His Horizon - Con Riley Page 0,95
Trevor firsthand. “There are still too many variables for him to be anywhere near accurate.” Rob stayed silent but his arms tightened around him as Jude continued. “We don’t know exactly when this wreckage washed up. It could have been right after…” His swallow was a dry click. “Or it could have been months later, and Trevor said he’d need as close a date as possible along with a last known location.” That alone was impossible. Suddenly, tiredness overwhelmed him, the postcard loose now in his hold, Jude unresisting as Rob took it from him to scan the writing closely while frowning. Jude didn’t argue either when Rob steered him upstairs, Lou asleep next to a wide-awake Marc in their parents’ old room. Marc switched places without comment, leaving Jude to lie next to his sister while dawn lit the horizon visible through his parents’ window with a warm blush.
“No. None of that,” Rob said, drawing the curtains. He said, “Close your eyes, fish face,” very softly, and Jude did.
He closed his eyes and let hope go as sleep slowly took him.
Jude woke at the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside his mum and dad’s room, Louise’s side of the mattress vacant. She was outside, he realised. He heard her say, “I do hope you enjoy your stay with us at the New Anchor,” to someone.
Jesus.
Their first guests of the summer, here right when he felt least able to put on a brave face.
He rolled over to face the wall rather than people he should welcome only to realise that one of the maps plotting his parents’ route was missing. He didn’t blame Louise for taking it down. It rubbed in how off course his initial search had been, wreckage found so far from any of the ports featuring one of their blue pushpins. He’d have ripped that map down too if she hadn’t got to it first. Ripped it down and torn it into a thousand pieces to scatter where the waves churned, white-tipped, outside the harbour.
Those scraps stood as much chance of washing up anywhere near where the One for Luck had.
His entire search had been useless.
Footsteps sounded again—Louise, he thought as they paused outside the door before moving on, noise receding. She took the stairs instead of coming in to wake him. A quick look at his watch had him sitting bolt upright. Nearly lunchtime already and he’d prepared exactly nothing. He let himself out, praying not to meet any of Guy Parsons’ posh readers prepared to pay five-star prices while he was still sleep-rumpled. Taking the stairs came with a jolt of remembering the moment the PC screen had filled with the faces of that survey team who’d all got closer to his parents than Jude had ever managed. He pushed open the door to the kitchen, tired to the bone like it was night instead of late morning, only to find lunch prepped already, mise en place arranged just how he liked it. Even fresh stock simmered on the range, clear and fragrant. He checked the refrigerator. That morning’s fresh catch from Carl already lay in neat fillets.
Rob.
“I don’t think he slept,” Lou said from behind him. “I found him and Carl down here first thing this morning.” She smoothed a frizz-free strand of hair behind her ear. “Susan came too, a bit later. She did my hair.” She sniffed, eyes welling even as she drew back shoulders surely far too narrow to bear this grief that kept on coming. “She’s running the bar while I….” Her lips pressed together. “How are we gonna do this, Jude?” she blurted, saying just what he’d been thinking, her reserves worn down to nothing too after keeping going for so long. “How do we carry on now that we know they’re…? How do we keep going like normal?”
Rob answered before Jude could. “You don’t.” He looked so much like his own dad in the shadow of the doorway that Jude blinked, that stern illusion shattered the moment Rob stepped into the light, kindness right there on the surface. “Because we’re all here to do it for you.” His kiss on Jude’s cheek was quick, his squeeze of Jude’s arm reassuring. “You don’t even have to be here. Take the day off. Both of you. Stay out of the kitchen. Leave it to us.”
Jude might have done as instructed if Rob hadn’t added a last order. “And stay out of the office.”
“Why?”
Rob opened his mouth and then closed