The next evening, Piers drove me to the restaurant himself.
When I pushed open the door to the private dining room, I found my father sitting beside Julie.
He was gently adjusting a hair clip for her, his expression soft with a tenderness I hadn't seen directed at me in years.
The moment he noticed me, the smile vanished. All that remained in his eyes was disgust.
I was long accustomed to that look.
There was a time when I'd been his little princess too.
That ended when my mother caught him cheating. Julie's mother and her daughter staged a dramatic exit, faking a car accident to make my father believe my mother's confrontation had nearly killed them.
From that day on, he despised my mother. And his love shifted entirely.
He skipped my graduation but drove Julie to and from school without fail, rain or shine. He forgot my birthday every year but could recite everything she'd eaten on any given day. He never had a kind word for me, yet he showered praise on every single one of her social media posts.
Now, I couldn't feel even a trace of fatherly love from him. Not a trace.
Throughout dinner, my father and Piers orbited Julie like satellites. Laughter, conversation, warmth. I sat among them like a ghost.
"Here, sweetheart, Daddy brought you something special!" He patted Julie's arm with a beaming smile. "To keep you and the baby safe!"
He reached into his pocket and produced a jade pendant on a silk cord. The surface was smooth and luminous, etched with a delicate pattern meant to ward off harm.
My entire body went rigid.
That was my mother's pendant.
Years ago, when she struggled to conceive, she had climbed to a mountaintop shrine to pray for it. Nine hundred and ninety-nine stone steps. Nine hundred and ninety-nine prostrations. She split her forehead open. Her knees were raw and bloody by the time she reached the top.
After I was born, she gave the pendant to me.
After the accident, I placed it around her neck and prayed it would keep her safe. It stayed there until the day she died.
And now it was a gift from my father to Julie.
"That belonged to my mother!"
"She's dead. What good is a pendant to a corpse?" My father shot me a cold glare. "Giving it to Julie is an honor it doesn't deserve."
He draped it around Julie's neck as he spoke.
Blood rushed to my head. I stared at him and forced every word through clenched teeth. "Do you even know whose child she's carrying?"
His expression froze. His eyes darted away.
That reaction told me everything.
He knew the baby was Piers's. And he'd been helping them deceive me.
"Daddy, I don't need it, really..." Julie's eyes reddened as she reached to take the pendant off.
Piers caught her hand to stop her, then turned to me with a look of reproach. "Geraldine, can't you just behave yourself?"
"Behave?" I laughed. "You steal my dead mother's keepsake, and I'm the one who needs to behave?"
I couldn't hold back any longer. I reached out and snatched the pendant back.
But my father grabbed the silk cord and yanked it hard.
"If you're going to make such a fuss, then nobody gets it!"
A sharp crack. The jade split into pieces and scattered across the floor.
Time stopped.
I stared at the shards. My mother had earned that pendant one prostration at a time, step by agonizing step. It had been my talisman since childhood.
Gone. Just like that.
My hands shook as I knelt to pick up the pieces. A jagged edge sliced my skin. Blood beaded on my fingertips and dripped onto the jade, mixing with the tears that fell before I could stop them.
Rage and grief nearly swallowed me whole. I lifted my head, my eyes burning red. "Remember what you did today. All of you."
I clutched the bloodstained shards and stormed out. I pressed my back against the cold door, fighting to steady the storm inside me.
Then I heard my father's voice through the door. A low, contemptuous laugh.
"Ignore her. Piers already has her assets. She won't be living the good life much longer."
The chill started in my chest and spread outward until it reached every limb, every fingertip.
So my father hadn't just known. He was an accomplice.
The last thread of love I'd held for him turned to ash in that moment.
But he was wrong. The one running out of good days wasn't me.
It was them.
