27. Jude
JUDE
I stare at the jigsaw on my parents’ kitchen table as I try to find a piece to fit in.
Mel and I have been back for over a week, and as much as I’ve tried to return to normal—been to work, out for drinks with colleagues, dinner with friends, visits to my parents—everything feels different now.
It’s all just… less.
“Dr. Glassberg’s daughter is going with her fiancé,” my father says, his emphasis on ‘fiancé’.
“Lovely,” I mutter.
My mother looks up, meeting my eyes as my father walks across the room, his attention fixed on the pile of mail he’s sorting through.
“Callum’s looking forward to it. It’ll be good for his career. I want to introduce him to Dr. Henton who’s heading up the cardiothoracic research in Sweden. Ground-breaking, it really is,” he says.
“I’m sure Jude has more fun things to do with her time than come to another medical awards ceremony with her parents, Roy,” my mother says, blowing the steam off her coffee in her seat opposite me.
Thank you, I mouth to her.
She’s been the only one out of the two of them who’s been supportive since I came home and told them Callum had been unfaithful.
I didn’t expect hugs and condolences from my to-the-point father, but I was hoping for a little sympathy.
Maybe I should have been more graphic in my depiction of Callum’s pre-marital activities, because my father seemed happy to brush it off as a ‘bit of harmless flirting’.
Yeah, because flirting involves having your dick buried inside another woman.
Callum seems happy to keep my father’s knowledge of the entire incident capped, due to their close working relationship. A better man would have owned up to his actions, surely? Taken the punishment for the crime and dealt with it.
I twist my lips as Slade barrages his way to the front of my brain, like he does multiple times a day.
He got dealt a different punishment. One that involved being outcast from his family and forced to live in the shadows. But knowing him, like I think I did, he’d have rather gone to jail.
I still don’t believe what he told me was true. I can’t believe it.
I didn’t fall in love with a murderer.
Google has been my best friend since I got home.
I’ve read every article I could find on his family, from business ones to the obituaries for his grandparents.
There’s not a lot of personal information to go on, but the things I was able to find—after Mel helped me stalk out his old social media—do not point to a killer.
He was an insanely attractive young man with a penchant for extreme sports and a love for his family and friends.
A man who smiled a hell of a lot.
Before.
Reading the comments from his friends on his socials was the strangest. All those words written to someone beyond the grave, when I know he’s alive.
I wonder where he went. If he’s by the coast, living on another boat. If he’s still making his carvings. If he’s found someone else. A woman who this time he won’t forget if she were to leave.
I scowl at the thought, but my timing’s terrible, and my father hones in on it like a tracker hound.
“I expect you to be there, Jude,” he instructs.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I reply with a forced smile.
My mother looks at me in concern as he leaves the room. “He only wants what’s best for you.”
“Yeah, if what’s best includes Callum and a lifetime of being a surgeon’s wife, second best to being a surgeon myself, of course,” I mutter with a hint of bitterness.
“He doesn’t show his feelings well. But he loves you and wants you to be happy, Jude.”
I blow out a breath. “I always feel like a huge disappointment to him.”
Mom squeezes my hand. “You’re not. He’s proud of you, even if he struggles to show it.”
“Mm,” I murmur, unconvinced.
“Are you okay? You haven’t been yourself since you got home. Is it Callum?”
I meet her worried eyes, unable to lie to her, but also unable to tell her the complete truth.
“No, I’ve barely thought about him, apart from the logistics of what to do with the apartment.” Truth. “I think it’s post vacation blues.” Understatement of the year.
“I understand. That place was beautiful. Magical.”
“You’ve been there?”
“A few years ago. Remember I took a trip at the time your father was on a conference in Chicago?”
I nod, remembering Mom traveling alone like she does every year around the same date. But I thought she’d gone to visit her sister in San Francisco.
“It was a tough time…” She exhales. “While I was away I did a lot of thinking. I was contemplating asking your father for a divorce.”
“What?”
I was not expecting that to come out of her mouth. My mother’s always played the dutiful surgeon’s wife role perfectly.
“He spent all his time working, and I… felt invisible, I suppose. It scared your father to know it had come to that. He had no idea how unhappy I was, and things have been much better since. You know he works hard, but we make time for one another now too. Marriage is hard, Jude. And it needs work from both sides. Your father might not be perfect, but he’s never looked at another woman since the day we met.
It’s medical research papers I have to compete with for his attention. ”
“I had no idea.”
She smiles softly. “Because you’re our daughter, and we didn’t want you to have any idea. It was for us to sort out. Now… leave your father to me. You deal with Callum. Whatever you decide to do, I’ll be here.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
There’s no way I want Callum back, but I’ve been so caught up keeping myself busy, so I don’t think about Slade, that I haven’t seen him yet.
And I haven’t told him there’s no way we’re getting back together, no matter how long he waits, or how much space he thinks he’s giving me by staying with his friend.
It’s over and has been since the first time he cheated on me—whenever that actually was.
The only tears I shed were ones of embarrassment and self-pity. I haven’t grieved my relationship with Cal. And that tells me a lot.
Because I’ve cried every damn day, multiple times, since I ran from Slade. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t left him that night. Would he still have left without saying goodbye? Would I have woken alone in his bed to find him gone?
Or would he have told me everything? The complete truth.
Everything in my gut tells me I’m right and not just delusional, lust drunk on what I want to believe.
Slade Beaufort isn’t a murderer.
Fifth Avenue is as busy as a designer wedding gown sample sale, and equally as chaotic. I have to swerve out of the way to avoid getting bowled into by a guy rushing past, cell phone glued to his ear.
I weave through the sea of bodies on my way to meet Mel. She upheld her end of the bargain and applied for a promotion. And now she has an interview, so we’re heading to lunch to celebrate.
A sleek car pulls up a few meters ahead, its driver exiting to hold the rear door open. I swerve to avoid another guy who isn’t looking where he’s going and almost crash straight into the suited man climbing out of the vehicle.
“Sorry.” I glance at him with an apologetic smile, but my blood runs cold as piercing blue eyes penetrate mine for the briefest fraction of a second before he looks away.
“It’s fine,” their owner clips dismissively like he doesn’t have either the time or interest in conversing with strangers on the street.
I stare at his profile. At the laser-sharp jaw. The Roman nose. The dark silky hair.
He buttons his impeccable suit jacket with one hand, nods to his driver, then sidesteps me, striding off toward a giant gold door, which is opened with a flourish by a uniformed doorman.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Beaufort,” the doorman greets as the man disappears inside.
I stand frozen, eyes inching over the glass windows and the sumptuous displays of sparkling jewels—each displayed like prized artwork. My mouth goes dry as I read the gold lettering on the front of the building.
Beaufort Diamonds.
Of course it fucking is.
Of all the places I had to walk by today, it had to be here. And it had to be at the precise moment that Sullivan Beaufort was exiting his fancy chauffeur-driven car.
He looks so much like him.
My breath bubbles in my throat, making a weird emotional squeaking sound.
“Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I blink a few times, unable to properly focus on the redhead who’s stopped on the sidewalk to look at me with growing uncertainty.
“Do you feel faint?” she asks.
“Um… I’m fine,” I manage to rasp, before swallowing thickly.
I look down at the small girl with her, dressed in a bunny onesie. She stares up at me with familiar, big, round blue eyes. She’s got a small sticker stuck to her chest, a cartoon fruit with the words, ‘You hold the kiwi to my heart’.
“Thank you,” I add, bringing my eyes back to the woman.
She smiles at me kindly. “You should come inside. We can get you some water.”
“I’m good, honestly. I’m meeting a friend for lunch. Thank you, though.”
“Okay.” She smiles again before looking down at the little girl. “Come on, Molly. Let’s go visit Daddy. We can tell him all about our morning with Auntie Sin.”
I stare after the two of them, my heart thundering as they disappear inside the store, holding hands.
“Jesus,” I mutter.
I can’t resist walking over to the store’s giant windows and peering inside. A giant circular fish tank is in the center of the store, and behind it on the wall is a giant poster of a beautiful blonde dripping in diamond jewelry.
Sinclair Beaufort.
Slade’s sister.
The back of my neck grows hot, but I can’t peel my eyes away.
Morbid fascination has me standing much longer than I should, spying on the inside of the store.
The redhead and little girl have disappeared, and so has Sullivan Beaufort.
But the interior still screams Beaufort.
Their family is in every item of lavish jewelry, every sumptuous velvet display cushion, every polished inch of sparkling glass in that huge tank.
They’re all over it. It is them. The Beauforts.
Only, one member of their family is missing. Gone without a trace.
I turn away, bile burning my throat as his glaring absence hits me like a shot to the temple.
This is where Slade belonged.
That little girl who looked so much like him is his niece.
He’s missing all of it.
This is the family who told the world he was dead, thinking they were saving him. When I know the man they left alone isn’t saved, but rather a lost soul.
One I can’t forget about as easily as they have, no matter how hard I try.