Page 90 of Riches and Romance

“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’tbondwith me. Couldn’tlookat 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 saidsomethingmade 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 agreatparent. 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.

CHAPTER 40

LUCKY PEOPLE

Jules

“This is bullshit.”I toss the police report onto the dining room table.

Omar picks it up and scans it. “So she wasn’t screaming for help?”

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