His Horizon - Con Riley Page 0,99

bobbing, seagulls bright-white against the same indigo sky that Ian had captured in his review photos. The windows framed a picture-postcard scene that Jude had taken for granted until he’d exiled himself in London. God, then how he’d missed it.

“You’ve never been here before?” Lou asked.

“No, but boy, did I ever hear all about it.” Trevor chuckled while surveying the unrolled charts. “When did they buy it?” A frown marred his features as Jude answered. Trevor bent over one of the charts for a prolonged minute, silent, only eventually asking, “It was that long after they married?” The sigh he let out was just as extended before he looked at Louise. “There are some photos of the wedding in there. Near the end,” he added, not needing to explain to Jude why that was where the photos finished.

“Really?” She flipped the first few pages, stopping every so often to ask a question. “Where was this photo taken?”

“That one?” Trevor pointed with the same parallel ruler Jude had grown up watching his dad use to plot courses around the Cornish coastline. “It was taken somewhere around here,” he tapped the western corner of the chart.

“And this one?” Jude peered over her shoulder at the photo of the same golden Buddha that he’d wondered about so often.

This time, Trevor tapped farther east on the chart. “That was here.” He touched where a pushpin once had left a small hole before he finally settled in front of another chart that showed a vast expanse of water. “This part might take a while, and still involves more guesswork than I’d like,” he admitted. “The issue is that to chart accurately, you want two clear points, a start and an end. But we’re still not entirely sure of the first point and there’s still a two-day margin of error for the second.” He bit the end of his pencil as Louise asked a final question.

“Where did you go next?”

“Next?”

“After this photo in your album. Look.” She crossed the room to snatch one of the framed photos that once hung in their dad’s study and now mingled with Marc’s seascapes for sale. “See? Dad had a similar photo of you and him as well.” She held the framed photo next to the one in the album. It showed both men grinning and a touch sunburned, arms slung across each other’s shoulders. “See how both photos have the same Buddha as the one on the last postcard Dad sent you. Where did you go after that? What was your next port when you sailed that last time together?”

Trevor set down his pencil and flipped a couple of the album pages. “Here,” he said. Then he looked up and made a request that Jude hurried to follow. “Could you get the postcards for me?” Once he had them spread out in date order, he nodded. “There are a few deviations from that voyage, but if he did follow the same route—” he checked the date on the postcard “—then they actually could have made it this far, the day before the storm surge from the typhoon hit. And this would have been where he was next headed.” The spot Trevor pointed to diverged from their father’s original planned route by enough degrees to make a difference. “Okay. Let’s see what happens when we use this as our start point.” He measured carefully then made an indent on the chart. “Now,” he murmured, “I’ll line up on a meridian, north to south.” His measurements were slow and oh-so-careful. Jude found he was holding his breath as Trevor murmured, “Then I’ll walk the ruler up. Don’t let it slip,” he warned, talking to himself and muttering more numbers under his breath before switching to another chart that covered a quadrant of the ocean in much more detail.

“That means he’s getting closer, right?” Rob’s fingers threaded with Jude’s.

“Yeah,” Jude said as Trevor checked against the graphs on his laptop, and then replotted.

“Thanks for working so hard on this,” Louise said once Trevor finally stood back.

“If doing this means I get a chance to apologise firsthand to your mother, that at least would be a great outcome.”

He busied himself with more measurements while Jude reeled, Louise putting into words what he couldn’t. “No, Trevor. I know Dad must have felt awful about lying about you, even though you wanted him to, but what happened to you in the first place was terrible. It shouldn’t have happened. None of it. I’m so sorry