“She’s not my favorite.”
Understatement.
We share a moment, a warm moment, but I shove it away.
I can’t.
I can’t.
Sabine stops in front of double wooden doors.
“This was your mother’s suite,” Sabine tells me. “It’s yours now. Finn’s is across the hall. Dare’s room is across the house.” After she says that, she waits, as if she’s expecting a reaction from me. When she doesn’t get one, she continues. “Dinner will be at seven in the dining room. Be prompt. You should rest now.”
She turns and walks away, shuffling down the hall on tiny feet. Finn ducks into his room, and Dare stares at me, tall and slender.
“Do you want me to stay with you?”
“No.” My answer is immediate and harsh.
He’s startled and he pulls away a bit, staring down at me.
“I just… I need to be alone,” I add.
I’m not strong enough to resist you yet.
Disappointment gleams in his eyes, but to his credit, he doesn’t press me. He swallows his hurt and nods.
“Ok. I’m wiped out, so I’m going to take a nap before dinner. I suggest you do the same. You must be tired.”
I nod because he’s right, I’m utterly exhausted. He’s gone, and I’m left alone in the long quiet hallway.
I take a step toward my bedroom, then another, but for the life of me, I can’t seem to turn the doorknob. Something settles around me, dread, I think, and I just can’t do it.
The look on Eleanor’s face emerges in my head, the way she was examining me, and I can’t breathe. Something crushes me, that dark thing that I felt in the driveway. It feels like it’s here, pushing on me, lapping at me.
I know it doesn’t make any sense.
Something pulls me.
It pulls me right into my mother’s old rooms.
And there, I sit, surrounded by her memories.
Chapter Twenty-Three
My mother’s rooms are as lavish as the rest of the house. There are no childhood posters taped to the walls here, no teenage heart-throbs, no pink phones or plush pillows.
The suite is carefully decorated, with heavy off-white furniture and sage green walls. The bed is massive, covered in thick blankets, all sage green, all soothing.
But it’s not the room of a child, or a teenager, or even a young woman.
It lacks youthful energy.
But I still feel her here.
Somehow.
Sinking onto the bed, I find that I’m surrounded by windows.