Hey Jude (Lennox Valley Chronicles #1)

“Are they both—” I start, and he drops his gaze with a small nod. “Jude, I’m so sorry.” The words feel so inadequate; a long silence stretches between us. “Tell me about what happened?” I ask quietly, rubbing his arms again. “If you want to. You don’t have to.”

“No, I can. I should.” He smiles sadly at me. “It’s been ten years.”

“Ten years?” I’m floored. They were so young. He was so young.

He takes a breath. “Yeah. Car accident.” His brow creases.

I close my eyes. I can’t imagine the pain he went through losing them both like that. He would have been about twenty when it happened. I look up at him again. Reaching for his face with both hands, I pull him toward me, pressing my forehead to his. “I’m so sorry,” I say again. I kiss him softly, then sit back in my seat.

We stay silent for a few moments as I let it sink in.

Jude’s voice is quiet when he speaks again. “After they died,” he begins, “Miles and I moved out here.” He looks around the kitchen before his eyes meet mine. “We grew up in town, not far from Riverside, but we spent every summer out here.”

I squeeze his hands, waiting for him to continue.

He takes another breath. “The house… I had to sell it. It was too hard to live there after—without them, I mean.” He rubs his jaw, smoothing down his beard. “And Miles was seventeen when it happened, still in high school. I got a job to take care of us while he finished senior year… but the mortgage was too much.” His shoulders drop and he rubs his thumbs over the backs of my hands, taking a moment to collect himself. “The memories were too.”

I nod. I can only imagine how alone they must have felt living there.

He clears his throat. “Anyway, that’s why we moved out here. Living here worked for us for a couple of years before Miles left for Seattle. I think he needed to get away from town, you know? Too many difficult memories.” He pauses as I nod again and looks down at where I’m rubbing his hands softly. “He really struggled after the accident.”

My eyes fall to the countertop next to our hands as I turn Jude’s words over in my mind. Miles… a dull ache spreads across my chest, my heart breaking for him too. Maybe that explains why he was drunk that morning. I inhale an unsteady breath before lifting my eyes to meet his.

“What was your dad like?” I ask gently, remembering the emotion in his eyes when he mentioned him earlier.

Jude blows out a breath and stands, coming around the island to face me. “Come with me,” he says, holding out his hand.

* * *

“This is amazing.” I stare at the inside of Jude’s shed, which is large; it’s almost the size of a full garage. A well-stocked wood shop with an enormous wooden workbench takes up most of the space. I spin around slowly to take in everything around me. A collection of vintage woodworking tools is hung and meticulously organized on a huge, wall-mounted pegboard above the workbench. In the far corner is a simple home gym setup and, on the wall opposite the workbench, an expansive set of cabinets fills the space from the floor to the ceiling. Everything here has been well taken care of, almost reverently preserved. I think I understand why it was hard for Jude to talk about his dad. Some things you just need to see… and feel.

The room smells of fresh cedar and I close my eyes, inhaling deeply; instantly, I’m transported back to watching my own dad working in his garage. In the center of the room, a table saw sits atop a weathered wood table with a lathe, used for carving the rounded legs of furniture beside it. Dad had always made me do a safety check before he turned on those big machines—hair tied back, safety goggles on, earmuffs in place—to calm my unease about the roaring noise.

“Most of this was my dad’s,” Jude says quietly, stepping inside and leaning against the workbench.

I turn toward him. A small, half-finished table sits at one end of the bench, next to a can of oil stain and a paintbrush. The surface is otherwise spotless.

Jude rubs the back of his neck. “We used to work in his shop at our house every weekend when I was growing up. He didn’t talk much, but spending that time with him was a huge part of my childhood.” He crosses his arms over his broad chest and smiles. “I loved it.”

I smile softly and rub my arms in the chill air of the shed.

“I still do—love this stuff, I mean.” He looks down for a moment, then back at me. “After they died, we got rid of a lot from the old house… but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of all this.” He flicks his eyes to the wall of tools. “So I moved it out here.”

I look around again. “I bet your dad would be happy,” I turn back to him, “knowing you held onto something you love so much.”

He holds my gaze with a sad smile, and something I can’t decipher flickers in his eyes.

I wander over to the cabinet. Touching the wood surface of one door gently, I look back at him. “Can I ask—what’s in here?”

“Open it.” He smiles, lifting his chin.

Grasping the handle, I pull it open. Inside is another cabinet, this one with a handle at the top and a hinge at the base. I quirk my eyebrows at Jude. He’s still smiling.

“Is this, like, a trick cabinet or something?” I grasp the second handle and pull it down. It swings open and rests on the floor, revealing a smallish mattress with a tufted, plush dog bed on top. I laugh, then gasp when I get the joke. I spin to Jude, who’s grinning now. “A Murphy bed!”

“Had to do it.” He shrugs. “He likes hanging out here while I work.”

I smile, reflecting fondly on how Murphy is never too far from Jude on the job-site. It’s easy to imagine him curled up here. I close up both cabinets and walk toward Jude, rubbing my arms again.