Strangely Normal - By Tess Oliver Page 0,9

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 was 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