Chapter Twelve

Veronica

The thrill of our encounter in the park was still with me as the semester drew to a close, but as the air filled with the promise of snowflakes and familiar songs played on constant loop wherever I went, there was something else that dominated my thoughts. The excitement of our secret rendezvous and the way that Jude dominated me, the power that he exuded giving me no option but to comply with him, sent shivers through my body every time that I even glanced his way, but just beneath that was sadness. I couldn't stop thinking about what he had told me when we were in the park talking about our Thanksgiving celebrations. While he had never mentioned any family or given me any indication that there was anyone in his life beyond the University, hearing that he had no family had struck me hard. He had talked about his staff several times now, and though the first few times we talked about them I took it only as confirmation of the wealth that Javi had described to me when we first talked about him, now I realized that they were something so much more.

Jude had talked about his staff with a casualness that at first had seemed to come simply from the fact that they were commonplace to him, something that he was accustomed to and had likely had throughout his entire life. The tone had almost made it seem as though he thought that everyone understood what it was like to have a team of people living in your home who were fully dedicated to meeting your every need. Now I realized that that tone was something far beyond expectation and privilege. He talked about his staff with ease and familiarity because they were all that he had. I didn't know the circumstances or how long it had been that way, but the truth was that his staff was the closest thing to a family that he had and even if he didn't admit to how much they meant to him, just the way that he spoke about them and his insistence on making sure that they were off on the holidays showed just how valuable they were to him. By being without one, Jude knew how important a family was, and he wanted to give those closest to him as much opportunity as possible to spend time with and celebrate with the people they left. Doing this, however, ensured that he spent those days alone.

Though Jude had said that he was accustomed to not having a family and celebrating the holidays alone, even saying that he enjoyed the solitude of being by himself on Thanksgiving, I didn't want that to be his only option. There was no reason he needed to always anticipate the special times of the year as ones that could only be truly enjoyed by others, and times when he would be by himself. I decided that I would help him to see just how joyful the holidays could be even without what other people would consider a traditional family. My heart beat just a little bit faster every time I thought about it, considering that maybe this would be the opportunity for us to take just one more step closer to each other.

Just as I had spent Thanksgiving, I knew that I would be spending the days leading up to and after Christmas with Javi and his parents and siblings, so I would need to execute my plan for Jude before. Though it wouldn't exactly be stopping him from spending Christmas alone, at least it would give him the opportunity to celebrate and to know that he would be on my mind and in my heart on the holiday itself. As the plans formulated in my mind and I hurried to make them into reality in the short time that I had, part of me wished that I had told Javi about Jude and me. I was still unsure about what it all meant and how it was progressing, and didn't know if I was ready to hear what Javi would have to say about it, but I knew that his creativity, not to mention the extensive and diverse group of people he had access to, would have made bringing my plans to life much easier. That thought brought pinpricks of guilt into the excitement and anticipation that I was feeling each time I thought about my plans unfolding. This was my best friend, the dearest person in my life, and I was keeping something so big from him. I hadn't told him about such a tremendous and influential part of my life, and I worried about what he would think and feel when he eventually found out. I could only hope that he would understand and that it wouldn't hurt him as much as I feared it would.

As my plans fell into place and things begin to work out exactly as I had envisioned them, I realized that there was one aspect that I had yet to figure out and that if I didn't, there was no way I would be able to follow through. As it turned out, it was Jude himself who resolved this detail for me. One afternoon as we were leaving his office having just completed grading the final exams, he turned to me with a look of exasperation.

"Damn it," he said. "I forgot to submit the modified grade for a student in one of my other classes who needed to make up a project. That needed to be in this afternoon and I don't have time to go turn it in before I get to my faculty meeting."

"I could do it for you," I had told him.

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. I have to walk by the office anyway. Just give it to me and I'll turn it in."

He looked incredibly relieved and we rushed back to the office. He grabbed a manila envelope from his desk and handed it to me.

"Thank you," he had said.

There was a look in his eyes that said he thought about kissing me, but didn't. It was a look that I had seen several times before, and one that always seemed to come into his eyes when we were standing somewhere he thought that we might be seen. In that second, I thought about wrapping my hands around the back of his neck and pulling him in for a kiss in the empty hallway, but I didn't. Something always kept me back when I felt those compulsions. I told myself that it was just knowing how he felt and wanting to respect it, but in the back of my mind, I knew that it was something else. Something close to fear. I didn't know how he would react and even though he had still made no gesture to define our relationship or to express any sort of feelings toward me, I didn't want to risk what connection we did have. After all, I had made no effort in those ways either. I didn't know what we were waiting for, but maybe we were both waiting.

When I got to the office that afternoon and handed the manila envelope over to the secretary, she had reciprocated by handing me a stack of envelopes for Jude, asking me to deliver them to him. I hadn't hesitated to take them, knowing that I would see him again soon and figured that it would save him some time and hassle. What I hadn't expected was that those envelopes would hold the very piece of information that I had been trying to find a way to discover.

I held one of those envelopes in my lap now as I drove slowly along a gradually narrowing road, hoping that my GPS didn't fail me. The address had been completely unknown to me when I saw it. I didn't even recognize the name of the town that was listed, much less the street. It turned out that that was because the entire town, small as it was, was comprised of Jude's estate. I had discovered through the research that my curiosity fueled that this house, and the land that it was sitting on, had been in his family for generations and that many years before it had been carved out as its own separate entity from the rest of the land around it. Named for a legend that surrounded an ornate clock in the parlor of a tavern that had once stood here, the little town was only the sprawling grounds, various smaller buildings, and towering mansion that was Jude's home.

I had seen pictures of the house when I was tucked in my bedroom, scrolling through images and trying to convince myself that it wasn't as creepy as I felt like it was to be searching him out this way. Those images, however, didn't compare to the moment when my car actually pulled around the bend and I saw the mansion rising up on the horizon, blocked from my access by an imposing iron gate. I felt breathless when I saw it and there was only one thought that crossed my mind.

The Batcave.

When I had overcome my initial stunned reaction to the house, reality started to sink in. My plan had not taken into consideration the existence of a massive gate that was going to keep me from getting to the house, and now I was on the wrong side of it with no clear plan as to how I was going to get through it. I briefly thought about just getting out of the car and trying to pull it open, but I realized that the chances of there being a gate in place in front of Jude's home that not only offered literally no security whatsoever but actually required him to get out of his car, open the gate, get back in his car, drive through, get out again to close it, then drive up to the house were fairly miniscule.

I suddenly noticed a light beside me and heard what sounded like a muffled voice. I rolled the window down and leaned toward the intercom I hadn't realized was there.

"Hello?" I called into it.

"Yes?" the voice came back. "Can I help you?"

"Um," I said. "I'm here to see Jude Ford."

Well, that was a truly idiotic response considering he's not here. They're not going to let me up to the house just to give me a tour of the empty rooms to prove it.

"I'm sorry but Mr. Ford isn't in right now. Was he expecting you?"

"Yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes. I mean…" I grabbed the envelope from my lap and stuck it out of the window, holding it toward what I hoped was a camera that could actually see me. "I have some of his mail. It's not actually mail. It's from the University. I was told to deliver it to him urgently."

I might have added the urgently.

I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to explain what I planned to do once I got inside the grounds. I figured that I would take that on once I got in. This was going to have to be one step at a time and the first step was getting past the gate. I sat with my arm extended from the window until the cold air made it ache before I finally heard the voice again.

"What's your name?"

"Ronnie," I said. I winced slightly. "Veronica," I corrected myself. "Veronica Parish. I'm Professor Ford's teaching assistant."

I was hoping that whoever was talking to me through the intercom wouldn't put it together that the semester was over and so I wasn't really assisting him with anything anymore.

"Come in," the voice finally said.

Smiling, I pulled my arm back into the car and rolled up my window. The gate ahead of me was slowly easing open and as soon as I felt like it was far enough open to fit my car through, I drove ahead. I didn't want to give whoever had opened it for me the opportunity to change their minds and close it. The house had seemed much closer when I was looking at it from the other side of the gate, but now that I was on my way to it I realized that it was positioned on a slight hill. As I drove slowly toward the house, I tried to decide what I was going to say to the staff that was inevitably going to intercept me when I got close enough to the house.

By the time I saw a dignified-looking man step out of a small house by the side of the drive and come toward me, I still didn't know what to say. I hurried to climb out of my car, envelopes gripped in my hand, before he got to me.

"I'll take the delivery," he said.

"Thank you," I said, handing the envelopes toward him.

He accepted them with a slight nod.

"I appreciate you putting such effort into getting these to Mr. Ford. I'm sure that he will as well. If that's all."

He turned and started away.

I never understood people who used that phrase without any intention of giving the other person the opportunity to answer the "if".

"Actually," I said, taking a few rushed steps toward him. "There's one more thing."

He turned around and looked at me with a somewhat bored expression. I wondered if that was just his usual expression or if he was so accustomed to girls showing up at the house that it didn't have any effect on him. I was very much hoping for the former.

"Yes?"

My mind raced as I thought of all the props that I had borrowed from the dance and theater departments, the Christmas decorations that I had bought, and the dinner that was wrapped in thermal containers in my trunk but was likely not going to be able to take much more waiting. Evening was setting in and I knew that Jude would be getting back to the house soon. I had to get started or my entire plan was going to fall apart, and suddenly it meant so much more to me than I had expected. I took a breath, looked the man directly in the eye, and told what was likely the most elaborate and rapidly constructed lie I had ever told in my life.

Whether the man genuinely believed it or not, it worked.

Jude

The glow coming from behind the house struck me first. It was bright enough that the spotlights didn't come on when I drove up the driveway, but I didn't recognize it as anything that I had seen before. Aaron stepped into the drive just as he always did and held out his hand to accept the keys. He was looking at me as though there was nothing strange happening, which did nothing to comfort me. In fact, his complete ignoring of the lights that were shimmering from the courtyard made me feel more on edge.

"What's going on?" I asked him.

He looked at me as he took the keys as if he was waiting for me to finish the question.

"Going on?" he finally asked.

"The lights," I pointed out. "What is that?"

I looked around the driveway to see if there were any other cars, but it was empty.

"Do you want me to put the car away, sir?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered.

"Very well."

He got behind the wheel and I stepped out of the way so that he could take the car to the garage. I suddenly became aware of music playing quietly from the direction of the lights. I walked toward them, an uncomfortable feeling forming in my stomach. I recognized the music, the soft strains of instrumental Christmas songs, songs that I had banned from my house years ago. Throughout the end of the year, I did everything that I could to avoid Christmas music. I limited going into stores and restaurants. I played only my own music in the car rather than turning on the radio. I rarely turned on the TV. I did everything I could think of to not have to listen to those notes, to keep the sound of the words and the melodies out of my mind and prevent the memories that they brought with them from taking hold.

Yet now they were playing, surrounding my house.

As I walked toward it, the music got louder. Soon I could hear humming and the voice was immediately familiar. As I turned the corner onto the path that led into the courtyard, I saw her. I stopped, my jaw aching with the tightness that spread through it, my hand gripping the briefcase so hard that my knuckles hurt. Spots danced in front of my eyes and I struggled just to keep myself under control.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Veronica turned sharply, her bright blue eyes widening in surprise, the color seeming unnatural in the glow from the lights on the Christmas tree she was decorating. It sat on the edge of the courtyard patio, shimmering in concert with strands strung around to create an illuminated circle around a table set near a crackling fire pit.

"Jude," she said, her voice high.

"I said, what the hell do you think you're doing? Why are you at my house?"

She jumped at the explosion of my voice and the ornament slipped from her hand, shattering on the ground beneath her feet. The sound was disproportionately loud against the sound of the music, as if my mind was amplifying anything to drown out the notes. Suddenly I could hear the sound of my breath in my ears, accentuated only by my heartbeat. I looked around, feeling blinded by each of the tiny bulbs that surrounded me. The table in the center of the patio was draped with greenery, two candles nestled among the leaves. On the side of the fire pit, Veronica had placed two pointed metal sticks, a bag of marshmallows at the ready. A sweet smell filled my lungs and a memory of peppermint hot chocolate crashed over me.

"I thought that you would like to celebrate Christmas," Veronica said weakly. "It was supposed to be a surprise."

"A surprise?" I seethed. "You come to my house without my invitation, get past the gates, God only knows how, and take over my courtyard with this juvenile display, and all you can say is that you thought that it would be a nice surprise?"

"I'm sorry, I just ---"

"I don't care what you have to say," I shouted. "This is a breach of my privacy. You weren't asked to come here. I never told you where I live. Who do you think you are?"

I slammed my hands down on the table, then growled, sweeping everything onto the patio. Veronica screamed, but I didn't care. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that the candles had lit the tablecloth and the greenery was smoldering, but I didn't care. I wanted it to burn.

"Jude, please…"

"Get out," I said. "I want you out of my sight. Take this disaster with you."

I stormed past her, pausing only to grab the tree and toss it to the floor with another anguished yell. My only momentary comfort came in the sound of the ornaments shattering and the bulbs bursting against the stone.

Veronica sobbed behind me as I stalked into the house through the door to my study, slamming it with every bit of strength that I could gather. Even before the panes of glass stopped trembling, I crumbled, my knees hitting the floor first before my forehead touched wood now damp with tears that had waited far too long to fall.