too much for him to handle,” Jude answered.

  A breath of fear caught in my throat, and I picked up my pace and sped toward the kitchen. I could only assume that Finley had left the kitchen area. There was no way they were having this conversation in her presence.

  Jude slammed a beer bottle on the counter just as I reached the kitchen. “You and dad are great pretenders, but I’m tired of it. I’m tired of tiptoeing around her. I’m tired of living on the edge of an exploding crisis.” Jude had not noticed me step into the room. My gaze shot to the couch. Only the back of it was visible from the kitchen, and my heart sank like a lead ball in my chest.

  “Do you think it doesn’t affect me?” Cole asked sharply.

  “You ignore it most of the time.” I stepped into Jude’s line of vision, but he was so emotionally charged, seeing me didn’t stop his venting. “She needs help, professional help—”

  Not knowing what else to do, I waved my arm wildly over my head. Cole and Jude looked at me, taking real notice of me for the first time. It finally seemed to dawn on Jude that my presence meant Finley was near. His stunned gaze shot to the hallway behind me. Confusion crossed his face as I shook my head. Then I looked over at the couch. Some Pig trotted around to the back of it and stood with his snout in the air.

  A dread laden silence filled from the room.

  “Sonavabitch,” Jude muttered. Color drained from his face.

  The couch jolted and the blanket flew over the back as Finley leapt from her hiding spot and ran for the hallway. Jude lunged to stop her, but she screamed and threw her fists at him. Her fingernails caught his cheek and four drops of blood rolled down his face. Cole followed Finley.

  Jude stood silently and watched the blood drip a pattern on his shirt.

  “Jude,” I said quietly.

  He didn’t respond or look up. His long, dark lashes dropped as he closed his eyes. The agony in his face was too much to bear. Tears rolled down my cheeks to match the blood streaming down his face. He’d been Finley’s rock. He’d been her life support when things went haywire. I could feel his pain deep in the pit of my stomach.

  I walked closer to him, but the energy around him told me there was nothing I could do or say to ease his agony.

  “Let me clean those scratches,” I said in a barely audible voice.

  He turned and nearly kicked the back door off its hinges as he stormed out of the house.

  I sat down on the couch and patted Some Pig on the head. Even he was suffering from all this. Moments later Cole returned. His efforts had been short-lived and most likely with the usual lack of effort. But it was hard to blame him in a situation where no amount of effort brought any results.

  “She’s tucked herself under her comforter,” he said with a definite degree of disgust. And it was hard not to feel a large degree of sympathy for both her brothers at this point. Even though Finley was the one suffering, it was not without some harsh suffering on their part as well.

  “Is she sleeping?” I asked.

  He opened the fridge and stuck his head inside. “Yeah, I’m sure she’ll just cry herself to sleep.” He emerged with a carton of milk which he opened, sniffed, and then dumped the contents in the sink. “Where did Jude go?”

  “He left.”

  “Thought he might. That was brutal. Finley is going to take this hard, but I think Jude will take it harder.” Cole grabbed a box of crackers from the pantry. “I was going to bring Max with me tonight, but to tell the truth, he seems kind of freaked out about everything. I don’t think he realized how much stuff Finley was dealing with. I know he likes her, but no one likes to take on someone else’s baggage. Everyone’s got their own shit to wade through.” He ate a handful of crackers and then threw the box on the counter. Some Pig snuffled up the crumbs Cole had dropped. “This has got to be hard on you, you spoiled piece of ham. Hell, just mentioning ham makes me realize I’m friggin’ starved.” He looked at me. “I know you two have been eating nothing but cereal these past couple of days. You’ve got to be hungry too.”

  “Little bit.”

  “Then get your sweatshirt and I’ll drive you to this great burger place down the street. If there’s no line, we can eat and be back in an hour.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to leave Finley.”

  “She’s sleeping. Besides, she’s not alone. I’ll let Tilly know we’re coming right back.” He shot me a sympathetic smile. “I know you’ve been stuck in here watching soaps all day. Finley always has the same routin
e for her down times. I’m sure you could use an hour away from here.”

  As tempting as a great burger and time away sounded, I was hesitant. “Let me go check on Finley first. I need to take Some Pig up anyhow. He’s probably tired.”

  Cole nodded but didn’t look too pleased. “Hurry up though. I’m hungry.”

  I climbed the stairs with Some Pig following close behind. Up until the last few days, I’d enjoyed every minute with Finley. I’d looked forward to each day knowing that it would be filled with at least three major bouts of laughter. But now I dreaded seeing her. I loathed seeing this side of her. I had no idea what to say to her, and the connection that had come so instantly and fervently from the beginning had been lost. That bothered me most of all. I knocked but there was no response.

  Some Pig had a litter box and bed of straw in a giant closet in Finley’s bedroom. I looked down at him and just like a little kid, he seemed to be doing what my mom had always referred to as the pee pee dance. I opened the door quietly, and the pig trotted to his little room and disappeared inside.

  Finley looked tiny in her big bed buried beneath the layers of plush blankets. I tiptoed over and gently pulled back the cover. Her face was red from crying, but she slept soundly. It was amazing how much sleep she needed in this state. I tucked the blanket in around her, turned off the light, and left the room.

  Hopefully, a long night of sleep would ease the pain of what had happened with Jude.

  ***

  The burger joint in my neighborhood had wobbly plastic chairs, food wrapped in paper, and that distinctive thin coating of grease on everything, including the napkin dispenser. In Cole’s neighborhood, the burger joint was more of a boutique than a joint. The ten dollar burgers were delivered in a basket to the rustic, but elegant, pine booths. A linen napkin cradled the basket and the soda arrived in a sparkling wine glass. But after the first few bites it occurred to me that the greasy dive served better burgers.