Serial by Lily White, Jaden Wilkes Read Free Book Online

was. He had a golf thing, from what I could remember.
    “Jude,” she said after we shared another giggle over my father’s latest hobby attempt, cheese making this time. “Did you hear about your friend, what is his name again, Anthony? The one who has ties to Seattle shipping?”
    “That would be Marcus,” I replied and popped a cherry tomato into my mouth. I rolled it gently on my tongue, loosened it up, and sheered it in half with my sharp teeth. The juice squirted down the back of my throat and almost made my eyes water with the intensity of flavor.
    That was part of my problem, part of why I thought I was different, why I killed. I felt too much, I tasted too much, and even my sense of smell was heightened compared to normal. I was starting to believe I might be the next step on our evolutionary ladder, the next rung, just a little farther ahead than the rest.
    Let’s face it; killing remorselessly did have certain biological advantages. It allowed me the freedom to make choices based on benefit to my position over brute emotional reactions to a situation at hand.
    “Yes, yes, Marcus. The red headed one. Anyhow, Susanne, down at the golf club was saying he’s engaged now. Can you imagine that?”
    “He is, and yes, I can imagine it. It must be something rather pleasant one would assume,” I replied and reached for another tomato.
    “I wish you wouldn’t act so indifferent about this,” she said with a frown, her perfectly sculpted eyebrows dropped in the centre quite comically. “Your father and I worry about you, you’ll be thirty in a few months and have never had a steady girl. Why, you’ve never even brought a girl around for dinner.”
    It’s the same conversation almost weekly. My parents fretted uncontrollably that the family line would die out with me.
    It was ridiculous, as there were fucking Hollisters in almost every major business venture in the US, but they weren’t directly sprung from the loins of good old mom and dad.
    “I do have somebody,” I said quietly and devoured another tomato as she processed this information.
    “You do? Oh Jude, that’s wonderful, wait until I tell your father,” she said with breathless excitement. “Please, tell me all about her.”
    “Well, she’s not from a great background,” I said, the only honest thing I could really say about all this, “and that’s why I haven’t brought her to meet you. She’s very self conscious and is terrified you might judge her because of it.”
    “Oh poo,” my mother replied, “tell that girl that I didn’t exactly come from a great family. And at this point we’ll pretty much accept anybody you bring home, we’d be delighted to meet her.”
    My mother’s idea of ‘not a great family’ was a net worth in the millions instead of the billions, but I didn’t point this out.
    “I will bring her over the moment she’s ready,” I said and reached for my mimosa. My head was pounding again and I needed a nap. “How’s the fundraiser coming along?” I asked, knowing if I needed to deflect my mother off a topic that was the one that would do it. She hosted the annual children’s hospital fundraising event and took it very seriously. It was probably the only job she’d ever had, and I will say she did very well at it.
    She launched into stories about catering and performers and all the associated drama, and I allowed myself to imagine her sitting here with us, laughing and talking to my mother. She might be wearing a light summer dress, her skin smooth and white, and her hair thick and healthy. She would have her hand on my knee as she told a funny story about something we’d done during the week.
    She would bring me in from being an outlier and place me comfortably in the middle, where every other normal person resides.
     
    ***
     
    Tuesday morning was a fucking nightmare. I slept in; I hadn’t been sleeping well at all and had woken up in a cold sweat around one in the morning. I couldn’t go back to