7. Sophie
SOPHIE
“So he’s still saying he’s innocent, then?”
Down the line, Meredith’s sigh sounds exhausted. “He’s claiming they were legitimate art sales. He can’t exactly deny that they happened, the evidence is pretty clear on that.”
I shift the phone to my other ear, pinning it in place with my shoulder as I reach up to grab a bowl from the kitchen cabinet. “But I thought you guys were going after the evidence because it was falsified?”
“Against June, yeah. But there’s no arguing that money hasn’t been moved around, no smoke without a fire kind of thing.”
Bowl on the table, I frown. “Not entirely sure that idiom fits.”
“You get what I mean,” Meredith sighs again, before changing the subject. “I’ll get the warranty for the stand-mixer sent over now. You sure you’re okay to bake?”
“Can’t be any worse than your attempt.” It’s meant to be teasing, but it comes out a little too much like I’m trying to reassure myself. “Trent will be back soon, and he’s been hanging out with Mom enough to have picked up a few things.”
Meredith is silent for a moment. “He’s been at the Beach House?”
“I told Richard I’d look after Mom while he dealt with his little tribunal,” I smirk to myself at the memory of the man, bright red and practically spitting. “You should have seen his face.”
That, at least, earns me something other than a sigh. But even Meredith’s laughter sounds tired. “Bet he loved that.”
“He’s decided you were the whistleblower, by the way,” I say as I root through the cupboards for the ingredients. “Seeing as June was too busy being a legitimate felon and I’m, apparently, not smart enough to think to root through his office for evidence of him bribing local government.”
“Technically speaking, it was Eddie.”
“Technically speaking, you’re supposed to say ‘no Soph, of course you’re smart enough to expose your step-dad’s criminal activities’.”
There’s a beat of silence where she says nothing at all. I’d be more insulted if I weren’t so distracted by the intricacies of pie baking. Mentally cursing the Shack’s stand-mixer for giving up the ghost.
“Soph?”
I’m fully immersed in measuring flour. “Mm?”
“Talk to June.”
And.
Well.
“No.”
“Soph.”
“Don’t lecture me.”
“I wasn’t about to lecture you, I just think–”
“I’ve got to go.” I dust off my hands before reaching for the red button.
Meredith says something else, but away from my ear, I can barely make it out.
“Bye, Mere. I’ll talk to you soon.”
I drop the phone on the counter a little harder than I mean to, the sound sharp in the small condo kitchen. The silence after is deafening, just the hum of the fridge and the scrape of my spoon against the mixing bowl.
Every time I picture June, I see the feds rifling through her house. Can feel my hands shaking as they pulled drawers open, Trent hovering in the doorway, trying to pretend he wasn’t scared out of his mind.
I can help but think if June had just told us the truth—if she’d admitted that she’d married Ashton in the first place—none of it would’ve blindsided me. None of it would’ve touched Trent. And that’s the part I can’t swallow.
Every time Meredith calls, it’s with more news, more evidence that June didn’t know, that she’s not guilty. Like she’s building her a case to me and not the state of New York.
Ashton played her, he set her up, the emails are fake, the signature was forged.
It’s not like I don’t want to believe it. God, I do. But it doesn’t erase the fact that she made a choice. She kept secrets. She promised me after Meredith shut us out of her wedding that she would never—could never—and yet…
I scrape the flour off the counter in sharp, quick motions, like maybe I can scrub away the sting in my chest.
I’m so tired of running the Shack by myself, from moving into this place, of keeping one eye on Eleanor and another on Trent. Every day I wake up, tie on an apron, and throw myself into the rhythm of it.
And all the while, the people who were supposed to be my dream team, my family, are hundreds of miles away in New York, knee-deep in bail hearings and court filings and whatever else they’ve got going on.
And I’m here. Alone.
I shake the thought off, focusing instead on the pie crust beneath my hands, trying to knead out the bitterness along with the dough. But the truth sticks to me like flour dust—it doesn’t matter how much I try to push it down.
I’m not ready to forgive June.
I don’t have time to.
It’s not until the pie is already out of the oven that the front door swings open, bringing with it the merrier sounds of teenagers.
A shuffle of sneakers, the thud of a dropped backpack, and Trent’s voice, half-laughing. “Don’t touch that, dude, it’s mine.”
I turn, tea towel still in my hand, to find Trent in the doorway. He’s flushed from the brisk walk home, hair mussed, and standing right behind him is a boy I don’t recognize. Tall, tan, dark hair that probably sees more product than it lets on.
“This is…?” I prompt, one eyebrow raised.
“Danny,” Trent nods toward his friend. “Remember? We have bio together.”
The name rings familiar from the stories I’ve managed to pry from Trent about his school career so far.
Though few and far between, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t hoped that Danny would become a more permanent feature.
Lord knows Trent needs friends his own age, and Danny seems as inoffensive as they come.
The boy in question grins without a trace of teenage posturing. “Hi! Are you really Sophie Holloway?”
I stare at him, stumped for a moment. “I think so, yeah.”
“No way,” Danny shakes his head.
“See? Told you,” Trent mutters, elbowing the other boy in the ribs.
It’s not often that I find myself completely unsure of a situation. But it’s not like anyone has ever had this reaction to me before. “Did you… er… see my pizza ad or something?”
“You were in a pizza ad?”
Trent groans. “Why’d you bring that up?”
“I-”
But Trent has already cut me off, turning to the other boy. “Yes, she’s an actress, no, she’s not my Mom, she’s my sister, yes, I live with her, no, you can’t sleep with her.”
“Trent!”
“But if she’s an actress, why is she working at the Shack?” Danny crosses his arms and stares at Trent like it’s a huge ‘ah-hah!’ moment, completely skipping over Trent’s other comment.
“I didn’t say she was any good, did I?”
In hindsight, throwing a wooden spoon at him probably wasn’t the most mature response. A clump of cranberry mix sticks to the back of his hair.
“She is right here.”
The spoon gets thrown back, missing me by an inch as I duck behind the counter.
Danny takes the scene in with a look of fascination. “If she’s not your Mom, can she still ground you for that?”
My responding ‘yes’ overlaps with Trent’s indignant ‘no’. We scowl at each other, daring the other to look away first. I lift an eyebrow, do you really want to do this in front of your friend? Trent rolls his eyes, no.
As a sign of peace, I approach my brother and throw an arm around his shoulders. A far more difficult task than it had been at the beginning of the summer, due to a seemingly unending number of growth spurts.
“So, have you been to the Shack?” I ask Danny, ignoring Trent’s petulant stiffening under my arm.
The teen’s face lights up. “Only like a hundred times. We used to go back when that other lady was running it? Dad would take me every week for a slice of pie.”
“Eleanor,” Trent says as if he’s corrected him a hundred times already. “That’s Sophie’s mom.”
I gesture toward the dessert now cooling on the rack. “I was actually just working on a pie before you got here,” then, to Trent. “Stand-mixer broke.”
“Again?”
But Danny cuts in before I can answer. “Are you sure that’s the same pie?”
The three of us turn to examine it, innocently still steaming from its time in the oven. It doesn’t look bad, or too dissimilar to the way Mom used to make it. But there’s something a little off about the smell…
I should have heeded Meredith’s warnings.
“Well, practice makes perfect,” I dismiss quickly. “I was actually about to head over to drop it off. Do you want to come with? I’ll get you guys dinner.”
Danny offers me a look of pure awe. “Seriously?”
Trent tries to play it cool, shrugging, but I see the quick glance he shoots me.
It’s a thank-you. It’s a don’t embarrass me. It’s a please don’t mess this up.
“Seriously,” I say, already grabbing my keys. “Just give me five minutes to change, and we’ll head out.”
Davon’s mid-rant about wholesale markups when I catch sight of Trent across the room.
He’s leaning over a booth with Danny, both of them bent over Danny’s phone, laughing at something on the screen.
The sound cuts through the rest of the noise, and I have to bite back the stupid grin threatening to spread across my face.
“I’ll check with the distributor,” I mumble distractedly, signing the bottom of Davon’s sheet without really reading it.
Davon snorts. “You didn’t even—whatever. You’ll yell at me later if I ordered wrong.”
“Probably,” I admit, but my eyes are still on the boys.
Davon clearly follows my gaze. “They grow up so fast, don’t they?” he teases, like he’s not fresh out of high school himself.
I give him a well-deserved, albeit good-natured, shove and return to the register.
Davon’s been one of my only tethers to sanity these last few weeks, and I probably owe him far more than he realizes. Between taking over a lion’s share of the daily operations and training both Trent and Mia up in the kitchen, the guy deserves one hell of a raise.
I’m mentally pitching it in my head to Meredith (who’s still running the books from New York) when Danny comes over with their empty trays. “That was insane, Sophie.”
“Don’t mention it,” I offer him a smile. “Need a lift home later? I’ll be done here in an hour or so.”
He shakes his head. “Thanks, but my dad’s already on his way to pick me up.”
“You sure?”
“Dan!” Trent calls over from the booth. “Hurry up, already.”
I wave the boy off with a bemused smile, half-heartedly returning to my station. It’s late enough in the evening now that I’m almost certain we won’t get any more customers.
Which is why it’s so surprising when the door chimes open. I glance up, tensing on reflex to arm myself with a customer-service-adjacent smile—only to relax when I recognize the flannel.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” I tease as Eddie dumps a pile of plates on the counter next to me.
“I cleaned these, you know,” he pretends to act all offended. “Could have returned them dirty.”
“Or you could tell your customers to quit being so lazy and come sit in the Shack if they want a lobster roll.”
Eddie wrinkles his nose. “Or, hear me out, takeout containers.”
“The environment, Eddie,” Davon suddenly appears at my shoulder to croon and collect his delivery. “Think of the environment!”
He winks at me before slipping back into the kitchen. I watch him go with a shake of my head.
“Hey, so, er…” Eddie leans in slightly closer, voice lowering so as not to be overheard. “Have you had any updates from New York?”
I take in his earnest expression, his empathy for me, his worry for June, his, well… something for Meredith. With a sigh, I hop onto the counter and swing my legs round to face him.
“Yeah. It’s going as well as it can at this point. Ashton pleaded not guilty, so it’s all,” I waft my hands about for lack of a better term than legally complicated. “Mere is pulling her hair out, obviously.”
His attention focuses. “You spoke to her?”
“Well, yeah,” I blink back. “She calls me every other day.”
This appears to be news to Eddie as he toys with his bottom lip with his teeth. Eyes glazed and distant, closing off.
It takes me a beat too long to realize: “She hasn’t spoken to you?”
“I… no.”
Something twangs in my chest. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the sisterly urge to pull rank and defend.
“To be fair, she sounded exhausted. I could barely keep her awake for an update, and she said she’d send over this warranty for the stand-mixer like hours ago, and she still hasn’t. She’s probably just asleep.”
He does not look convinced. “Yeah.”
But it sounds like it’s been weeks, though.
Which makes me want to ask, why do you care so much? What is Meredith to you?
Instead, I say. “She did mention you, actually.”
It’s almost to bear, watching the hope fill his features. “Did she?”
“Yeah, she was telling me about?—”
The door jingles open yet again. And with everyone now accounted for, the customer-service smile jumps automatically to my face as I slip off the counter and straighten out.
The words: “Hi there! How can I help you?” Are out of my mouth before I can process who I’m talking to.
Noah. Noah Short.
Last seen driving away vengefully after crashing into my car. (Silver speckled hair groomed in stylish disarray, undermining the effect of his resting scowl.)
Vaguely, I notice Eddie straightening at my side, as if reading my body language is enough to alert him to a threat.
Noah acknowledges none of this. His blank gaze scans my apron, my nametag, before dismissing me entirely in favor of looking around the room.
“I’m just here to pick up my son.”
Dread pools in my stomach. “Your son.”
Nope. No.
“Is there an echo?”
No, no, no.
“Who is your son?” My voice sounds far too strained.
“I don’t see how that’s any of your–”
“Hey, Dad!”
And of course, Danny comes bounding across the room. Trent in tow. Neither wise to the fact that I’m about ready to burst out of my skin as they exchange words that only confirm my fate, like ‘are you ready to go home’ and ‘you remember me telling you about Trent.’
Eddie puts a concerned hand on my shoulder, squeezing lightly, but I silently shake my head at him. I take a deep breath to ensure my eye doesn’t start twitching.
“Dad, this is Sophie! She owns the Shack, can you believe it?”
When I turn back, my smile is properly in place and ready to bear whatever snobbish disregard Noah can come up with next.
But Noah’s not even looking at me, his eyes lingering on my shoulder.
“Noah, right?” My smile strains, his gaze doesn’t falter. “You’re Danny’s father?”
Finally, dark eyes flick up to mine.
There’s no reason for my throat to close up the way it does. His expression is so very carefully blank.
“Come on, let’s go,” he finally mutters before grabbing the back of Danny’s neck. All but hauling him out the door as the teen shouts his goodbyes over his shoulder.
Once they’re safely out of sight, Eddie squeezes my shoulder once more before dropping his hand. “Well, he seems like an asshole.”
It takes a second for my breathing to return to normal.
“Yeah, you have no idea.”