Chapter 1 Sophie
ONE
SOPHIE
My mother clicks her tongue as she ties a bunch of basil, using the last bit of twine. "Get me another spool. I have to hurry, or I’ll be late."
Wordlessly, I head down to the basement to comply with her request. Down here, she stores everything she needs to process the herbs she sells at the farmers’ markets in the area.
Vast quantities of jars, twine, wooden boxes, and baskets pile up on the shelves against the walls, causing the boards to bend under their weight.
After grabbing a spool of coarse twine from a box, I throw a glance at the old wardrobe, which stands in the corner of the room as if it’s long forgotten.
It used to scare me, but now I get a tingle of anticipation as soon as I look at it.
Because I don’t want to let my mother wait any longer, though, I turn away, switch off the light, and go back upstairs.
"Thanks," she says absentmindedly as I hand her the twine. "I want to be there before this awful Miss Morgan shows up and snatches away the best spot."
I suppress a shake of my head as she wrinkles her nose in obvious disgust, and refrain from saying anything back. Miss Morgan is a thorn in my mother’s side. And that’s not because she snatches the best spot at the markets every now and then. It’s because she’s Black.
My mother isn’t a bad person. She just thinks everything used to be better back in the old days.
And for her, the separation by skin color was one of those better things.
I refrain from contradicting her. But although my mother taught me according to her example, I believe that God doesn’t want such racial segregation.
For Him, we are all equal. Speaking of Miss Morgan scaring away my mother’s clients…
Well, I can’t testify to that because I’ve never attended one of these markets, but I assume my mother’s overreacting a little.
She interrupts my thoughts as she makes her way to the car with the first box of herbs.
Sighing quietly, I grab a box and follow her.
After loading everything into her car, she opens the door before turning around to me once more.
"Remember, you only use the phone in an absolute emergency, and even then, you’re only allowed to call me.
You won’t open the door for anyone and—"
"I do not leave the house," I finish her sentence. "I know, Mother."
The rules in this house are very simple, and if I don’t follow them, I’ll get punished.
Truth be told, I don’t know what that punishment entails because I’ve never dared to break these rules.
They always made sense to me. After all, my mother drilled them into me for years.
However, I no longer think they’re as meaningful.
But whatever doubts may have blossomed in my mind over the past few months, one thing’s for sure: my mother won’t change her mind regarding her rules.
I use the morning to fulfill all my duties.
I tidy up, do the laundry, and prepare dinner.
As soon as I’m done, I head to my room and kneel on the wooden floor in front of my bed.
Smiling softly, I lift the loose floorboard under the furniture and take out the book and the old rusty key tucked underneath.
I then hurry downstairs to the basement, stand in front of the big old wardrobe, and slide the key into the lock.
It jams a bit, as usual, but after a few tries, the quiet click of the lock reaches my ears, and I can finally open the doors.
My eyes land on multiple rows of books hidden inside the cabinet. Most of them are old, worn, and smell musty. Others are newer, with only a few dog-ears and dents in their covers. But they all have one thing in common: they’re novels—mere stories about adventures, friendship, and love.
They’re my greatest treasure.
When I accidentally found the key in the basement a few months ago, I didn’t know it would open the doors of this wardrobe.
I tested it on all the dressers, chests, and caskets in the house until I thought of the closet in the basement.
I had always avoided it before because it scared me.
Moreover, it was locked, and my mother had no idea what was inside.
When I asked her about it once, she said it had already been there when we moved in.
That explains why it still stands here. If my mother knew what was right under my nose all those years, she would’ve chopped the wardrobe with an axe and burned it, along with all the books, in the oven.
There are other books besides the Bible. But those are just tales for fools, Sophie. That was her answer when I asked her years ago if the Bible was the only book that existed. And because I was little and considered my mother omniscient, I believed her.
But that quickly changed after I discovered that treasure of books in our basement.
I knew I had to hide the key and the books I took upstairs to my room, and the hollow space under the floorboard in my room seems more than perfect for that.
Even if my mother found a book there, I could act as if I didn’t know about it and one of the previous occupants must have forgotten it there, just like the wardrobe in the basement.
Ever since I opened the first novel with my heart pounding in my chest and started reading it, I couldn’t stop. And so, over the past months, I got into the habit of doing my chores as quickly as possible so I could read until my mother returned in the afternoon.
Those are the best hours of my day. I immerse myself in foreign worlds while experiencing suspense, excitement, and sadness, and even find friends between the pages.
But the more I read, the more I questioned my mother’s beliefs.
In those books, the kids went to school rather than being homeschooled.
They made friends and had mothers and fathers.
The men weren’t all bad or as evil as my mother claimed.
They were charming and humorous, accommodating, and even compassionate.
Women fell in love, admirers wooed their beloved ones, and here and there, a boy stole an innocent kiss from a girl.
At first, it confused me. After all, my mother had told me for almost eighteen years that men were savage and I could only trust her.
But if that was true, why did stories like this exist?
Slowly, I began to doubt what my mother had taught me. I used to believe she would protect me from the cruel world outside and keep me almost locked inside this house to keep me safe. I really thought all people were evil, and that she was worried about me.
But now I’m not so sure.
What if she’s wrong? What if not all people are bad and not all men are savages?
What if she lied?
Those questions haunted me the most. But I would’ve never dared to ask my mother about them. I already knew what she would say, so I kept my thoughts to myself. But as I became more and more certain that the world could not be as she told me over and over again, a new curiosity arose inside me.
I wanted to know what the world was really like.
I wanted to meet other people and go on adventures.
To make friends and—what I thought would be the most exciting part and happens in nearly all of these novels—fall in love.
I wanted to know what it feels like when a boy holds my hand or even kisses me.
And I wanted to know if it really feels like butterflies in your stomach. I wanted to experience it.
What started as wishful thinking has turned into a desire I can not ignore any longer.
It’s as if a force is trying to pull me out into this world, which is so foreign and strange to me, but seems to be full of joy and hope, too.
And so a thought solidified, keeping me awake at night and making my heart race in my chest during the day.
I have to run away and leave my mother.
She would never let me go, so asking her about it would be pointless.
Just leaving without a plan doesn’t seem very smart to me, either, since it’s nearly five miles to the next town—at least according to my mother.
And although my view of the world has changed a lot in the past few months, I’m not naive enough to believe that there aren’t bad people and dangers.
Besides, I don’t want to encounter a Mississippi alligator or other wild animals.
So I have to find another way. And I will.
I put the book I already read back on one of the shelves and grab the one right next to it.
I don’t care about reading them in any particular order.
Instead, I just take one after the other because I’m not picky.
I want to read them all and immerse myself in the stories, regardless of what they’re about.
Afterward, I lock the doors and go back upstairs to my room to spend the last hours with the new book until my mother returns.
"I’m going to take my bath," she announces, rising from her chair while I start doing the dishes.
The scraping of the chair’s legs on the old kitchen floor echoes through the room before her footsteps move away and the bathroom door closes. Shortly after, she turns on the faucet, and the water flowing over my hands gets cold. I turn it off and prop myself on the edge of the sink.
While I wait for her tub to fill up so that I can continue with the dishes, I look outside through the window.
Our house is in the heart of Mississippi, right in the center of the state.
About 100 yards from the front door, Rocky Hill Road crosses Mississippi Highway 17, with traffic controlled by a traffic light as pointless as an umbrella in the desert.
I can’t remember ever seeing more than one vehicle at the same time here, so it’s no surprise that none of the people passing by wait till the traffic light turns green.
Right now, a vehicle is approaching from the south, heading toward the intersection.
It’s a huge black pickup truck, its headlights illuminating the deserted road and some surrounding trees even though dusk is still a few minutes away.
It rolls at a moderate pace toward the traffic light, which I know is red, and stops right in front of it.
It’s not uncommon for people to stop because they don’t know it takes three minutes for the traffic light to turn green.
But most of them don’t wait as long, and I can’t blame them for it.
But the black pickup stays still.
I start counting the seconds in my head, waiting for them to finally ignore the red light and drive off, but they just don’t. For a moment, I wonder if something may have happened to the driver, but when I reach 169 seconds, the light changes to green, and the car starts moving.
That was the first time in seventeen years I saw someone wait the full three minutes. Not even the wildlife officers wait more than thirty seconds at this intersection.
I follow the truck with my eyes until it disappears from my view, and only then do I realize that the water in the bathroom has been turned off.
As much as I want to, I will never know what the deal is with this pickup and its driver, so I shake off the thoughts about it, turn on the water, and finally continue the dishes.