I gulp because this stern atmosphere is scary, and because Whitley must be enormous. It’s so big that we all have separate wings and rooms and suites. It’s like an island floating in the middle of England.
I am on edge because I can see that my grandmother doesn’t like Dare. It’s in her voice, dripping with resentment and distaste. I briefly wonder why, but then put it out of my mind as I make my way back to my giant bedroom. It’s not my business. He’s a step-cousin who I don’t even know. Like my father would say, it’s not my circus, not my monkeys.
In the morning, Sabine wakes me from my sleep with a gentle rap on the door.
“Come with me, child,” she says, her voice like a gnarled piece of driftwood. “We’ve got to go get the pups.”
Excitement leaps in my chest and I charge from the bed, pulling on clothes as I go. A dog. Dogs don’t judge you, they love you no matter what, and they never act like you’re crazy. I can hardly wait to get one of my own.
Finn and I chatter as we ride with Sabine in an old truck, down the road to a neighbor’s. A herd of fat fluffy black puppies surround us when we get out, and it isn’t long before I pick one with big sad eyes, and Finn picks one with a wriggly body and wagging tail.
“They look small now,” Sabine warns us. “But they’ll be bigger than you someday. They’ll have to be carefully trained to be obedient.”
“What should we name them?” Finn wonders aloud as he holds his squirming puppy on the way back to Whitley.
Sabine glances at us. “Their names will be Castor and Pollux. It is fitting.”
I find it interesting that she has already named them, but it doesn’t really matter. Because I have a soft puppy sleeping on my lap and that’s really all I ever wanted. I just didn’t realize that until now.
It isn’t until we’re back at Whitley and in the kitchen feeding our new pets when I think of our cousin.
“Shouldn’t Dare have gotten a puppy, too?” I ask, pausing with my hand on Castor’s head. Sabine shakes her head and looks away.
“No.”
Her answer is so immediate and firm that it puzzles me.
“But why?”
“Because, my child, he doesn’t matter. Now remember what your grandmother said. Children don’t ask questions here.”
It’s the first time that I truly see Dare’s place in this home, and he plays the role of insignificance. I don’t like it. Dare should have the same position as I have. He’s Eleanor’s grandchild, just like me. So why do they treat him like he’s different, like he’s disposable?
It leaves me with a sense of dread and a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Try as I might, that feeling won’t go away.
Finn and I sleep with Castor and Pollux snuggled at our feet, and still, I somehow feel alone for the first time in my life because I’m in a place where a living breathing person has no importance whatsoever.
If it’s Dare today, it might be me tomorrow.
Disposable.
Chapter Five
Whitley Estate
Sussex, England
I dream that I can’t breathe, that something something something is strangling me. I struggle and struggle to take a breath, to move, and I simply can’t. I startle awake to find Castor lying across me, with every ounce of his two-hundred pounds crushing me.
“Ugh, Castor, move,” I mumble because his dog breath is rancid and his slobber is dripping down my neck. He pants harder, and doesn’t budge.
I manage to roll out from under him and I fight hard to remember the little ball of fur that he used to be only one year ago.
“You’re enormous,” I tell him lovingly, patting his giant head. We’d only arrived yesterday and Castor and Pollux seemed to remember us, as though we’d never left. “I didn’t even know a dog could get so big.”