Finch.

I am eating dinner in Norah’s brick house with Jacob, Louis, and William as well as Norah’s fiancé and a man I hate more than anything in this whole world.
I don’t know how I am so composed but I am. I don’t know how I will make it a forty four more days like this. I hear scratching forks on dinner plates and it hurts. I keep looking at Matthew as if at any moment he will look back with a nasty smirk on his face. I swear it’s going to happen.
Then I hear a scream, just the most gruesome scream I’ve ever heard.
I drop my fork and it lands on the white china. I get out of the chair and run to the little bedroom where Eleanor has been sleeping.
She’s crying and wide eyed and her blues eyes are liquid as she stares at me. She’s like a child, her arms stretched out towards me. I take her in my arms and she burrows into me.
“He’s here,” she is whispering.
“Yes.”
“I heard his voice. It’s quiet, but he was talking.”
“What did he say?”
“You can lay her down, follow me.”
“But that happened a few hours ago, Birdie,” I continue to whisper.
“I know. I wasn’t really asleep. But after awhile I just got so scared. I felt like I was going mad, knowing he was here and being awake the whole time. I just couldn’t talk to him yet. I needed you.”
“It’s alright, I’m here.”
I hear footsteps coming down the hall and I pull Ellie tighter.
“Are you alright Eleanor?” Norah asks. Ellie raises her head and nods.
“I just had a bad dream,” she replies.
“Oh. Well, if you’d like to join us for dinner you can,” Norah says.
Ellie forces a small smile and pulls away from me, then walks to Norah in the doorway, and takes her hand.
“You’re very pretty Norah,” Ellie says. Norah smiles back at her and talks to her the whole way out to the kitchen. I sit back down and watch Ellie very closely. She smiles at everyone, avoiding Matthew Fletcher’s eyes. I can almost hear her heart hammering in her chest.
Matthew is watching her and I wish to break his hands. As Ellie sits I take her hands in mine under the table.
Ellie takes small portions of food and then daintily eats, barely chewing it seems. She’s so quiet.
“Are you feeling better now Eleanor?” Matthew asks from across the table.
I don’t know what to expect. Now that she is forced to speak to him, face to face.
She does just what I never would have guessed she’d do.
“Oh, I’m fine now thank you. It was just a dream,” she says, and smiles at him.
It isn’t what she said or what she did. It is the way she did it.
Her answer seemed to have some sort of second meaning, which I take to be that she dreamed of him, perhaps. Her smile is wicked, like she is planning and thinking all the time.
I can only imagine what she is thinking, though I’d like to say I know her best.
Though as she speaks, and smiles with malice, I feel her squeeze my hand.
I know she still needs my help, and still will for forty four days.