Chapter 39
CHAPTER 39
CHAOS
Omar
“This is great.” I am sincerely impressed with the scope and size of the abandoned shopping mall he’s walking me through.
“I think so, too. Let’s get back to the office, and we can talk numbers if you’re ready to move forward.”
I nod. “What about your dad?”
“He said he had to stop at the house. Probably to check on my mom.”
Alarm bells ring in my head. I pull my phone out to text Jules. “Leave now.”
He takes his sunglasses off and wipes his eyes like he’s tired, oblivious to my panic. “She’s got agoraphobia. It’s a damn shame because she used to be…man, larger than life. She traveled all over the world and was the head of the division that sourced our fragrances in the nineties. When I was a kid, I had nannies and barely saw her. And then, when I was old enough to not need her anymore, she suddenly was locked in her room and couldn’t leave the house.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know. I was maybe eighteen. So like 2011. I can’t believe it’s been that long.”
“Listen, do you mind if we postpone the meeting till?—”
A loud ring interrupts me, and he pulls his phone out of a holster in his jacket, and for a second, I think it’s a gun.
I try to call Jules while he’s talking, but his conversation draws my attention and raises my panic. “What? Who? Shit. Fuck. Okay, I’m on my way back.”
“What is it?”
“There was an intruder. Someone broke into my mother’s room.”
The surge of panic makes my head spin. What the hell? “Is your mother okay?”
“I dunno. My dad said he got there just as they were running out. They got away, but he’s called the police, and they’re looking for them.”
Thank fuck she got away.
“Can I drop you somewhere? I’ve got to get back to the house and see what the hell is going on.”
I wave off the offer. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll catch an Uber. Or call Jules. I’ll be fine. You go ahead.”
I call Jules like a madman for a solid two minutes. Then I order an Uber to take me back to my house, and in the five minutes it takes for him to arrive, I call her at least fifty times. Her phone goes straight to voicemail.
“Jules, I swear to God, if you don’t call me back, and you’re fine when I see you, I’m going to fucking spank you. I swear. And not in the way you like.” I leave a voicemail and try to think.
My phone rings, and it’s her. “Beat, what the hell?—”
“Omar, I messed up.” She’s whispering, but her panic is palpable.
Mine even more so. “What happened? Where are you? I’ll come get you.”
“I don’t know where. I’m in our car, and the police just got here. There’s three of them, and I don’t think?—”
“Please step out of the vehicle,” an angry male voice booms from behind her.
“Break…oh my God. Listen. She’s my fucking mother . I love you so much. I’m so sorry.”
Then the line goes dead.
“Mr. Royale isn’t pressing charges.” A cool as a cucumber looking Remington Wilde walks out of the door marked No Entry.
“They better not be, motherfuckers. I swear to God, Remi?—”
“Listen, if you’re going to live here, you should know that I’m not a criminal lawyer. I came down because you’re a friend, but I’m going to give you someone else’s number?—”
“We don’t need a criminal lawyer. She didn’t break into anything, and if they so much as think of saying she did again, I don’t care what it means or what it costs, I will make sure they don’t have another truly happy day in their lives again.”
Remi sighs, hands on his hips, and shakes his head. “Again, I’ll send you the number for my friend who practices criminal law.”
“Whatever. Can I see her?”
“Yes. She’s being processed, but you can go back and sit with her in a minute.”
“Thank you, Remi. I’m sorry to pull you away from work.”
“It’s all right. You guys come to dinner on Friday at our place. Tyson and Dina will be there, and she’s itching to meet Jules.”
“We’ll do our best.”
He pats my shoulder. “I’m sorry this didn’t pan out. We can talk about that more on Friday. Go get your girl. She’s holding up, but she looks like she’s about to shatter.”
Fuck. My gut clenches. She’s been back there for hours now.
He knocks on the door and waves up at a small camera at the top of it, and with a buzz, it unlocks.
I walk down a too brightly lit hallway and past the first door and stop when I see Jules sitting at a table through the window next to it. She’s curled her body into itself, her hands are tucked between her knees, and her head is bent. It kills me to see my Beat so flat and out of tune.
I open the door slowly.
She looks up then, and her eyes are exactly what Remi described. Shattered.
“She’s my mother. She thought I killed him. And she left me to face it on my own. She didn’t want me to ever find her.”
I’m so angry I don’t know what to do with myself. But I push it aside and focus on her. “Baby, I’m so sorry.” I move to stand in front of her chair and drop to my haunches so she doesn’t have to look up at me.
She shakes her head. “I didn’t do anything to her. I have the whole thing recorded and as soon as they give me my phone, I can prove it. I just… I can’t believe she called the police.”
“She didn’t. Her husband did.”
Her face creases with confusion. “What? How? He wasn’t in the house when I left.”
“I don’t know. His statement says he chased you out.”
“He’s lying. When I get my phone back, I can prove it. I forgot to stop recording until I pulled my phone out to call you after the police showed up. But…why would he make that up?”
“I don’t know Jules. I don’t understand any of this.” I’ve never felt more helpless in my life. “We’ll get to the bottom of it. But first, tell me what happened in her room. She said she’s your mother? How is that possible?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know, but I believe her.”
“But…Noah is my age. His sister Rachel, from what I remember, is ten years younger than him. Which would make her two years younger than you. So I get that she wouldn’t have a clue. But if his mother had a baby when he was eight years old, he’d absolutely remember.”
“Can you hold me. Please? I’m so cold,” she asks. Her voice is a hollow version of its normally animated cadence. I’m livid. But I’ll focus on that later.
I sit in the chair next to hers and pat my knee. “Of course, come on.”
She climbs onto my lap, curls up cross-legged, rests her head on my shoulder, and tells me how Nora Royale ended up in love with a candlemaker from the West Midlands. “She used to travel throughout the potteries for the company business. They met, and she said it was an instant attraction and that she fell head over heels. She left her family for a year and stayed with him. She said her husband doesn’t know, and she hopes he never has to. She said he’d been so good to her and didn’t deserve the pain it would cause.”
“I can’t believe this.” This is mind-blowing.
“She said it was an escape from a life she felt trapped in. Her oldest child had been shipped off to boarding school. She had a career she loved, but her husband worked all the time, and she was lonely.”
“She left him?”
She nods. “She said when she got pregnant several months into their relationship was when she started having regrets about leaving her husband. She said…” Her voice trembles, and I wish I could throttle this woman. “She said she got very depressed after I was born and didn’t bond with me. Couldn’t look at me. She missed her son and husband so desperately and wanted to leave. Her husband agreed to let her come home, but she couldn’t tell him about me, so she signed away her parental rights. My father was angry and begged her to stay. For my sake. She couldn’t. But she agreed to look after him and me for as long as he needed. She set up the shell corporation and used it to send him money every month. They never spoke again. She knew nothing of me until a couple of months after he died when she said something made her type his name in her browser’s search bar. The first result of the search was an article about his death.”
“And the daughter who’d been arrested for killing him,” I add with disgust.
“Yes. She was torn by her guilt and regret. She became depressed, anxious, terrified of going anywhere lest she wreak havoc on someone else’s life. She used to leave her room. Now she only does so at holidays. She said her husband had been through enough. That her children had suffered enough.”
“What about your suffering? I’m so fucking sorry she hurt you.”
She sighs heavily. “I can’t cry, Omar. Not for her. But for my father…and how much she hurt him. And how he hid it from me so I wouldn’t know she didn’t want me. I think back now, to all the times he talked about her and how he made me believe she died giving birth to me. And now I realize he was telling the truth.”
“Oh, Jules. I’m so sorry.” I feel ten different things at once, anger most of all, but I’m saving it for the people who did this to her.
“I’m not. My dad was such a great parent. He learned how to do my hair. He took me bra shopping and bought my maxi pads and taught me how to cook, and fish, and make candles, and how to love and forgive and survive. I didn’t miss a thing. I didn’t need her then, and I don’t need her now.”
I know she means it, but the hurt in her voice is unmistakable. “No you don’t.”
“The worst part of this, honestly, is that we’re back to square one. We came all this way, and we don’t have anything to take back with us. Nothing that will get them to reopen my case.”
“So this is…”
“Salt in the wound. I wasn’t looking for my mother. But knowing I had one like her who is such a coward does make it sting even more.”
“We’ll never stop looking. There’s more to go on.”
“They may be dead ends.” Her lack of optimism kills me.
“They won’t be. Someone set your father’s shop on fire with you inside. You weren’t meant to survive either. We’ll go back to England, and we’ll keep looking.”
“But what about your life here? You have family and friends and a community of people that love and care about you. You have that beautiful house and your sister and her family, and your dad. He needs you. I don’t want to take that from you.”
“Jules, all you’ve ever taken from me are sadness, loneliness, and confusion. I know you love it here, so do I. But I won’t live anywhere that you’re not. We have the house in Brixton—we did that together. We can be happy there. Your candlemaking shop awaits.”
She sighs.“I want to change my name back. My father gave it to me. Even though he called me Jewel. But he said I was the jewel in his crown, and I changed it because I wanted to start over and I—oh God.” She swallows audibly. “I haven’t been to see him. They wouldn’t let me go to his funeral. And then, when I got out, I couldn’t bear to go there after I’d admitted to taking his life. But I miss him so much, Omar.”
“I know. I know. I’m sorry. But you are not alone. And you won’t be again. We’ll face everything together.”
I’m a man of my word, I keep my promises, and these I’ll keep to her, too.