23 Sophie
Sophie
Sophie pauses Survivor and stands up.
“I’m going to bed.” Her dad stirs in his recliner, like he’s going to stand.
“Don’t get up,” she says, handing him the remote.
Yawning, she dips into the kitchen for some water.
On the counter, she sees a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies that look delicious and out of place.
Otto has never been a baker. He must be so lonely here on his own that he’s picking up new hobbies to pass the time.
She places one on a napkin and brings it out to him.
“Don’t mind if I do,” he says with a greedy smile when he sees the cookie.
“Love you, Dad.” She kisses him on the head. His hair is thin and soft.
“Love you too, kiddo.”
In her room, she sits at the foot of her childhood bed, knees tucked up to her chest. She can hear faint sounds of the TV from the other room. She calls Talia. With every ring, Sophie thinks of Leah’s hot little hands and feels the worry deep inside her.
Just as she thinks she’s going to be sent to voicemail, she hears a groggy voice on the other end. “Hey.”
“How is she?” Sophie can’t keep the anxiety from her words, though she tries. She’s imagining Leah curled up in Talia’s lap, sweating and struggling to breathe.
“Sleeping.” Her tone is warm, comforting, but there’s a hint of something else too.
“What’s wrong?” Sophie asks.
There’s a slight hesitation until Talia says, “Don’t freak out. Her fever went up slightly after her last dose of Tylenol wore off, but the doctor said only to worry if it’s above one hundred and two.”
“Is it above one hundred and two?”
Another pause, this time, it’s laced with annoyance. “No, of course not. I have an alarm set for every two hours so I can keep tabs on her temp all night.”
Tears are starting to build up in Sophie’s eyes. “I’m sorry I’m not there. How did she seem at bedtime?”
“Snuggly, a little whiny,” says Talia, and Sophie can hear her softening. “She will not let go of Bear. And she asked for you a few times.”
Sophie closes her eyes. “What did you say?”
“I said ‘Mama is coming home soon,’ and that seemed to work.”
“How are you doing?” Sophie asks after a pause.
“Oh, let’s see,” says Talia with a sigh. “I miss you.”
“Me too,” whispers Sophie.
Talia’s response comes quickly. “But listen to me. It’s still a low fever. We are going to be fine. I want you to stay there. I want you to enjoy this time with your dad. I promise I will call you if her fever goes up.”
A clatter outside her window makes Sophie’s breath catch. She’s about to whisper, “What was that?” before she realizes that Talia’s not actually in the room with her. She stands slowly and walks to the window, then peels open the blinds so she can see out. She sees nothing but the dark street.
“Soph?” she hears through the phone. The sound makes her jump.
“I’m here,” Sophie says eventually, turning from the window and racing to the bed to tuck herself under the blankets. “What about work tomorrow?”
“I already called off.” Talia hesitates. Then she says, “I can do this, Soph.”
Sophie’s therapist is in her head. “Do you trust Talia to take care of Leah?” Sophie’s answer to that would be “Of course I do, but…” But what? Is Sophie really so controlling, so overbearing, that she can’t let her wife handle their daughter for a few days?
She nods, deciding to heed her own internal advice. “I love you. Call me the minute her fever goes up. I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night. I want to be the first person you talk to after the doctor, and I’m coming home if it gets any worse.”
Sophie can almost see Talia at the kitchen table, dressed in sweatpants and a Buffs T-shirt and those adorable black-rimmed glasses, glaring into a blue-lit laptop, Tylenol bottle at her elbow.
Sophie lets herself lean into this image, lets herself feel the safeness of it, especially as the image of Quinn’s bloody sweatshirt crashes through her thoughts.
She feels slightly uncomfortable as they hang up, like she’s forgotten something, but she tells herself it’s the same feeling she always has when she’s forced to rely on someone else, and so she tries to ignore it.
On her phone, she turns on some music to drown out any sounds that might make the anxiety worse.
Her feet are suddenly freezing, she realizes, and she walks to the closet, peeling open the doors.
She sees the pair of purple slippers sitting there on the shelf and shoves her feet into them.
Maybe her dad bought them for her? But he couldn’t have because he didn’t know she was coming.
If they’re not for her, then whose are they?
She’s about to close the closet door when she lets her gaze fall on Quinn’s journal. Half-hidden beneath a crimson cable-knit sweater, just where she left it. She doesn’t want to think about the journal right now, and she goes to pull the chain to turn off the light.
But something catches her eye.
A flash of pink between the sweater and the journal. She doesn’t remember seeing that before.
She squats down, carefully peeling the sweater away with two fingers, like a layer of old, dead skin. Then she sees the sticky note. Neon pink and stuck to the cover of the journal, right in the center. Two words written in jet black marker across it.
Read me.
She spins around, as if an explanation will reveal itself somewhere else in the room. A stack of Post-its on her dresser, perhaps. Or maybe she stuck one on the journal yesterday and didn’t remember? But the thought is ridiculous. Of course she didn’t.
She is certain that when she last saw the journal, it did not have a bright pink sticky note on the front of it. She searched the thing from front to back. The pages were empty—empty except for Quinn’s name scribbled inside the cover. But this note. This note was not here.
She reaches out to open the journal without lifting it from the floor. She turns the first page, and then when she sees nothing else written in it, flips through the rest. It’s still blank. She isn’t sure what she expected to see. She sits back on her heels, thinking.
“Dad?” A minute later, she’s out in the living room again, trying to suppress the insect of fear creeping through her veins. She leans on the back of the sofa.
“I thought you were going to bed,” he says over his shoulder without pulling his eyes from the TV. Two soaking wet participants high-five on the screen.
“Dad.” She is schoolteacher stern now, and it gets his attention this time.
He fumbles for the remote and pushes the recliner upright with his feet. “What’s wrong?” he says, searching her face. She takes a deep breath, but the weird feeling is still there.
“Has anyone been in the house?”
He looks at her in confusion. There’s a cookie crumb stuck in his mustache. “What do you mean? Besides you and me?”
She nods.
He looks away for a flash, his own thoughts occupying him. Sophie doesn’t know what to make of this hesitation, and her mind tries to interpret it.
“Dad?”
“No,” he says quickly. “No, just us.”
“So, no one has been in my room?”
He looks furtively down the hall, then shakes his head.
“You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
Something occurs to Sophie. “At night, and when you go out, you lock up, yes?”
“Yes,” he says with a note of incredulity.
“What about the back door?”
He looks toward the kitchen, where the door in question stares back at them. Sophie senses he’s about to say that he locks that too, all the time, but they can both see clearly from here that the deadbolt is turned to the right. Unlocked.
She looks back at him, and he glances up at the ceiling, letting out a chuckle of self-admonishment. “The lock is finicky. I’ve been meaning to get it fixed for a few months.”
Sophie hurries into the kitchen, where she picks up a chair and shoves it under the knob of the back door. Just in case.
When she comes out, her dad walks over and leans down so he can look her in the eye. “I promise you, we’re safe.”
She studies his face, and she can feel her heart rate slowing just from the weight of his hands on her shoulders. She collects herself and says, “Whose things are in my closet?”
There’s a moment when Sophie can see him thinking. He gives her an extra hard squeeze that feels unintentional, a kind of instinctual reaction to ground himself at her words. “They’re yours, aren’t they?”
“No.”
“Huh,” he says.
“What about the journal?” she asks. “How did that get there?”
“Journal? I don’t remember a journal.” He rubs at his neck, searching her face.
Then he digs his fingers into his eyes, looking suddenly exhausted.
The creases on his forehead that were once the cornerstone of his whole expressive personality have deepened over time into permanent folds.
Two pockets of skin rest on top of his cheeks.
“Are you okay, Dad? I mean here, on your own?” She asks it gently.
With no hesitation, he pulls her toward him in a robust embrace. His barrel chest and strong arms grip her so she can’t move.
“I’m the dad. Let me do the worrying.”
She allows herself to relax into him.
Later, though, when she’s lying in bed, something occurs to her. The way he rubbed at his neck. It’s what he does when he’s hiding something.