Page 83 of The Sculptor

This doesn’t make sense. None of it does.

I can feel Vance’s weariness drift through the phone when he says, “I think you need to accept that anything could have happened with Jude. Paula, the supposed adoptive mother to Jude, died years after he was born. Knowing Langston, his friends couldn’t be much better than him.” He pauses before he finishes shattering what’s left of my hope. “If she wanted the child but then died, it’s possible her husband jumped ship and left him with the nanny—or anyone for that matter.”

My poor boy, what happened to you?

“How did she die again?” I just can’t let it go. We are closer than we ever were before. It can’t just stop here.

“Um,” Vance hums absently, likely scanning the document before he adds, “it says cardiac arrest.”

Well, that could be from anything. I rake my hands through my hair and start to pace. “And Harrison doesn’t know these people at all? No family or anything?” Now I’m just thinking aloud, vomiting all the questions until something clicks. “What about next of kin on the death certificate?”

“I checked already. Just a brother who is also dead.”

“What in the total fuck?” I yell, allowing my frustration to bleed into the conversation. “Do these people just have bad karma or bad eating habits?”

Vance chuckles. “Well, I’d vote karma, since they are friends with Langston, but the physician in me says it was age and comorbidities that got them in the end. Not everyone has great genes, brother.”

If I had only known before.

If I had the same intuition—the same hope Ray did, maybe I would have looked for him sooner. I could have found his parents when they were still alive.

“We’ll keep looking,” Vance promises, his voice holding a finality to it. “He’s a Potter, and you know all too well that Potters can survive anything.”

I don’t remember what the rest of our call consisted of. I just remember wishing Hal a Merry Christmas and teasing Remington to send me a picture of the stocking with his name on it that he had to open in front of Vance this morning. Then I called Astor and held back tears as I watched him and Keys coo over Tatum, whose face I could barely see under the huge Christmas bow on her head.

But it wasn’t until I finished the call that I sat down on the sofa, feeling the weight of the past twenty minutes settle onto my shoulders. What if I can never give Ray the life she deserves? Maybe I was wrong for loving her all those years ago and threatening the other boys in our school for even looking at her.

I’ve done everything I could to ensure she would always be mine, and look where that’s gotten both of us: Ray, out on the dock—risking a vicious snake crawling up her leg as she experiences yet another awful Christmas alone.

What good life have I truly given her? A son she’s only held once? A home she’s only spent two seasons in?

The only true thing I’ve ever given her was pain.

And I’m so sorry that I can never fix it. No matter how hard I try, I can’t heal the pain I’ve caused. I was the reason she had to run away from home and have the baby in a rundown cabin. If I hadn’t gotten her pregnant at eighteen, she would have never endured the pain of losing a child not only once but twice.

I can’t seem to stop making bad decisions.

Should I have let her have a go at Langston to find Jude on her own?

Something swirls in my stomach, and I know that even if I thought that was true, I couldn’t risk her more pain or bruises on chance.

I also know somewhere deep beyond the pain that there is nothing greater than creating a life with someone you love. And there was never a doubt that I didn’t love Ramsey Ford or the child we created. And that love—that experience—however fleeting, is worth all the pain we’ve endured.

I just wish I could stop it.

I wish we could be like everyone else.

Sometimes, I envy the wicked ones. Their lives seem so simple—so easy. They do well at work, have more children than they need, and when life’s stresses get too much, they jet off to a tropical island for peace and privacy.

I’ve been fortunate in amassing my wealth.

But it hasn’t come easy.

I wasn’t handed a silver spoon because I wasn’t the same as my father.

I didn’t realize why back then, but now, as an adult, I know that the greatest joys in life are free. They aren’t earned—they’re given.

Ray loved me without conditions.

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