10 Sophie
Sophie
Sophie didn’t tell her dad she was coming.
It’s not that she was afraid to say anything; it was more that she wasn’t sure what she could say. “I’m coming home because a friend needs me, even though I haven’t been to see you in fifteen years. Oh, and I’m not bringing your granddaughter.”
Just because Sophie hasn’t been to Whisper Ridge doesn’t mean her dad hasn’t been to see his grandbaby as often as possible.
Otto Stringer has been to Denver plenty.
He’s made the four-hour drive five times in the last year alone, including once during a pretty treacherous snowstorm.
It warms Sophie’s heart to know that he loves her family so much he’s willing to overlook her lack of effort.
She hasn’t stepped foot in this town since she was a teenager, and he’s never once made her feel bad about it. Not on purpose anyway.
But here she is, stepping foot. She wonders how this is going to go, being inside her childhood home. She puts her bag down and knocks.
While she waits for him to answer, she rocks back and forth between her sneakered feet, and her thoughts stray to Joey again. She’s worried about her. Really worried. That murder wall, with all the pictures and the strings. And her claim about the whispering trees…
Joey texted the group chat a few minutes after she left the bar, letting both Sophie and Elena know she was planning to go to Barbara’s tomorrow morning to talk to her about Tom.
Sophie replied as soon as she was off the phone with her family.
Regardless of what she believes is true, she doesn’t think Joey should be alone.
It’s loneliness, she realizes, that probably dragged Joey into this delusional pseudo-investigation in the first place.
And then, before she has another thought, she sees her dad, on the other side of the open door, standing in his socks and sweatpants. He blinks when he sees her.
“Hi,” she says and gives him a wave.
He pretends to stagger backward, steadying himself on the hall table. Then he says, deadpan, “No thanks, we don’t want any,” and closes the door.
Sophie shakes her head and waits. In less than three seconds, he flings open the door again with the biggest grin she’s ever seen. Reflexive tears spring to her eyes. “You’re here,” he says, but she can’t reply because he pulls her in for a lung-crushing hug.
***
“Frozen pizza or grilled cheese?” he calls from the kitchen.
Sophie’s in her childhood bedroom. It’s exactly the same.
Not exactly the same, actually, because it’s clean, which was never the case when she lived here.
But her bed is still covered in the lavender floral bedspread she remembers.
The walls are still the same buttery yellow, but they look fresh.
She wonders if he repainted it recently.
Three different collages—all tacked with pictures of Sophie, Quinn, Joey, and Elena—line the far wall next to the window.
One for each year of high school. There isn’t one for senior year, of course.
After what happened to Quinn, Sophie did what she had to do to graduate early.
She was gone, working at a museum in Denver to pay her rent, by New Year’s Eve.
Standing here, she knows what drove her away, but what kept her away—that isn’t possible to capture in a collage.
“Never mind,” her dad calls out again. “Grilled cheese it is. This pizza expired in 2007.”
Sophie drops her bag to the floor and takes out her phone.
When Sophie told Talia she was going to Whisper Ridge, she asked if it was because of her dad, and Sophie, for some reason, didn’t say no.
Seeing Quinn’s name in Joey’s message unnerved her.
She hadn’t seen or heard it in so long, and somehow, she could sense that this was Joey’s version of a cry for help.
She could have told Talia this, of course, because Talia was her wife.
She knew about Quinn’s tragic death. But Sophie had never told her about the magic.
She let Talia think it was an issue with her dad so she didn’t have to explain, surprised at how excited she was just at the thought of speaking about it again with Joey and Elena.
She sends a quick check-in text. It’s the dinner-bath-bedtime hour, so Sophie’s not expecting a response, but she stares at the phone anyway, hoping to see Leah in her little cat jammies.
She realizes she forgot to tell Talia about the chicken defrosting in the fridge and the carrots she bought yesterday that she meant to make for dinner today, and a moment of panic seizes her.
She hopes Talia remembers to help Leah brush her teeth after her last glass of milk, and—oh my god—she left Teddy in the dryer this morning.
“Hey,” says her dad, poking his head into her room. “Dinner in ten.” He must see the tears that she hasn’t had time to hide because he comes in and puts a hand on her face. “We doing okay?”
She nods, afraid to speak. “I just miss Leah,” she manages.
He dips his head down so his eyes are level with hers.
“I know you’ll tell me eventually why you’re here, so I won’t ask.
” He hesitates. “This stage is tough. Believe me, I know. All couples struggle when the baby is young. Just—don’t give up on them.
” He raises his hands. “That’s all I’m going to say. ”
Sophie looks at him. “Oh, Dad, no.” She realizes why he thinks she’s here. “I’m not leaving Talia and Leah. Never. Never, ever.”
She softens as she sees his face. Relief that Sophie hasn’t turned out like her mother.
“I’m here,” she says, finally mustering the courage to explain, “because Joey says she needs my help. Honestly, I think she just needs a friend.”
What Sophie doesn’t say—and neither does her dad, to his credit—is that Joey needed a friend fifteen years ago when all her then-friends abandoned her and needed one again ten years ago when her mother died.
He looks her dead in the eye. “You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?”
“Of course,” she says, squeezing his hand. She’s not sure if it’s true, but she likes to think it could be.
“Shoot,” he says, suddenly, sniffing the air. “The grilled cheese.”
When he leaves, Sophie dumps her bag onto the bed.
She doesn’t even know what she’s brought.
She shoved a bunch of things in here without taking time to see if anything matched or fit.
At least she remembered her toothbrush. She puts her toiletries in the bathroom, which still also looks the same as it used to.
Same pink tiles on the walls, same matte white bathtub, same polka dot shower curtain.
But again, clean. No more pimple cream or body scrub from her youth, but also no toothpaste splatters on the mirror, not a single tissue in the trash.
Her dad has never been a particularly tidy man, and he wasn’t expecting her, so she’s wondering why his house looks this neat on a random Monday.
Back in her room, she tries to flatten a shirt on the bed, but it’s like the wrinkles are permanent. At this point, she wouldn’t be surprised if they were. The closet, with its bi-fold slatted doors, calls to her, and she scoops her clothes up into her arms.
Inside the closet, there’s a little lightbulb with a drawstring that she pulls, and the light flickers on.
The drawstring swings, and she’s distracted by this little movement.
She spent mornings staring at this same drawstring, hating her clothes, annoyed that when she pulled a shirt over her head—one that looked so cute on the hanger—it would cinch in all the wrong places, giving her a lumpy look.
She’s been working on her body positivity, but she still has a way to go, especially since Leah was born.
There are no more of her drapey sweaters in here anymore.
Her dad brought boxes to her in Denver over the years, filled with clothes and books and things from her life before.
However, there are a few items she doesn’t recognize neatly stacked on the white iron shelves.
A pair of jeans and some slippers. What looks like a nightgown, and hanging next to it is a blue floral sundress.
It’s cute, though not something Sophie would wear.
“Dad?” she calls out, hoping to ask him who these items belong to, but before she can, something else catches her eye.
A journal sits in the back corner of the closet.
She drops the pile of clothes from her arms and bends down to see it more closely.
It’s a rosy pink, and the words live for the journey are embossed in small gold letters across the front.
The cover looks worn, smudged by fingers and pen marks.
She has never kept a diary, never liked the idea of analyzing her days this way.
She’d rather sit with someone and talk it out face-to-face.
This journal is not hers. And yet, here it is, sitting in her closet next to this strange dress.
“Soph,” her dad calls to her from the kitchen. “Food’s up, love.”
She picks up the journal. It’s a hardcover, and the pages are edged with gold. “Coming,” she calls over her shoulder, but she doesn’t move.
It’s obvious that this journal has been held by anxious hands. She can tell by the broken spine and the way the pages want to splay out instead of pressing together. But when she opens to the middle of the journal, she stares at a blank page. There are no words there.
She flips through pages and pages, but still there is nothing in this journal. It’s strange because it feels like she should see ink, but there isn’t any. Eventually, she gets to the end, and still, nothing at all. Then she cracks it open to the very first page, just to check something.
She pinches her eyebrows together. On the inside of the front cover, it says, “THIS JOURNAL BELONGS TO:” and then on the line following, someone has written their name in faded blue pen.
Quinn Winter.