Chapter 4

Shawn thundered, "Claudia!"

He wanted to go after the heartless woman and drag her back for a full-blown confrontation, but Samson looked like he was fighting death itself.

Shawn's jaw clenched. Not wasting a second longer, he scooped Samson into his arms and hurried toward the black Porsche parked at the entrance.

"Get us to the nearest hospital now!" he urged.

Lucas bolted for the driver's seat while shouting after Claudia, "Mrs. Faulkner! Mr. Samson is convulsing from his fever! Won't you at least look at him? You can't just abandon him like this!"

Claudia's flashy sports car was parked beside Shawn's. Her back stiffened when she heard Lucas' desperate plea, but instead of looking out the window, she rolled it up to keep out the noise.

"Just ignore them and drive, Ethan," she said lightly.

Lucas stomped his foot in frustration as Claudia's red sports car whooshed past him and into the distance, but he couldn't afford to dawdle any longer.

Shawn was fuming in the backseat of the black Porsche, his gaze murderous as he barked an order at Lucas, "Have someone tail her. I want to know what she got up to in the past year!"

"Yes, sir!"

In the past, the doctors at the hospital told him that both Claudia and her baby died from labor complications. Shawn didn't see their bodies, but he did run a DNA test on the sample taken from the ashes. It matched Claudia's.

While he suspected Claudia might not be dead, all the hospital records he went through suggested otherwise. He even looked into her associates from the past but found no evidence to show she was still alive.

This wasn't his first time in Glenhallow, the place where she grew up. Nothing suspicious ever turned up on his previous visits.

But for all his efforts, Shawn never expected her to have staged her death. Worse still, she was living her life as if nothing happened. She even went so far as to pretend not to know him! He cursed her inwardly.

Samson's condition stabilized soon after they arrived at the hospital. The medical team carried out a series of tests and procedures to bring his fever down, following which he was admitted into the VIP pediatric ward. The doctor hooked him up to an IV drip, too.

Lucas, ever the efficient and trusty assistant, didn't take long to find useful information while investigating Claudia.

"Mr. Faulkner, I found something! You might want to sit down for this. The booking for the lounge Mrs. Faulkner used at the hotel this evening was made under the name 'Jolene Jefferson'!"

Upon hearing this, Shawn fixed Lucas with a dark, assessing look and pressed, "Are you sure?"

Lucas said solemnly, "Yes! We looked everywhere for the past year for signs that Mrs. Faulkner might be alive but couldn't find any. Do you think it's because she abandoned her old name and adopted a new life as Jolene Jefferson?

"She could be Bertram Jefferson's protégé and the woman we came to meet in Glenhallow! Why else would Jolene do business with the other families in Briarwood but not ours? She even turned down Mr. Samson's case even when we offered to pay her a small fortune!"

Shadows clouded Shawn's chiseled side profile as he mulled over Lucas' theory, a storm brewing in his eyes.

Indeed, he came to Glenhallow this time to find a woman named Jolene Jefferson.

Samson's behavior was out of control since Claudia's apparent death. He constantly got into fights with other children in preschool and refused to go to any of his extracurricular activities. Countless tutors gave up on him because he was impossible to deal with.

And these days, he resorted to crying and screaming, demanding to see his mother.

For the past year, Shawn had no choice but to play the role of both father and mother. He couldn't go anywhere freely, shackled to his motherly duties at home. At night, he and Samson often lost sleep and found themselves staying up until the morning.

Shawn reckoned that at this rate, Samson's tantrums and wild behavior would be the child's downfall. As such, he had no choice but to look around for a new tutor. Having exhausted the tutor pool in Briarwood, he brought Samson to Glenhallow and continued the hunt.

He heard that Bertram Jefferson, a renowned artist famous for his traditional ink paintings, was living in Glenhallow after retiring from the limelight. His protégé, Jolene Jefferson, won major international awards in the last year.

Her talent in traditional ink painting aside, Jolene was also a well-known psychologist who specialized in early childhood education. She counseled many petulant children from prestigious families and taught them art and calligraphy.

Shawn came to Glenhallow to meet Jolene, but Samson's health was delicate now, and his immune system went haywire. No sooner than they landed in Glenhallow did the little boy get violently sick and run a fever close to 105 degrees Fahrenheit.

And Shawn certainly didn't expect to run into his supposedly dead wife.

If Claudia and Jolene were the same person, he would hunt her down and ask her how she could be so cruel as to abandon him and Samson. More importantly, he wanted to know how she managed to escape his radar for so long.

In all the years they were married and shared the same bed, he never knew Claudia could paint. He remembered she was left-handed and that her handwriting was no better than an illegible scrawl.

Shawn barked, "Find out where Bertram lives. We're visiting him tomorrow!"

"Yes, Mr. Faulkner," Lucas replied.

"And keep our identities a secret for now," Shawn said.

"Very well, sir."

…

The next day, in a countryside manor tucked away in the idyllic town by the outskirts of Glenhallow, Bertram hummed softly in his study. He pulled up the sleeves of his loose shirt, ready to work on another ink painting.

"Jolene, is it true that you ran into Shawn last night?" he asked with good humor.

Claudia was poring over her artwork. Dressed in a lilac satin robe, she looked soft and feminine, like a flower in full bloom. There was no warmth or humor in her delicate features, and she looked erudite with her hair pulled back into a low bun.

When she heard Bertram's question, she frowned and accidentally pressed her brush down too hard. The ink pooled and spread under the tip, ruining the painting.

"Yes, he's here in Glenhallow, and he recognized me right away. I told him he had the wrong person, though," she admitted, grabbing a new piece of parchment and laying it out before her.

She added, "But I didn't correct him when he said Claudia was dead. I am, after all, Jolene now."

Technically speaking, she was Jolene long before this, until her reunion with the Lowells. She was merely returning to her old life and resuming an old identity.

Everyone believed she was kidnapped and sold to a family in the sticks of Glenhallow at a young age. In the Lowells' eyes, she was uncultured and unrefined—a bumpkin raised in poverty.

What they didn't know was that she was actually sold into many families. She grew up feeling inferior and was forced to deal with many of life's hardships.

When she was ten years old, she met Bertram while he was in the countryside seeking inspiration for his work. He took her in after that. When he saw she had a flair for traditional ink painting, he imparted his knowledge into her and taught her everything she knew about the art.

A year ago, she returned to Glenhallow with Isabel after her desperate escape from Briarwood and cut ties with the Lowells and Shawn. For the past year, she focused on recuperating, raising Isabel, and keeping Bertram company.

She hardly ever reminisced on those she left behind in Briarwood. They no longer meant anything to her. She didn't want to go back to that life anymore, be it for the Faulkners or the Lowells.

Everything was fine until she ran into Shawn last night. She even ended up losing sleep over that soul-wrenching meeting.