“Are you suggesting Sybil wasn’t Judd’s daughter?”
“It would explain the abrupt divorce filing while his kid was recovering from surgery.”
“What’s Mila’s? Does she know?”
“A-positive.”
“Is everything okay?” Mila asked when I came back into the bedroom.
“Not really.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You weren’t supposed to get dressed.”
“I’m hardly dressed, Decker.”
I draped my body across the bed and put my fingers under the hem of her shirt. “No longer naked.”
“I just thought…if someone were to come in.”
“To the bedroom?”
Mila’s cheeks flushed. “I just felt weird.”
I kissed the palm of her hand. “It’s okay. There’s something we need to talk about anyway.”
Mila got off the bed and grabbed her jeans. “I’ll be right back.”
“Wait a minute,” I said when I saw the look on her face. “We aren’t finished, baby. We’re barely getting started.”
She looked into my eyes but didn’t speak.
“I mean it.”
She nodded and left the room, and I felt like the biggest asshole that ever lived. My desire to take things slow had left Mila feeling unwanted, and that was the last thing she should feel.
27
Mila
Tossing the jeans on the bed, I rummaged in my suitcase for a pair of shorts. I was sure I had another clean pair. Given I hadn’t planned on being here very long, I didn’t pack much. Although I really didn’t remember packing at all. Much of the last few days were a blur.
I sat on the end of the bed and put my head in my hands. While Sybil and I never got along, she was still my sister. We’d looked so much alike growing up that people often mistook us for twins, but other than the physical appearance, we’d had almost nothing in common.
If I were asked to describe my sister in three words, the first would be angry. I’d attributed it to my leaving for college shortly after our mother died, but Sybil could’ve gone to college if she’d wanted to. It wasn’t as though our grandfather was in poor health at the time. In fact, he’d only gotten sick a few months before he died.
Sybil had been angry long before that, though. But why? I’d experienced all the same things my younger sister had. Our father had left our mother when we were very young. He went on to make a staggering amount of money, if one could believe the press’ accounting. He’d been featured on the cover of several business magazines and even made the list of one hundred wealthiest men in
the world. Did it bother me that we didn’t share in that wealth? Not really. We’d been happy enough living with our grandfather. It wasn’t as though we’d never had enough to eat.
Happy enough. Had we been? While Sybil had been mostly angry all her life, our mother—for as long as I could remember—had been profoundly sad. I didn’t remember much before the divorce, so I had no idea if that was the cause of her lifelong depression. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but now that I was an adult, I realized the fact that my mother never dated again, as far as I knew, was odd. She’d only been in her early thirties when her marriage ended, yet I never remembered her going on a single date or even expressing an interest in doing so.
Sybil hadn’t done much dating either. I’d never met or heard about anyone my sister referred to as a boyfriend. Was that because she and Adler had been secretly seeing each other? The idea of it made me cringe.
I looked up and saw Decker in the doorway, studying me.
“Whatcha’ thinkin’ about, pretty girl?”