by Tess Oliver
“Nearly dropped dead from a heart attack right then and there.”
“Exactly. That’s because you are a good dad. A good dad would be scared shitless watching his kid ride full speed into the side of a car. It didn’t matter that we’d pulled the bike out of the trash, what mattered was that you were worried that I’d hurt myself.”
Silence surrounded us again and then he spoke. “You know I’m damn proud of you, don’t you, Eden?”
“Yeah, I do. And that’s another reason you’re a great dad.”
The freeway opened up eventually and our crummy van rolled into Beverly Hills looking ridiculously out of place amongst the Corvettes and Porsches. The houses, or more appropriately, the mansions, looked like small cities with dark green lawns and manicured shrubs and trees.
Dad smiled over at me. “We’re almost there. Are you nervous?”
“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t. I just hope they like me.”
Dad held the piece of paper with directions in one hand as he steered the van down a long, shady street. He turned right up another long street lined with purple jacaranda trees.
I took hold of the directions. “What street is this?”
“This is the driveway.”
“Oh.” My mouth went dry and my stomach fluttered as if butterflies were doing an Irish river dance inside of it. We pulled up to massive black gates. In the distance, I could see an imposing mansion that looked more like a series of well-matched buildings rather than a home. The fountain out front looked larger than our entire apartment. “It looks like an English Castle.”
“King is from England originally. A lot of the big names came from Britain.” Dad cranked down the window, leaned out, and pushed the button on the intercom.
“Security,” a deep voice said through the speaker.
“Hey there,” Dad said lamely, “Uh, Eden Saxon is here for an appointment with Miss King.”
There was no further discourse, and the ornate iron gates swung open. Dad drove slowly as if we were driving through a field of land mines. His fingers were white as they gripped the steering wheel. I giggled at the irony.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“On the insanely crowded freeway, you used the top of your knee to drive, and here, on a deserted driveway, you’re gripping the wheel like you’re driving through a blizzard in the Alps.”
He loosened his grip and smiled. “Don’t know why. I guess I just didn’t want to make a mistake.” He leaned forward and glanced up through the windshield. “There are probably cameras all over the place.”
“I think that as long as you’re not doing donuts on the lawn, you’re safe.”
The front doors were made of highly polished dark wood cut in the shape of an arch. I stared at the doors a second and took a deep breath. “Well, here goes nothing.”
Dad leaned across the seats and hugged me. “Remember, call if things don’t work out. I can be back out here in an hour.” He leaned down to get a better view of the house. “Man, is this place something.” His gaze was riveted to the shiny front doors.
“Dad, he’s not home, remember.”
“I know.” He kissed me again.
I reached back and yanked forward my duffle bag. “Love you, Dad.”
Chapter 4
The doors of the mansion were even bigger up close. I stood for a moment gathering my courage and then pressed the red button. I expected a doorbell. Instead, it was another voice.
“Welcome. I will be right out.” I was certain a young girl would open the door, but it was an elderly woman with rosy cheeks and a crisply pressed maid uniform. “Miss Saxon?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Tilly. I’ll let Miss King know you’ve arrived.” She ushered me inside, and while I’d told myself over and over again not to act like a total bumpkin by appearing overwhelmed by it all, the entry made my jaw drop. A smooth sea of white marbled flowed through the room and a glittering chandelier hung over the center of a dark blue floor mosaic. The chandelier was bigger than our van and every crystal had been polished like a diamond. I stood alone in the cavernous entryway feeling dwarfed and completely out of place in my faded jeans. Footsteps sounded behind me and I spun around.
“You must be the new governess,” the girl said, and then apparently noticing the shocked expression on my face, she smiled. “I’m only kidding. I was down in the theater watching Jane Eyre. Of course, if you were Jane then that would make me the little French girl and that would make my dad, Mr. Rochester, which is creepy because he’s old. Although his latest girlfriend is only twenty-five or something like that.”
She was extraordinarily petite with white blonde hair cut in a long shag, but as small as she was, she was definitely the type of girl who could walk into a crowded room and catch everyone’s attention. Two orange cats swirled around her legs as she grinned up at me.
“Oh my God, you’re so tall. One of those lucky girls who has legs up to her teeth— as my dad would say.” She walked over and shook my hand. “I’m Finley Tate King. Yeah, I know it’s a boy’s name.” Tiny as she was, she swung my duffle up onto her shoulder like a lumberjack. “The brilliant, highly skilled medical professional who performed the ultrasound on my mom told her she was ninety-nine percent sure I was going to be a boy.” Her ultrasound tale continued as she motioned with her head for me to follow. “I guess you have to give her credit. At least she didn’t say a hundred percent. Anyhow, my mom had already named me. She told my dad that even in the womb she’d come to know me as Finley, so she refused to change the name.”
I took in the posh decor as I followed her up an incredible staircase that was lined with paintings and sculptures that looked straight out of a Paris museum.
Finley made a point of touching two of the sculptures on the head and then she stopped and tapped the top of the banister three times. “You’ll be staying two doors down from me. The bedrooms are all left once you get to the top of the stairs. Your room is the third door on the right.” She smiled at me over my duffle. “Just in case you get lost, which is pretty easy to do in twenty thousand square feet.” She stopped long enough to point out a door. “This is Cole’s room. You definitely don’t want to go in there.”
“I guess he’d be mad, huh?”
“No.” Her blue eyes looked serious beneath the heavy black make-up and fringe of white blonde bangs. “Dirty socks. Stinks like hell in there.”
I smiled. “Mental note taken.” We continued down the long hallway. “I take it Cole is your brother?”
“Half-brother.” She looked back at me. “Cole, Jude, and I all have different mothers. We were all part of my dad’s procreation period.”
“He had a period?”
She broke into wild laughter and then fanned her face to stop. I was feeling rather stupid. “No, like Picasso’s blue period. No tampons involved. His ‘procreation period’ came right after his ‘captivated by cocaine’ period and right before his ‘grappling with middle age’ period. Which, believe me, he’s still grappling with. I think the only difference between his ‘middle age’ period and the ‘captivated by cocaine’ period is that instead of packing coke in his suitcase, he’s packing ibuprofen.”
“Captivated by cocaine?”
We stopped at a room and she threw open the door. “My dad thinks captivated is a much happier word than addiction.”
“He has a point.” We stepped inside the room, and I had to mentally remind myself to close my mouth. A large four poster bed, complete with silky canopy and more pillows than I would know what to do with, sat in the center of a room that rivaled the school cafeteria in size. “Getting lost in the house— hell, I’m going to get lost in that bed.”
“That’s cute. I like that.” Finley looked up at me. “You sure are beautiful. I’ve always wanted to be tall and statuesque like my mom. She was a model. But I wa
s six weeks premature, and I just never grew much.”
“Do you see her a lot?” Talking about her mom sent a twinge of homesickness through me.
“Nah, she’s living in Venice or something like that. My dad got full custody of each of us, so we grew up with him. It helps to have a lot of money for good lawyers. But I think the three of us would have chosen to stay with him regardless. Jude’s the oldest. He’s twenty-two. His mother was an actress, but she died in a car accident. And Cole sees his mother occasionally. She used to be Dad’s accountant.” She sighed. “Oh my gosh, just tell me to shut up when I drone on too much.”
“There’s been no droning at all. I find it fascinating.”
“So what are your parents like?” She reached for my hand. Her fingers were covered with rings, and her slim wrists were weighed down by bangles. “Do you live with your mom or dad?”
“Both actually.”
“Wow, you don’t hear that very often.”
“I know. That’s kind of sad. I live with my parents and my two little sisters. My parents had me when they were teenagers, so they’re pretty young. My dad is absolutely obsessed with your dad.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear and displayed a long row of tiny gold hoops running down one ear. “Let me guess, mid-thirties, played in a band, still wears long hair.”
“Yes. Holy crap, do you know him?”
“No. That is just the usual profile of Dad’s man groupies.”
I pressed my hand to my chest. “Thank God. I just had a nightmarish vision of my dad standing outside of your house with his Black Thunder t-shirt holding a big piece of cardboard painted with the words ‘I love you, man’.”
She laughed. “Hey, you’d be amazed what people do to get into see my dad. One lady even parachuted onto the grounds. She was completely naked, but her body was painted with the Black Thunder black wing logo.”
“What did your dad do?”
“That’s the sad thing about it. She’d gone to all that trouble but hadn’t bothered to find out if my dad was even home. He was in Europe on tour. Jude felt sorry for her though. He handed her a signed picture before the cops put her in the car.”
A wet nose on the back of my hand startled me, and I looked down expecting to see a dog. A black and white pig with a gold hoop in one ear wiggled his snout at me.
“That’s Some Pig,” Finley said.
“He sure is.”
“No, I mean that’s his name, Some Pig. He was rescued from a horrid farmer who didn’t feed him enough. That’s why he is so small. His real name was Sheldon, like the T.V. character, because he’s highly intelligent and obsessive-compulsive, like me.” She leaned closer. “But worse,” she whispered as if her pig could understand.
“Can I pet him?”
“He’d be pissed if you didn’t.”
I reached down and stroked the top of his head. “I’ve never touched a real pig. I remember seeing some on a field trip to the farm, but they didn’t let us touch them. The whole time the guy was standing in the pen, telling us all kinds of information about pigs. But I wasn’t paying attention. I just kept thinking—when are we going to pet them? But we never got to touch any of the animals. It was the lamest field trip ever.” I leaned down and ran my fingers down his back. His hair was thick and rough. “How did he end up being called Some Pig?”
“One day, I made the grave mistake of letting Sheldon, the pig, not the television character, watch Charlotte’s Web with me. After that his mood changed. He stayed in his straw bed, and he wouldn’t eat, not even nachos. Those are his favorite. So a pet psychic came and had a session with him. She told us to change his name to Some Pig and it worked.”
“There’s such thing as a pet psychic?”
“Yeah, they’re in high demand in this neighborhood. Lots of neurotic pets.” She headed out of the room. “Are you hungry?”
“A little bit.”
“Great. Let’s go down to the kitchen. You can meet Jude. He’s an ass most of the time, but I love him.”
“And does he also suffer from dirty sock syndrome?”
“Yeah, after all, he’s a guy. But Jude likes to sleep in the pool house, so his room stays pretty stink free.”
Some Pig and I followed Finley down the long flight of richly carpeted stairs. She touched two different sculptures on the way down but once again tapped the banister three times at the bottom. She must have sensed me noticing her little ritual. She looked back at me over her shoulder. “Some people pray to keep bad stuff from happening. I tap the banister. I personally think my method is less involved.” A steady drumbeat rolled down the hallway to the left of the landing. “Sounds like Jude’s in the gym.”
“There’s a gym in your house?”
“Among other things.”
She had short legs and I had absurdly long ones, but I had to hurry to keep up with her frantic pace. The pig had to nearly gallop on his stumpy legs. We reached a door that vibrated with loud music.
“Stay,” Finley told Some Pig and she reached for the knob. The sound system would have made my dad drool. It nearly blasted me off my feet.
A long, hardwood floor stretched out beneath a field of exercise equipment and weight machines. The room had a lower ceiling than the other rooms and half of the walls were covered in mirrors. It seemed deserted as I followed Finley around two large weight machines to the farthest corner. Then through the pounding music, I heard the rhythmic sound of grunting interspersed with fists smacking a punching bag. The last mirror held the reflection of a shirtless guy with broad shoulders and a muscular back. Sweat dripped down a large, intricate tattoo of Black Thunder’s famous black wing logo. The punching bag bounced with each hit.
Finley walked over to a panel of buttons on the wall and turned down the volume just low enough to stop the reverberation in the room.
Wrapped hands steadied the punching bag, and her brother peered around it. “Shit, Doolittle, why’d you turn that down? You threw off my rhythm.” Then he saw me and stepped out from behind the bag. Green eyes assessed me coldly as he dragged the gray beanie from his head. His short black hair stood up all over his head. Like the smooth muscles of his chest and stomach, his hair was drenched with sweat. He reached up and wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist.
“This is the girl Dad hired to keep me company this summer. She’s from the valley.”
His mouth tilted up in a sardonic grin. “I guess it’s true. You can buy friends.”
“Oh, shut up, Jude.” Finley motioned down to his foot and for the first time I noticed the large, official looking cuff around his ankle. “What did the lawyer say? When does it come off?”
He stared down at it for a moment as if he’d forgotten it was there and then lifted his piercing green gaze. He didn’t seem pleased that she’d brought it up in mixed company. “In a week. When does yours come off?”
“You’re such an ass,” Finley said, and though I hadn’t known her long I wasn’t imagining the hurt in her tone.
There was no apology in his expression as he turned his attention to me. He stared at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. “So does Valley have a name?”
“I’m Eden,” I told him grudgingly.
“Eden?” his mocking grin returned. “I hear they have some pretty wild apples down there.”
“Only a true snake would know,” Finley interjected.
“So how long is your hired companion staying?”
“She’s staying the summer. So get used to it.” Finley took hold of my hand, and I realized that even in the short amount of time, I’d already grown fond of her. She pulled me around to leave.
“I think Dad has lost his fucking mind,” Jude called to us as we walked away. “And take the dogs with you. I’m going to take a shower.”
Finley’s whistle startled me but not as much as the sudden appear
ance of two lion-sized dogs trailing along with us. I scooted closer to Finley.
“They’re harmless,” Finley said. “Unless you’re a wolf. They’re Irish wolfhounds.”
The dogs trotted past us like small horses and stopped to sniff Some Pig who sat obediently in the hallway waiting for us. I gasped in terror for the poor pig, but he didn’t seem to take notice of the massive prey animals. Then they lifted their large snouts and trotted ahead of us down the hall.
“What are their names?” I asked, hoping to get my mind off of the fact that her brother hated me already.
“Butch and Sundance,” Finley replied. “At first, I’d named them Leo and Julius but then one day I made the mistake of—”
“Let me guess. You let them watch the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and they got mopey, so you had to call the psychic.”
“Nope. We were watching Bonnie and Clyde. Only they couldn’t both be Clyde and neither wanted to be Bonnie, so they settled on Butch and Sundance.” We turned the corner and landed in yet another stretch of hallway. “I either have to stop letting my pets hang out in the theater room or do a better job at naming them.”
“Or better yet, you could bring in the psychic before you name them.”
“Good idea.”
We turned the corner again and landed in a kitchen that glistened with shiny granite counter tops and stainless steel you could see your reflection in. There was even a small sitting area with a wide screen television and plush green couches. The dogs stretched out on the rugs in front of the couches, and Some Pig curled up next to them.
The house was truly magnificent. Every fixture sparkled. Every rug looked lush enough to sleep on. Every piece of furniture looked expensive and imported. But aside from the small herd of cool pets, the whole place lacked the magical element that made a house feel like a home. As luxurious as it was, it felt unfriendly and cold. Just like Finley’s brother, Jude.
“I don’t eat critters of any kind.” Finley reached for a cupboard handle. The door swung open and revealed a huge refrigerator stocked with food and beer. “Are grilled cheese sandwiches all right? Sorry, but that’s all I really know how to make.”
